A historic home becomes a popular west Fort Worth beer garden and coffee cafe
Big Kat Burgers is already a hit at Crystal Springs Hideaway, the burger grill-bistro-beer garden in west Fort Worth.
Now — finally — Crystal Springs Hideaway is serving morning coffees and prize-winning pastries under the shade trees at its historic location, a 101-year-old home at 113 Roberts Cut Off Road.
Crystal Springs Hideaway opened last year and quickly joined the lists of Fort Worth’s best patios and beer gardens.
It serves wine and cheese in front, beer and burgers in the back and cocktails inside the handsome old home, originally built in the days of the now-gone Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion country music hall next door.
The coffee and espresso bar opens at 7 a.m. and serves a variety of Central American and Ethiopian blends.
But the pastries are a co-star. The croissants, cookies and breads come from James Beard semifinalist chef Maricsa Trejo of La Casita Bakeshop in Richardson.
That’s yet another reason to stop at Crystal Springs, off Roberts Cut Off Road a half-block north of White Settlement Road in the neighborhood now known as the River District.
Big Kat was first to help open Crystal Springs, serving “big, messy” burgers, tots or fries and popular “cowboy caviar” or green chile corn dip served with Fritos dippers.
The burgers have names like the “Classic Kat,” the “Last Chance” pepper jack-candied jalapeño bacon cheeseburger, or the “Brute” bacon burger with bacon-jam cream cheese, jalapeños, onions and a jalapeño-cilantro ranch dressing.
Another popular burger is the Tiki, a cheddar burger with pineapple, jalapeño and pepperoni.
Any burger is also available in slider size.
J.D. and Shanna Granger, former Tarrant Regional Water District officials, founded Crystal Springs Hideaway.
“We love a good burger, we love good cheese and wine — we love good beer,” Shanna Granger said on a recent Eats Beat Live, the Star-Telegram streaming show on Facebook, X.com and YouTube.
Finding the house “really brought the vision together,” she said.
She described Crystal Springs as an “Austin-style’ beer garden but with a cocktail bar, wine, cheese and charcuterie.
The name Crystal Springs refers to both the West Fork of the Trinity River and the old Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion, a 1930-40s dance hall and swimming pool from 1916 to 1966 at 5336 White Settlement Road.
For decades, the Roberts Cut Off Road home behind the dance hall belonged to the Maroon family, Lebanese-American grocers when Greek and Lebanese built a community around their truck farms in the valley of the West Fork of the Trinity River.
The dance hall is legendary in country music as the place where Fort Worth bandleader Milton Brown and later fiddler Bob Wills first combined swing-dance tunes, jazz and country music to create the sound known as western swing.
Crystal Springs Hideaway is open from 7 a.m. to midevening Sundays and Tuesdays through Thursdays, until midnight Fridays and Saturdays. It’s closed Monday; 682-224-2583, crystalspringshideaway.com.
This story was originally published September 22, 2025 at 4:35 AM.
