Buttons Restaurant reopening in Dallas area, leaving original Fort Worth location
Buttons Restaurant is a Fort Worth landmark no more.
Closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the part-soul food restaurant, part-jazz nightclub is moving to a location in the north Dallas Galleria area.
Majority owner Curtis Luper said leaving Buttons’ its 11-year west Fort Worth location was in the plans all along, to make Buttons’ chicken-and-waffles more convenient for customers coming from as far away as Frisco.
The move marks Buttons’ return to the north Dallas market, where it operated from 2010 to 2015. The new location is the former Hibashi at 13465 Inwood Road in Farmers Branch.
“We will not change a thing,” said Luper, the former TCU assistant football coach who is now offensive coordinator at Missouri.
He was planning to move Buttons in July, he said. But the coronavirus pandemic forced the closure.
New federal loan money is helping Buttons move and support employees, he said.
The new location is “a chance to expand our business and open us up to a bigger clientele,” he said.
Luper said the new location will have the same ambiance with an expanded menu, a larger dance floor and live music several days a week with a national act coming in quarterly.
He said it will take at least two months to open after the state gives the all clear to return.
The building in Addison is new, bigger and $10,000 a month cheaper than the current location, said Rick Jones, an Austin lawyer and the chief financial officer of Buttons.
Buttons had planned to move to Arlington and looked at locations in Lincoln Square and the Highlands but couldn’t get the deals to work, officials said. A new Fort Worth location and a Houston Buttons are planned.
The original owners, Carolyn and Herbert Hughes, and chef Keith “Buttons” Hicks had left when the restaurant was sold in recent years.
On Facebook, Carolyn Hughes wrote:
“We say farewell to the place where your Soul was fed with ‘food and music.’ Where EVERYONE was a cool ‘Kat.’ Where friends became family. And those families broke bred together, laughed, children played, and the patio was the spot to gather! ... BUTTONS — where LOVE was the best seller on the menu. There never was a stranger. The place where ‘differences’ made us ‘the same’ and everyone knew and learned each other’s name. OH THE MEMORIES.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 1:36 PM.
