The Fort Worth steakhouse designed by Disney Studios: It’s served cowboys for 30 years

In the middle of a dizzying land rush in the Fort Worth Stockyards, Riscky’s Steakhouse hasn’t changed.

It hasn’t changed hands.

It hasn’t changed decor.

It’s barely changed the menu since 1995, when the Riscky barbecue family reopened the steakhouse originally designed in 1959 by an art director from Disney Studios.

Today, Riscky’s Steakhouse, 120 E. Exchange Ave., looks like a surprise and a bargain.

Lunch weekdays is $11-$15. Chicken and dumplings costs $7 Thursdays. Complete steak dinners with sides start at $30, or for $99, two people get two full steak dinners with a nice rib-eye or filet mignon.

For Valentine’s, there’s a slightly different $99 dinner offering a choice of two steaks — the ribe-ye or filet — along with a side, soups or salads and also an appetizer of calf fries (!).

What at first looks like a typical Texas steakhouse menu also harbors odd surprises: escargot, jalapeno cheese curds, an excellent house-made potato soup and old-timey sides like a baked sweet potato or salads with Catalina dressing.

Yes, Riscky’s has smoked prime rib. That’s Friday and Saturday nights.

The menu’s Polish cabbage soup (kapusta) and calf fries are a callback to 1922.

That was when Theo Yordanoff, a packinghouse worker who had crossed to America on the Lusitania from Vallis, North Macedonia, founded Theo’s Cafe to serve Stockyards cowboys and packinghouse workers.

Riscky’s Steakhouse is basic fare for Stockyards visitors, and last weekend at Saturday lunch both dining rooms were filled with cowboys and families, many dining on large steaks.

A lighter lunch of potato soup and salad left room for the house-made bread pudding, another surprise.

The feature on the weekday lunch menu is fried or smoked catfish, one of the best dishes at any restaurant in the Riscky’s empire.

But there’s also a chopped sirloin lunch for $11 and a special side of cayenne crawfish mac-and-cheese.

Street parking is easy to find nearby at lunch, particularly weekdays.

Eddie Sullivan, an owner along with Jim and Norma Riscky of the Riscky’s BBQ family, said the steakhouse is “like it’s always been for 30 years now — we just get a lot more people.”

The steakhouse’s big sellers are the filet, the prime rib-eye and the wet-aged steaks, he said.

But the biggest draw is that the dinners include sides, unlike a la carte restaurants.

The 1910 Saddle and Sirloin Club building was built originally as a cattlemen’s private club.

It features a rustic bar overlooking Marine Creek and a original 1959 dining room of Old West storefronts designed by Disneyland art director Harvey Gillett (1904-63). He also designed the theme park’s Main Street USA and Haunted Mansion.

“We just try to keep everything cleaned up and touched up,” Sullivan said. It’s “still like Disney designed it,” he said.

Here’s the story on calf fries: It was 1924 when a cowboy in Yordanoff’s cafe ordered “mountain oysters,” a fried dish of what’s left when a bull is transitioned to a steer.

Yordanoff picked them up free at the Stockyards. But he couldn’t pronounce mountain oysters.

So his cafe became the first in the industry to sell them on the menu as calf fries.

Riscky’s Steakhouse is open for lunch and dinner daily; 817-624-4800, risckys.com/risckys-steakhouse.