This Texas Sit-Down Restaurant With A Gas Station Past Is Unexpectedly Upscale

The road trip is a quintessential American pastime, but if you're starving and miles away from the nearest town, sometimes you have to get by on a bag of Doritos or a sketchy-looking hot dog. Fortunately this isn't always the case for the modern road trip, where gourmet dining can turn up where you least expect it. Similar to Italy's Autogrill, which turned a gas station eatery into an on-the-go dining institution, great food can come from the most unlikely places, like a gas station in Texas that was a culinary hot spot for nearly 20 years before it expanded to a stand-alone restaurant. 

Executive chef and owner of Chef Point, Franson Nwaeze, who is originally from Nigeria, had initially planned to become a commercial pilot in the United States. However, he found a love for cooking while working as a dishwasher, and began his culinary training. In 2003, Nwaeze and his wife Paula purchased a Conoco gas station in Watauga, Texas just north of Fort Worth, recalling that it was easier to get a bank loan for a gas station than for a restaurant. But Nwaeze didn't want to serve the usual gas station fare like microwave burritos or sad taquitos endlessly rolling on a warming tray. So he built a commercial kitchen inside the station's miniscule food mart. The small but mighty restaurant served both comfort food and refined dishes like fried chicken, oxtail, duck à l'orange, escargot, and a signature bread pudding to an ever-growing number of diners from near and far, all eager for Nwaeze's culinary creations. 

Chef Point's popularity grew and grew through both word of mouth and lots of media exposure, including not just one but two features on Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" in 2011 and 2025. Chef Franson Nwaeze worked over the years to reconfigure the space to accommodate more diners, including eliminating the gas station's pumps altogether, but eventually appeasing the crowds proved unsustainable. Nwaeze opened a stand-alone Chef Point restaurant in Colleyville, Texas in 2019, and closed the former gas station location a few years later in 2023. The Colleyville location is a far cry from a gussied-up gas station, with sleek and warm wooden flooring and tables paired with leather booths and chairs, colorful art on the walls, and lots of natural light flooding in from the outdoor patio.

Today, the large menu boasts a wide range of options, but the notable items include lobster bisque, "better than sex" fried chicken, a blackened pork chop stuffed with crab and pepper jack cheese, escargot-stuffed mushrooms, and Italian-style nachos. There are also Southern classics like fried green tomatoes and chicken fried steak alongside Italian-inspired dishes like shrimp scampi and three types of chicken parmesan: white, red, and pink. The restaurant's full bar provides cocktails like a Texas-inspired bacon bloody mary and a selection of "gas station margaritas" as well as mocktails. 

Although it's no longer housed inside of a gas station, Chef Point remains a popular destination. Next time you're driving through the Lone Star state, check it out or look for one of these 12 unexpected gas station eats in Texas.