‘I’m still here’: Old-timey breakfast cafe hungry for diners at Fort Worth Stock Show
Everything around Dickies Arena has changed since the days when Montgomery Street was a two-lane road serving factories near the railroad yard.
That is, everything except Montgomery St. Cafe.
“I’m still here,” Claudette Finley said last week, handing an order of biscuits to a late breakfast customer at her throwback plate-lunch cafe, 2000 Montgomery St.
On the eve of its 75th Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo, she hopes the cowboys and customers remember to stop by for morning coffee, breakfast or weekday lunch.
“The cowboys like to come here, but a lot of regulars think there’s too much traffic,” she said. “We’d be tickled to death if more people would come.”
Finley, a former American Airlines flight attendant now in her 80s, might be the dean of local cafe owners.
When she bought Montgomery St. in 1986, original founder Jake Wells told her, “If you take care of this place, it’ll take care of you.”
In turn, she’s taken care of the Cultural District with pancake breakfasts, biscuits and weekday plate lunches and pies.
As far as I can tell, the cafe has not changed one bit since 1979, when a nostalgic mural of the 1950s was added along one wall depicting the days when the Stock Show had just moved to the Cultural District and the restaurant was named the Industrial Cafe.
Other beloved local plate-lunch cafe have changed locations, owners, decor or recipes.
Montgomery St.’s daily specials are still scrawled on a whiteboard behind the counter.
Diners squeeze together at old-time stools or in five wooden booths, or around the six tightly packed tables.
The weekday lunch specials range from beef tips or meat loaf to fried chicken.
But the cafe remains known for fluffy pancakes, big biscuits and chicken-fried steak.
The opening of Dickies Arena was expected to boost business for restaurants such as Montgomery St. Cafe, Taco Heads and Jazz Cafe, a Greek-Mediterranean lunch and brunch hangout with a laid-back vibe.
But in some ways, the arena and Cultural District traffic and tight parking slow breakfast and lunch crowds at nearby businesses.
Montgomery St. Cafe is open for breakfast daily except Sunday and lunch weekdays, so nighttime arena crowds miss out.
It winds up being a favorite stop for crews loading concert equipment or for cowboys and ranchers headed to the Stock Show grounds.
“It’s a mixed deal for us,” Finley said.
“We’re at the back [of the Stock Show grounds] and we don’t get a lot of people coming over here,” she said: “Thank goodness there are regulars who know us.”
Montgomery St. Cafe opens at 6 a.m. weekdays, 7 a.m. Saturdays. It serves lunch until 2 p.m. weekdays and breakfast only Saturdays until noon; 817-731-8033, facebook.com.
This story was originally published January 11, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
