Olaf Growald
Westland Hospitality’s Gigi Howell sits under a picture of Margie Walters, the matriarch of Margie’s Italian Gardens.
The people at the table next to me said it before I could even think it: “This is a whole lot nicer than Margie’s used to be.”
Anyone who has visited Margie’s, the long-running Italian spot in far west Fort Worth whose roots stretch back to the 1950s, over the past few years most definitely won’t recognize the place.
“Is it going to be like the old Margie’s, yes,” co-owner Gigi Howell of Westland Hospitality posted in a video on Facebook, days before the restaurant’s grand reopening a few weeks ago. “It will be like the old Margie’s, but the old Margie’s opened in 1953. It closed in the ’90s and then a different Margie’s was open from 1997 to 2023.
“We are not the Margie’s that closed in 2023. We’re the Margie’s that opened in 1953.”
What that means, Howell told me a few days later as she showed me around the absolutely packed dining room, is that she and co-owners Bourke Harvey and Mark McBride have taken Margie’s back to square one, to its original humble beginnings, when Italian immigrants Margie Walters and her mother Tina Lozzi — along with Margie’s brother Valerio — opened it more than seven decades ago along what was then known as the Bankhead Highway.
“We took it down to the studs,” she says. “The idea being, we wanted to take it back to the very beginning when it was a simple yet elegant place that served great food.”
The interior has been completely overhauled. Sunlight catches the pressed patterns of a new tin ceiling, lending a touch of historic charm above. Below, cracked, well-worn linoleum has been stripped away in favor of cool, raw concrete flooring.
Once unused dining room space, in rooms kept dark and dank, has been converted into bright and airy — yet still cozy — connected eating areas. The main dining area features a long bar, inviting you to pull up a stool beneath the soft glow of elegant milk glass lighting. Throughout the dining rooms, new marble-topped tables and a scattering of red banquettes create a cohesive feel of class and elegance; big band music plays in the background.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Howell asks me, guiding me from room to room. Her enthusiasm is contagious, not to mention well-warranted. For Howell, the rebirth of Margie’s has been a highly personal project. As I’ve explored before in other articles, Howell has strong ties to this area of Fort Worth, which is known as Westland; her family, in fact, helped build many of the homes that engulf the area.
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Howell has even stronger ties to Margie’s: It’s where her parents met. “I grew up at Margie’s,” she says. “I spent so much time here, I honestly thought Margie was my grandmother.”
Large photos of Walters and her family are scattered around the restaurant, along with early menus (including one advertising the restaurant’s original name, Margie and Tina’s Italian Gardens) and mementos from Margie’s early days. Some of the restaurant’s original signage has been repurposed, too.
“We saved as much as we could,” she says. “But so much of this was in such a bad state of disrepair, we just couldn’t hang on to it. I mean, you should have seen the kitchen — what a mess it was!”
Helping execute Margie’s new slimmed-down menu — made up of pizzas, housemade pastas, several appetizers, and desserts — is Juan Rodriguez and his wife, Paige, who run the popular Magdalena’s supper clubs. Howell says they’re using many of the restaurant’s original recipes.
Along with pizzas, nearly a half-dozen housemade pastas are offered — spaghetti, angel hair, rigatoni, fettuccine, and creste di gallo — and served with your choice of sauce, including Alfredo, Florentine, and marinara. There are also pasta dishes, such as the must-try braised short rib ragu with pappardelle and the chicken piccata, which rests on a nest of angel hair pasta.
Appetizers include smoked tenderloin carpaccio, freshly made garlic bread, and calamari with a sweet orange chili sauce. For dessert, try the olive oil cake with a blueberry compote.
There’s also a nice selection of red and white wines, available by the glass and bottle, along with craft cocktails.
It’s a far cry, in other words, from the most recent incarnation of Margie’s, which had unfortunately fallen into disrepair.
“When I heard it might be available, I knew instantly I wanted to do what I could to save it,” Howell says, glancing around the restaurant that she calls a second home. “It’s meant so much to me, so much to my family, so much to Margie’s family. Her son was here the other night, and he told me how much he loved it. You have no idea how good that made me feel, knowing he liked what we’ve done with his family’s restaurant. I think I may have cried.”
Margie’s Italian Gardens, 9805 Camp Bowie W. Blvd., margiesitaliangardens.com
