There’s a Model T parked over the buffet line at Willhoite’s, and it’s not there for decoration. It’s sitting on the same hydraulic lift that used to raise real cars off the ground when this building was a working garage. You fill your plate with fried catfish and mashed potatoes underneath a car that once got serviced in that exact spot, and nobody who works there thinks that’s strange.
The building at 432 S Main St in Grapevine goes back to 1913. It started as a dry goods store, ran briefly as a silent movie theater, and then in 1919 turned into the first full-service auto garage in town. Andrew Wiley Willhoite and his partner Bart Starr ran it. Willhoite’s son Ted took it over in 1936, put in the town’s first electric gas pumps, and kept the place going until he retired in 1975. After that it sat empty for a few years, used as a furniture warehouse.
Grapevine native Phil Parker bought the building in 1980 and opened Willhoite’s Restaurant on January 17, 1981. He didn’t gut the place. He kept the brick, kept the gas pump out front, kept the bones of the garage, and built a restaurant around them instead of over them. The facade got restored in 2017, and the Grapevine Heritage Foundation gave the building a Historic Preservation Award in 2019.
The place has never tried to be one of the polished spots on Main Street, and that’s part of why it’s lasted. One longtime regular put it plainly in a review: not a chain, not upscale, not touristy, just a former gas station garage doing good food at a fair price. Willhoite’s also quietly supplies meals for the local Meals on Wheels program, which is the kind of thing a restaurant does when it actually belongs to its town rather than just occupying a storefront in it.
The food is straightforward country cooking. The lunch buffet runs Monday through Saturday from 11 to 3, with something close to 20 hot items rotating through, fried catfish, chicken fried steak, meatloaf, green beans, and mashed potatoes that regulars mention before anything else on the menu. The salad bar alone runs more than 55 items. Sunday brings a brunch buffet from 10 to 2, with made-to-order omelets, fresh waffles, and cinnamon rolls pulled hot alongside the rest of the spread.
Off the buffet there’s a full menu too, half-pound burgers, fish tacos, sandwiches, entrees, and a late-night bar menu of buffalo wings, potato skins, and cheese fries for whoever’s still around once the band starts. Happy hour runs Monday through Friday from 4 to 7 with $2.50 drafts. Live music plays Wednesday through Sunday nights, and Tuesday is karaoke starting at 8. The stage has hosted bands before anyone had heard of them, including the Chicks and Pat Green back when they were still building a following.
Forty-five years in, it’s one of the longest-running restaurants on Main Street, and it’s never once tried to be anything other than what it is. People don’t walk in expecting a tasting menu. They walk in for chicken fried steak, cold beer, and a car parked over the buffet that’s been there longer than most of the restaurant’s regulars have been alive.
