CROWLEY
A Crowley Road location of 43-year-old Cousins BBQ closed Saturday night, the latest in a series of local restaurants to close as food and labor costs continue to rise.
By 7:30 p.m. Saturday, the restaurant was sold out of its popular pork ribs and budget-friendly smoked chicken, a worker said.
THe Crowley location opened in 2003 in the then-new Stone Gate Plaza shopping center near Farm Road 1187.
The original Cousins in Fort Worth remains open at 6262 McCart Ave., 7 miles north of the Crowley location. A newer location also remains open at 5125 Bryant Irvin Road in Cityview.
In its heyday as a Fort Worth barbecue tradition alongside Angelo’s and the Railhead, Cousin’s shipped brisket and ribs to Washington for President George H..W. Bush and late founder “Boots” Payne trained cooks at Disneyland.
Cousins made Texas Monthly magazine’s Top 50 list of Texas’ best barbecue twice and was chosen for the magazine’s annual barbecue festival.
But after Hill Country-style, small-batch “craft” barbecue came to Fort Worth in 2015, old-time commercial barbecue restaurants faced tough competition.
Cousins remodeled and retooled to upgrade its food and decor. But then the prices of beef and labor started skyrocketing.
Cousins now charges $34 a pound for brisket. That’s less than several of the top-ranked restaurants.
Chain restaurants On the Border, The Rim and Rio Mambo closed Burleson locations recently as several new restaurants opened in that city’s Old Town.
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Bud Kennedy is celebrating his 40th year writing about restaurants in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He has written the “Eats Beat” dining column in print since 1985 and online since 1992 — that’s more than 3,000 columns about Texas cafes, barbecue, burgers and where to eat.
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