A sign from Beirut Grill is perched near the remains of the restaurant Aug. 20 at 2410 W. Abram St. A fire on Aug. 17 destroyed the business.
Approximately 14 minutes before 6 in the evening on Aug. 17, a fire alert was dispatched to the Arlington Fire Department. Immediately upon the first unit’s arrival at the scene, a second alarm was requested.
Smoke filled the air in West Arlington as the sweltering summer heat reached its height of the day. After more than 30 minutes of fighting the flames, interior units evacuated the structure as the focus shifted to defensive operations — and seven minutes later, at 6:27 p.m., a fourth alarm was requested.
More than 80 firefighters across the Arlington and Pantego fire departments worked to put out a commercial fire that was brought under control at approximately 7:40 p.m., a little under two hours from the first unit being dispatched.
In those nearly 120 minutes, the lives of several business owners, their employees and their families changed.
Beirut Grill
Mojtaba Salame was at the airport on the afternoon of the 17th, picking up his brother, who was coming back from a trip to Beirut, Lebanon. Along with Salame’s wife and family, the two men sat down for a late lunch when they returned home.
A phone call would end the reunion early.
Salame is the brother-in-law of Abbas Fares, one of the owners of Beirut Grill.
“As soon as we sat down, we got a call saying that there’s smoke coming out of the building,” Salame said.
By the time he made it to the restaurant, the firefighters were already on the scene. At that point, all the family saw was smoke.
“It looks like it’s not a big deal,” Salame said. “We were hoping that it’s just a quick 45-minute thing.”
Slowly, the fire became more, eating away at the structure where he had helped out his family on a part-time basis whenever he was needed.
On a normal day, Beirut Grill was a family operation, serving Lebanese cuisine. The food was cooked on a charcoal grill, served to customers of varying cultures, Salame said.
“A lot of times we’re just sitting outside and then customers come, and they’re leaving the restaurant, they sit with us and we have some tea or we have some juice,” Salame said.
“This was kind of like our second home. When we had nothing to do, we’d come sit outside here on the patio and grab something to eat and just chill.”
The fire started showing after firefighters cut the roof open. For hours, Salame and various members of his family watched from outside.
“I stayed until maybe 4 a.m.,” he said. “I honestly lost count.”
On Tuesday morning, he got a few hours of sleep and then was back to checking in on his family and the other affected businesses.
On Friday, the family stood together where the restaurant used to be. Sometimes they laughed, sometimes they talked, sometimes they were simply silent.
They looked at the lot where their business had been, now bricks, wood and other materials on the ground.
Salame said they hope to one day bring the restaurant back to serve their customers and the community that they have grown.
The business started a GoFundMe account to raise funds to recover. It has raised over $34K as of press time.
“We do thank the community a whole lot,” Salame said. “It’s going to be definitely a long process, but hopefully, we can get to a point where we can come back and do what we were doing.”
A city worker and an Arlington firefighter look at the remains of businesses Aug. 18 after a fire in West Arlington.
Smash Toast
Bobby King ran a 2000s pop punk sandwich shop called Smash Toast, a business idea he’d had since college.
“The first chance I got to do it, I opened it and made it happen,” King said.
The restaurant opened in September 2025 and served a variety of sandwiches featuring pop culture names, coffees and other drinks.
On Aug. 17, Smash Toast was open until 3 p.m. King said the day was a normal one. He checked in with a new employee in the morning and did a grocery run.
Later, he went to another of his offices, where a friend called asking him to deliver a set of trailer keys he had. On his way, King received another call, this one from Kait Thibeaux. Thibeaux owns Folklore Grove Bookstore and is one of King’s best friends.
“I got the call from Kait saying, ‘Bobby, I think our store’s burning down,’” he said.
The call occurred around 5:40 p.m., and King arrived at the business close to 6:09 p.m.
“I don’t know why, but just the second that I saw it, I just knew that it was kind of over for us,” he said. “From just what I know about fire stuff, smoke is just as damaging as fire.”
With books and food equipment inside, the smoke alone would heavily damage the contents of the businesses.
But the fire wasn’t put out.
“It just kept growing,” King said. “I remember at one point we thought it was out, and then fire starts pouring out the front door of Beirut.”
He said that once the roof collapsed, the fire only kept getting bigger.
King stayed until the flames were extinguished, but the firefighters kept spraying water. He said he left around 9:30 p.m.
On Tuesday, more phone calls began coming in, from people King knew and people he didn’t. Even with the business gone, business didn’t stop.
“I had sales tax due on the 20th, and so I had to pay sales tax,” King said.
The remains of Beirut Grill lie next to the entryway of Smash Toast and Folklore Grove Bookstore on Aug. 18 at 2410 W. Abram St. The one-year anniversary of Smash Toast and Folklore Grove Bookstore opening was coming up in September.
On Wednesday, he had a meeting. On Thursday, King went to a conference for a disability ministry he does work with. Smash Toast was only one of his businesses, one of his commitments.
A phantom pain comes through in moments of relaxation, times when he would have been working but now is not. He hopes to bring the business he once dreamed of back — back to Arlington.
Smash Toast, Folklore Grove Bookstore and Derma Spa Laser Clinic, another business affected by the fire, have opened a shared fundraiser on the Smash Toast website. It has raised over $10K as of press time. The Pilates Effect, which also closed because of the fire, is working on relocating and is continuing classes in a temporary location.
“Arlington’s been my whole life,” King said. “Born here, raised here, went to school at Williams Elementary, went to Young Junior High, went to Martin High School. My wife went to UTA.”
“Arlington’s my life, and so with that, this is just another part and element of it.”
Folklore Grove Bookstore
Tucked in a nook inside Smash Toast, Folklore Grove Bookstore was hidden upon first glance. The bookstore garnered a tight-knit community of customers.
Brittany Rodriquez began working as a bookseller at Folklore Grove Bookstore after leaving her previous office job and starting a small business.
She said the space was really nice. People could stop for a cup of coffee and then pick up a book.
“I worked in food service for about 10 years, and then I went into retail at Folklore, and being able to see the two incredible things combined is actually wonderful,” Rodriquez said.
Her last shift before the fire was on Aug. 14. The Texas Independent Bookstore Crawl had brought customers who might not have ever seen the store before.
“Just an outpouring of community was coming in to support and get their stamps and chitchat; saw some familiar faces, saw some new faces, some people that had traveled from, like, an hour and a half away,” she said.
Rodriquez said it was a nice and relaxing day, a typical one for the bookstore.
At around 7 p.m. on Aug. 17, Thibeaux called Rodriquez. Thibeaux asked her if she was sitting down before delivering the news of the fire.
“I told her, ‘I’m sorry; I can’t believe this is happening,’” Rodriquez said.
Rodriquez did not end up seeing the bookstore while the fire was burning.
The next morning, she and Christina Wolf, a fellow Folklore Grove Bookstore bookseller, visited the spot. Rodriquez said they went because “seeing is believing, and before all of that it was all kind of like a nightmare that other people were telling us about.”
Chairs salvaged from Beirut Grill lay outside the restaurant Aug. 20 at 2410 W. Abram St. Small parts of the restaurant were salvaged from the burnt down building.
At the scene, Rodriquez’s mind raced as she tried to think of every way to raise money to bring everything back to how it was before the fire.
“It’s truly a major, major loss to lose both Smash Toast and Folklore because now not only does the community no longer have a safe space to go to be creative and feel safe and talk about books, the employees have also lost a home away from home.”
Everything was in flux. Through her small business, Rodriquez was set to lead a class on how to make flowers out of recycled book pages on Aug. 22 at the bookstore. The fire displaced the event.
But support came through. Daydream Bookstore Cafe — an independent bookstore in the city — picked up the event and gave Rodriquez the opportunity to have the class.
Several more bookstores around Dallas-Fort Worth have made posts on social media raising awareness of the destruction of Folklore Grove Bookstore.
El Gabacho Tex-Mex Grill, as well as other nearby restaurants, offered food and water to the firefighters and the business owners at the scene of the fire and in the days after it was put out.
David Govea, owner of El Gabacho Tex-Mex Grill, said helping is “not something you think about; we just do it.”
@j.e.journalism