Watauga, Texas

Chef Point Bar & Restaurant

High-end dining has a home in this former gas station.

Chef Point is something of a paradox. It’s a high-end restaurant that offers perfectly cooked steak and duck with plum sauce. But it’s also in a former gas station, just off the highway, in a suburb of Fort Worth.

The unusual eatery’s origins date back to 2003, when owner Paula Merrell Nwaeze tried to open a more traditional restaurant with her husband. Since they didn’t have prior experience, the bank denied them a restaurant loan, and all the couple could afford was an empty space in a then-operational Conoco gas station. The sit-down restaurant they eventually opened inside became so popular that the couple removed the gas pumps. They were making most of their money from the restaurant, not the gas.

Chef Point is part of a larger Texas tradition. In the massive state, which has more gas stations than any other, the gas station restaurant is its own genre, often offering better-than-average meals to a population on the move.

But Chef Point has now become a destination for diners seeking lobster macaroni and cheese, seafood-stuffed poblano peppers, and rib-eye. It’s not fare you’d expect at a pit-stop, but it makes for a charming contrast with Chef Point’s once-humble surroundings.