Stephanie Thomas was exhausted. After putting in a long day running Westside soul-food stalwart Drew’s Place with husband Drew Thomas, she looked at the paperwork required to apply for a small business grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and thought … nah.
“It was a day or two before the deadline,” Thomas said. “I had started the application, but I decided nobody was going to give us that grant.”
Fortunately, she rallied. Tapping her reserves of strength and optimism, she submitted the completed application in time.
Then last summer, she and Drew learned they’d been awarded a $50,000 Backing Historic Small Restaurants by the historic preservation trust. The grants, supported by American Express, went to just 50 small eateries across the country. Drew’s Place was one of two in Texas to get the windfalls.
The money allowed the 39-year-old business and its founders a chance to refresh and renew the establishment that has provided generations of Lake Como diners with award-winning fried chicken, pork chops, black-eyed peas, and other soul-food staples.
“It gives you a second wind,” Drew said. “It’s exciting.”
The Thomases are no strangers to fresh starts. Drew first opened the restaurant in Forest Hill in 1987 after graduating from Texas Tech University, where he continued a stellar football career begun at Arlington Heights High School.
Photo by Mark Henricks
In 1998, they took over a dilapidated building at the corner of Horne and Curzon just off Camp Bowie. The structure had served as a dentist’s office, then a beauty salon before it sat empty for 20 years.
After operating continuously as a busy restaurant ever since, the facility had accumulated a lengthy list of essential repairs and deferred improvements. The booths needed new covers, the ice machine was malfunctioning, and the lighted sign on top of the building hadn’t worked in years.
The financial demands of keeping the restaurant going had pushed many of these concerns to the back burner and kept them there.
“By the time you patch Humpty-Dumpty up and put him back together, there’s not a much to spend on the outside,” Stephanie said.
The grant money made a lot of catching up possible, but it did come with strings. Forty thousand dollars had to be spent on exterior improvements, while $10,000 could go for working capital or other outlays.
Photo by Mark Henricks
The Thomases paid to have the sign lights repaired and the booths recovered in smooth black vinyl. They also opted to commission a bright and expansive mural for a wall overlooking the small parking lot.
The mural features illustrations of meaningful elements like the sign from Drew’s father’s barbershop. Another image is of Stephanie’s father using his construction skills to help them renovate the decrepit building before they could open in their current location.
The Thomases are having an awning installed to shelter customers picking up orders at the window, and they got the balky ice machine fixed.
The process didn’t go entirely smoothly. The project was due to be completed at the end of January, but they had to request extensions allowing them to finish by April. Setbacks were often due to delays in acquiring the permits necessary to modify the exterior of an older building housing a local icon.
“We had to get permits for things I had no idea we needed,” Stephanie said.
One hoped-for improvement, extending a canopy over the patio dining area for more diners to eat in the shade, may have to be modified due to issues with the required permits.
No matter what happens with that patio cover, the small business grant is likely to at least ensure that Westsiders will continue to have a much-loved place to get their soul food fix. The restaurant has earned many awards, including a Readers’ Choice distinction in our 2025 Best Of issue for best soul food.
The Thomases have expanded and then contracted Drew’s Place over the years, opening relatively short-lived additional locations in Stop Six and other neighborhoods. But they never left Como. Now, with the help of the grant money, they’ve refreshed the building and are looking forward to serving up many more heaping plates of savory Southern comfort food.
“Business is as good as it’s ever been,” Stephanie said. “So, we’ll keep doing it a little longer.”
