As the Horseshoe turns: Conflict tangles Fort Worth chef Grady Spears, Horseshoe Hill
The future of another Grady Spears restaurant is uncertain after a public falling-out last week between Spears and a business partner.
Horseshoe Hill Restaurant, Spears’ celebrated chicken-fried steak cafe in the Stockyards, is closed for now after a split between Spears and Weatherford rancher Jed Watje.
The restaurant had already announced it would be closed Sept. 1-10 for filming of Paramount’s “Y: 1883” Yellowstone series in the 200 block of West Exchange Avenue.
But visitors last weekend found a printed notice on the door saying Spears was barred from the property as of Aug, 24.
On Saturday, the celebrity chef took to Facebook, posting a 675-word missive saying Horseshoe Hill would be closed three weeks and “we had planned this for months.”
The restaurant has been “kidnapped,” he wrote, and he hinted at legal action to return.
Watje said in a text message that “there isn’t anything to update on as of yet,” and that he would respond “as we go forward.”
Horseshoe Hill opened in 2015 and immediately won Texas Monthly’s praise for Spears’ take on chicken-fried steaks served five ways.
As of Saturday, the restaurant’s Facebook page had not been updated since July 30.
Spears was the founding chef at Reata, leaving in 2000.
Horseshoe Hill has been one of his longer-lasting restaurants after shorter stints at his namesake Grady’s in Fort Worth and Grady’s Line Camp in Tolar, among several stops around the state.
According to photos shared on Facebook, Watje’s letter posted on the door Aug. 24 carried the headline “Eviction Notice” but did not say the restaurant was closing.
“Grady Spears does not have a lease in place” for the property, it read, and he “will not be allowed on premises.”
The street is closed by Fort Worth police during the “Y: 1883” filming, so the sign is not accessible to the public. But Spears described it in his Facebook post.
“The employees were told we are closing,” he wrote. “My staff called me and I instructed them to leave.”
Spears wrote that he is “being bullied!”
His long history of kitchen brilliance that made him friends with top Texas celebrities, but he also has a peripatetic history of opening and closing restaurants.
Horseshoe Hill was listed in Texas Monthly magazine’s “Where to Eat Now” in 2016, including praise for the “golden, extravagantly battered chicken-fried steaks ... sizzling, scandalously fat-ribboned aged ribeyes ... [and] light, fluffy calf fries.”
An accusation of aggravated assault against a family member in 2018 was dismissed in 2020, according to Tarrant County records. Spears had agreed to complete a 27-week Partner Abuse Intervention Program in Denton County, according to the memo of an agreement between prosecutors and Spears’ attorney.
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
