When Ruth Hooker built Hooker’s Grill in the Fort Worth Stockyards in 2017, she pressed her family’s handprints into a corner of the foundation before the concrete set. She placed scripture in the walls. On the outside, in large letters visible from the sidewalk, she had the words Chi Pisa La Chi Ke engraved in stone. It’s Choctaw. It means until we meet again. There is no word for goodbye in the Choctaw language, and Ruth doesn’t say it to her customers. “I’ll see you later. I’ll see you next time. I’ll see you down the road.”
That is not the kind of thing most burger joints put on their buildings. But Hooker’s Grill is not most burger joints.
Ruth and her mother Kathryn are enrolled members of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Neither had any restaurant experience when they opened. Ruth was her own general contractor during construction — no background in building either — and there were moments where the whole thing nearly didn’t happen. She credits her Choctaw heritage for the resilience that got her through. “You have to define in those moments what you are about,” she has said. When things got hard, she put on her jewelry with the Choctaw seal and her grandfather’s war memorial pieces and walked into whatever meeting she had to walk into.
Her great-grandfather George Davenport and his brother Joseph were Choctaw code talkers in World War I — the original code talkers, before the Navajo, whose native language was used to send battlefield communications the Germans couldn’t crack. Kathryn grew up not fully knowing this history. Ruth learned it later and it became a passion. A star honoring the code talkers now stands outside the restaurant. An exhibit at the Military Museum of Fort Worth tells their story. The Hookers had a hand in making both happen.
Ruth’s fondest childhood memories are of summers in southeast Oklahoma with her grandparents, a large cauldron over an open flame, fresh-caught fish sizzling in hot grease, and enough food being made to feed not just the family but everyone who showed up. Her great-grandmother Ruth raised hogs and chickens across the street. Salt pork and biscuits and fried potatoes every morning, from scratch, without discussion. “Everyone knew the importance of gathering and forming a community,” Ruth says. That’s the restaurant she built.
The burger that started it all is the Oklahoma Fried Onion Burger — a Depression-era invention from El Reno, Oklahoma, where cooks in the 1920s began pressing thin-sliced onions directly into the beef on the griddle to stretch the meat further. Ruth learned it from cooks back home, not from YouTube or a cookbook. She built her own trowel system to make it work right. The onions caramelize into the patty. The whole thing is pressed thin and flat, cooked through on a flat top until the edges go dark and the interior stays juicy. It’s a different animal from a smash burger and it’s been winning best burger in Fort Worth since 2019.
The Indian Taco is made on fry bread — a dish Ruth is careful to explain came out of hard times, when Native Americans were forcibly relocated and stripped of their food sources and had to survive on government-issued flour and lard. The fry bread is made from a traditional Choctaw recipe passed down from her great-grandmother. It’s their way of honoring where the food came from while feeding people who’ve never heard that story. “The fry bread is a gateway to education,” Ruth says. “Once you expose other cultures to your food you have a starting point for a conversation.”
The Rez Dog — a hot dog wrapped in fry bread and fried — has its own following. The Frybread Burger replaces the buns with smaller pieces of fry bread. Kathryn, whom regulars call Mom, is 81 years old and still working the counter.
The building has one more story. The front seating area was enclosed by carpenters working on Taylor Sheridan’s 1883, which filmed scenes nearby. When the production wrapped and the sets came down, Ruth kept the structure. It now provides shade over the picnic tables. She wasn’t going to let that go.
Hooker’s Grill is at 213 W. Exchange Avenue in the Fort Worth Stockyards. Open Wednesday and Thursday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday. More at hookersgrilltx.com.
