Here’s a new place to eat breakfast and lunch at an airfield northwest of Fort Worth
You might say the restaurant business at Hicks Airfield’s airport cafe has always been touch-and-go.
For 20 years, the cafe has operated as a landmark burger grill and country cafe. Now, it’s a brunch and lunch hangout for the new suburban neighborhoods that have grown up around the small airport off of Bonds Ranch Road north of Saginaw.
The airport cafe has always been a success.
But one wrong turn and customers wind up on the runway.
Wing It Cafe, 171 Aviator Drive, is the newest restaurant drawing families and children to enjoy pancakes or half-pound burgers and see planes, but not too closely.
It’s in the airfield cafe space left when brunch mainstay Beacon Cafe moved to Business U.S. 287 north of Saginaw. Before that, in the days when only cattle grazed nearby, it was Rio Concho Cafe.
Eric Faulkner said he and his wife, Kathryn, have added new signs, fences and bold warnings: “DO NOT Drive or Walk Across Runway.”
The restaurant uses a driveway behind the hangars instead a block east of the runway.
If neighbors can find their way back to the restaurant, they’ll discover the same burgers the Faulkners served at their former Wing It Cafe in Lewisville, plus a new breakfast and brunch menu by former Dallas sous chef Seth Chick.
Fall specials include banana-walnut pancakes, orange-cranberry pancakes and pumpkin French toast.
The lunch menu features six burgers and a weekly special, plus sandwiches, wings and appetizers.
A blackened chicken sandwich the other day features jalapenos, honey mustard and artisan pickles, with what tasted like panko-crumb onion rings.
Faulkner said he did not know until after he leased the restaurant about past airfield conflicts, which led to Beacon Cafe’s move out to the highway after a successful run.
“We are doing everything we can to make it as safe as possible for all guests,” he wrote in an email.
Wing It Cafe is open for breakfast and lunch Wednesdays through Sundays; 682-224-6314, (6) Wing It Cafe | Fort Worth TX | Facebook.
