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Another long-standing restaurant is dark on Camp Bowie Boulevard.
And it won’t be the last.
A 45-year-old Uncle Julio’s chain restaurant is under repair indefinitely after badly failing a city health inspection. but plans a future reopening party, a manager for the Irving-based company said this week.
Uncle Julio’s, 5301 Camp Bowie Blvd., is now remodeling along with Tommy’s Hamburgers, a 23-year fixture that burned in a May 9 fire at 5228 Camp Bowie Blvd.
One block east, the Bella Italia West restaurant at 5139 Camp Bowie Blvd. will move at the end of December after 37 years, founder Carlo Croci said Tuesday.
Bella Italia is losing its space amid talk of a new Merrick Street development involving a Colorado restaurant company.
Croci said all he knows is that “we will be somewhere …. I do not know where.”
Bella Italia West opened in 1988 after leaving a smaller Bella Italia in the Wedgwood neighborhood.
At the time, that corner at Camp Bowie and Merrick Street was considered a star-crossed location. Seven consecutive restaurants had failed.
In a 1988 Star-Telegram interview, Croci said: “I’m not going to worry about why other people didn’t make it. I think I can.”
Uncle Julio’s was already open and a busy fajitas-and-margaritas restaurant known for one of the area’s first frozen margarita-and-sangria “swirls.”
At the time, frozen margaritas were still a new phenomenon. The frozen margarita machine was invented in 1971 at Mariano’s in Dallas.
Uncle Julio’s originally opened in Dallas as a North Texas venture for former managers from Houston-based Pappasito’s. That company had not yet come to the Dallas-Fort Worth market.
Since then, Uncle Julio’s has gone through several hands and a foreclosure.
It now has restaurants in 12 states and belongs to Sun Holdings, the Dallas-based parent of Freebirds World Burrito and Taco Bueno.
In the Sept. 19 city visit, inspectors found food storage and handling problems at the restaurant along with major structural problems.
Sewage was running through the dining patio into a city storm drain, according to the city report.
Inspectors counted 43 demerits out of a possible 100.
A new manager wrote in an email this week that the company is giving the restaurant some “much-needed love.”
The restaurant’s voice mail message promises a grand reopening party that “the Fort Worth community will never forget.”
Other locations remain open at 9201 North Freeway in north Fort Worth, 150 E. Interstate 20 in Arlington and 1301 William D. Tate Ave. in Grapevine.
Tommy’s Hamburger Grill is expected to reopen by year’s end.
A nearby location remains open at 1736 Mall Circle, along with a second location at 2455 Forest Park Blvd.
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Bud Kennedy
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