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Darrell Byers
Seafood Gumbo at The Chef's Corner.
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Darrell Byers
Chicken and waffles
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Darrell Byers
Shrimp, catfish and grits.
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Darrell Byers
A plated lamb shank at The Chef's Corner.
Pull into the Chevron gas station at Loop 820 and East Berry and you won’t find a single clue that, inside, a tiny restaurant called The Chef’s Corner is serving some of the city’s best Cajun, comfort, and soul food.
There’s no outside sign advertising chef Mike Douresseaux’s excellent gumbo, a sprawling feast studded with crab legs and crawfish. No way to know about his lamb shank that falls from the bone or his chicken and waffles drizzled in burnt butter caramel; either would fit nicely on the menu at any four-star restaurant.
Walk inside this modest gas station, and you still may not discover Douresseaux’s culinary joys, his kitchen is so hidden, so obscured by packages of doughnuts and drink machines.
But you’ll see the line, a steady stream of in-the-know neighbors and diners who’ve recently discovered his food through the social media grapevine. TikTok has grown particularly fond of Douresseaux’s gas station eatery. Shared by local influencers, posts about The Chef Corner’s beautifully presented food have racked up thousands of views.
Chances are, you’ll see Douresseaux, too, in his pearl white chef’s coat, hand-delivering food to customers, showing them their dishes before sealing them in clamshell containers. There’s no dining room; you take your food to-go.
Darrell Byers
The Chef's Corner owner and chef Mike Douresseaux.
Gas station restaurants are nothing new in Fort Worth, but Chef’s Corner is a completely different experience from, say, a gas station taqueria or burger spot. It’s more along the lines of the original incarnation of Chef’s Point, a chef-driven restaurant that started out in a gas station in Watauga.
“To me, it doesn’t make that big of a difference where I’m cooking,” says Douresseaux, a Beaumont native who has spent 40 of his 56 years working in restaurants. “What matters to me is, do people like what I’m doing?”
In developing the menu, he looked to his parents — dad was from Alexandria, Louisiana, mom was a Texan. Those two worlds come together in dishes such as his corn-roasted jalapeno cheese grits with sausage, crawfish, fried catfish filets and jumbo shrimp, and his spectacular gumbo, a show-stopper spiked with crab two ways — blue crab and massive snow crab legs.
He also drew inspiration from his own experience as a lifelong chef, in which he’s worked as an executive and consulting chef for several high-end hotels and restaurants. Not many diners, after all, would expect to see lamb shank with a side of mushroom risotto, salmon glazed with sweet and fiery Thai chile sauce, or herb-grilled steak served in a gas station.
Diners, too, had a say in the direction of his menu. “When I first opened, I asked customers what they wanted to eat,” he says. “So many people said gumbo and chicken and waffles and pork chops, things that aren’t readily available in this area — and things that are right up my alley. It was then that I knew I’d be a good match for the neighborhood.”
Douresseaux has also spent several years as a dietary consultant, having graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in dietary management; his menu includes a handful of veggie and vegan options.
Two things drew him to this unlikely spot on the city’s east side: He lives close by and there’s nothing else in the area like it.
“I decided to open in a gas station while I was at another gas station across the street,” he says, laughing. “I pulled into a Shell wanting a po’boy sandwich. So I did a search on my phone, and every place that serves po’boys is far away. So, on a whim, I went inside and started talking to the owner about maybe opening a place there, and he said, ‘No, but what about at the Chevron across the street?’”
As it happens, the same person owns both stations, and soon the two were in business together, converting the Chevron’s storage space into a full-fledged kitchen; the restaurant opened in January.
The arrival of Chef’s Corner comes after a time of darkness for Douresseaux. Working long hours in restaurants cost him his marriage, he says, and a battle with alcohol landed him in legal trouble.
That’s in the past now, he says. Faith brought him out of those turbulent times, he says, and today he balances his life between proudly fawning over his three daughters, one of whom is on the road to becoming a chef, and focusing on his new restaurant.
Sometime in the next year, he’s hoping to take Chef’s Corner to the next level by opening a traditional brick-and-mortar.
“I’ve had a lot of highs and lows, but right now, life is great,” he says. “God is good. He’s brought so much into my life. I know he wants me to be exactly where I am today, doing what I love.”
Chef’s Corner, 5728 East Berry St.
