A Fort Worth restaurant is closing after 33 years. But it never sold chicken-fried steak

One of the most friendly, homespun restaurants in Fort Worth will close next month after 33 years of serving cakes, cobblers and simple lunches — baked, not fried.

Tastebuds Eatery, 7674 McCart Ave., will do catering after May 31 but will close as a restaurant because the rent went up and “the whole dining market has changed,” founder Sunne Hill said.

“Everybody’s in a hurry now — they want fast-food, all fried, and barbecue,” said Hill, known for non-fried home cooking such as lemon-pepper baked catfish, chicken or meatloaf served with vegetables such as garlic-thyme-bay-leaf black-eyed peas or jalapeno turnip greens.

Dining-room service will end May 25 or sooner, Hill wrote Tuesday night in an emotional Facebook post. From May 25 to May 31, Tastebuds will serve takeout only.

“It has been one heck of a ride as year after year we persevered against the oh-so-thriving restaurants,” she wrote, “and we have each of you to thank. ... The past few years, especially past couple of months, have proven to be some of the hardest, in every way possible.”

Hill’s post mentioned the “unrelenting speed” of restaurant life. She has been working 60 hours or more a week for 33 years, she said.

When Hill and her husband, Byron, moved from the Bay Area in California and opened Tastebuds in 1991, it was near a welfare office in a dilapidated shopping center at the corner of East Berry Street and South Riverside Drive.

Nobody believed it would last.

How could a cafe survive in Fort Worth if it didn’t even serve chicken-fried steak?

“People there had bets — they said I’d last nine months, tops,” Hill said, smiling.

“I told them I’d do it my way.”

The tiny shop became known for her signature cream cakes and cheesecakes.

In 2004, the Hills moved Tastebuds to a sparkling new strip shopping center in what was otherwise a fast-food wasteland near Sycamore School Road.

But suburban customers didn’t want to sit and wait a half-hour while Hill cooked dinners one-by-one in the cramped kitchen. (For long waits, Tastebuds had a sofa and a well-stocked bookshelf.)

New customers — mostly older, Hill said — latched onto the cafe and came for soups, chicken-salad sandwiches, strawberry-spinach salads or chicken tetrazzini.

“I know almost everyone by name, and they know me,” she said.

The sofa and home furnishings went away with COVID, although a bookshelf is still filled with novels and mysteries.

When the restaurant closes, Sunne Hill wrote in the Facebook post, “You just may spot Mr. Hill at a local library turning the pages of a sci-fi thriller.”

Tastebuds is open for lunch and late afternoon takeout daily except Monday; 817-361-5500, tastebudseatery.org.