Rock Springs Cafe shut its doors for good on June 30. It had sat inside the Rock Springs Building at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden since 2019, pouring coffee and building lunch plates for a steady stream of garden visitors who wanted something to eat between the rose collection and the Japanese Garden. That building has been standing since 1934, when the Botanic Garden first opened as the oldest one in Texas, and for a few months this fall it’s going to sit quiet while a full renovation happens inside it.
What comes out the other side is called Flora House, and the name change is doing more work than it looks like on paper.
The kitchen belongs to chef Juan Rodriguez, a partner at Westland Hospitality, the Fort Worth group that also runs Margie’s Italian Gardens, Pulido’s Kitchen & Cantina, JD’s Hamburgers, Curly’s Frozen Custard, and Westland Gardens. Rodriguez already leads the food side of Westland’s catering business, Magdalena’s, and earlier this year he picked up “Most Creative Dish” at the Fort Worth Zoo’s Beastro event. His wife, Paige Rodriguez, is running the guest experience and events side of the new restaurant, which is how a lot of husband-and-wife restaurant pairs in this town actually divide the work, even when only one name ends up on the press release…