Having a meal outside on a hot summer’s day in Texas is usually not my idea of a great time, but with Fort Worth celeb-chef Tim Love doing the cooking, I will make an exception. The creator of the downhome-fine dining restaurant Lonesome Dove in the Stockyards area has taken his show semi-on-the-road - to the banks of the Trinity River. At the place called Woodshed Smokehouse, with food like this slab of baby-back pork ribs, you’re likely to eat and leave warm, sleepy and very full.
The concept behind Woodshed crosses paths with a couple other Texas chefs’ “barbecue joints,” in that Love and his kitchen do apply a more rigorous culinary method to foods than we’re used to seeing. Dishes often involve several cooking methods behind the scenes, rather than simply being slapped on a grill or into a smoker. Yet that doesn’t keep the vibe from being hyper-casual and more than a little fun.
One of the cooler touches at Woodshed is the flag system used for meats. If you’re like me and have never used or seen such a system, it works like this: In addition to all the regular meats on the menu, one or more flags hung outside the place tell you which animal is being celebrated today. Like the blinking red lights that, when you’re lucky, promise “Hot Donuts,” this flag on this day promises Woodshed’s spin on cabrito.
Really, there’s no way to guess how many presentations the Meat of the Day will get, but virtually any day you can bet it will get taco-ed. With this particular dish, all the joys and wow-pow flavors of the Tex-Mex world gather to explode from this freshly made tortilla. Enhancements like pico de gallo and guacamole do indeed abound. I’m told there are days with two meat flags flying. Now that I’ve got to see!
Think fast… what is the hottest food craze going on right now, in Texas and across the nation? If you say “ramen,” you would be correct. Those little storebought packets of dry noodles, chicken base and salt that so many of us lived on in college have been elevated to a high art. No, not using the packs… but starting with whatever fresh ingredients something called ramen must have started out as. In true chef fashion, Tim Love finishes his ramen by cracking an egg on top.
Toto may know he’s not in Kansas anymore; but if Texans need help figuring out they’re not in just a barbecue joint anymore, they need look no further than the wild and wonderful selection of vegetables. Because of the love affair (Love affair, get it?) between this chef and meat fat, not everything that’s vegetable is vegetarian. But based on this day’s mighty procession of fried potatoes, fried artichokes and what may be the world’s most amazing roasted squash, I’m ready to order nothing but vegetables one of these times on the banks of the Trinity River. Then again, that depends on what flags are flying.
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