Preview: Tim Love's Woodshed Smokehouse

The first time DFW.com got a sneak peek at Tim Love's Woodshed Smokehouse, it was back in August, and the restaurant was scheduled to open in September. Then Love aimed for a December date, but that got caught up in red tape.

The new date, Feb. 1, looks solid. If what we saw and tasted in our latest sneak peek is any indication, this place is going to be worth the wait. And nobody has been waiting longer than Love.

"This is the longest and hardest project I've ever done," says Love, the celebrity chef who also owns Lonesome Dove and the Love Shack restaurants. He says he began thinking of the Woodshed concept almost three years ago. "For all sorts of reasons. There are so many components to put this spot right here."

"Right here" is on the Trinity River Trail, which goes right by the large patio of the Woodshed. The plan even involved splitting the trail, creating a sort of bypass for when Woodshed has live music acts big enough to require closing part of the trail. The restaurant has an interior dining room as well as the patio, but everything is designed with a view of the river in mind.

Love and the Trinity River Vision Authority have taken some heat because the TRVA signed a 10-year lease with Love without open bidding. But Love says he hopes the restaurant, located just west of University Drive not far from Hoffbrau Steaks, will help open the door for other restaurants along the river.

"I think (the River) is our biggest and most underutilized asset," says Love. "This trail system is unmatched in the state. But you'd be surprised how many people in Fort Worth have never been to that waterfall at the top of the trailhead over by Carswell. It's spectacular, and it's free. It's pretty awesome.

"I've gotten beat up a little bit in the last couple of months," he continues. "But I'm trying to make [the river area] better. When I did the lease, I said, 'I want to do something for the river.' Somehow that backfired on me. I thought people would be excited about the fact that they could come here and drink a beer and 6 percent of it goes back to the [district]. I mean, that's pretty cool."

As befits a place with "Smokehouse" in its name, the first thing that hits you when you walk in is the fragrance of burning wood. The restaurant's dishes will be cooked over hickory, pecan, oak and mesquite; the menu includes symbols showing which wood is used for certain dishes. Some will feature the "animal of the day" -- the restaurant will raise flags indicating whether that will be beef, poultry, pork or game. But it won't all be meat; among the more intriguing menu items are Whole Smoked Cauliflower Head with Olive Oil, Lemon, and Chile Arbol; and Local Acorn Squash with Tuaca, Dark Brown Sugar, and Smoked Pepper Hollandaise. (What's Tuaca? This.)

Mostly, though, The Woodshed is about location, location, location: The restaurant has a large patio area that's on the bank of the Trinity, not far from Colonial Country Club. In fact, one of the reasons the opening took so long is rooted in the Trinity Trail -- Love wants walk-up business from people who use the trail, but because he'll have live entertainment on the patio and will sometimes need to block off a part of the trail, a "bypass" had to be built to allow continuous use. There is an interior dining room as well, but its doors can open to the patio to create a cooling breeze (the restaurant will take reservations for the dining room, but the patio is first-come, first-served).

"I like to say it's a restaurant for the people," Love says. "It's a restaurant for everybody. We built it so everybody feels welcome, whether you like to spend a lot of money or don't like to spend a lot of money, whether you like to be outside or like to be inside, hopefully it'll feel very comfortable but polished." Prices range from $4 to $8 for small and medium-size plates and $12-$18 for entrees. Woodshed will also offer larger-fare dishes, such as 6-hour Smoked Beef Shin with Fresh Ricotta, Chilies, and Smoked Oil, that are designed to serve four people. Prices for those range from $60 to $75.

The restaurant has been referred to as a barbecue restaurant, but nothing about it -- till I saw the smokehouse itself and all the smokers within -- made me think "barbecue." Maybe that's because I saw the menu before I even began speaking to Love; when you see items such as Smoked Red Fish en Papillote or Pecan-roasted Mushrooms of the Season with Four Chilies, and Olive Oil, you don't exactly think sliced-beef sandwich or ribs. But it's a barbecue place with a diverse menu.

"We do about eight different ethnic cuisines," Love says. "We've got paella from Spain; we've got banh mi, which is Vietnamese; we've got bulgogi, which is Korean. But it's all some form of barbecue, and that's what we want to do here. We want to tantalize people's palates, and it's not all about brisket. It's about very refined techniques."

The restaurant has 25 beers on tap -- and five wines on tap, as well. But for the time being, at least, no harder stuff; he wants people to be able to walk on the Trinity Trail with their drinks if they like, and they can't do that with mixed drinks. The restaurant will also have a full-service coffee bar will pastries; the coffee bar opens at 7 a.m. for people who want to hang out by the river, and the kitchen will open at 11 a.m. (Love says that during the first week, the restaurant will only serve dinner Wednesday-Friday, so it can get a chance to get rolling before going full time).

And he says he believes that it will be the greenest restaurant in Fort Worth.

"We don't run any air-conditioning," he says, adding that the restaurant design allows it to be cooled by breezes and ceiling fans (and has limited western exposure, which will help shield it from the afternoon summer sun. "We've got a plug for electric cars out front. Everything we serve in is biodegradable. We don't have any glass on the property at all. All our beers are served in corn-syrup cups. We won't use any straws on the property, because we don't want them finding their way into the river."

Love's crew did a few dishes for us for photo purposes, but of course, that food couldn't go to waste. As an omnivore who lives with a vegetarian, I was most pleased by the Red Smoked Beet Salad with Fresh Ricotta and Pistachios; the red and gold beets had a nice smoky accent and red-pepper flakes in the ricotta gave the dish a little extra kick. Meat-eaters will go for the Bulgogi Beef with Housemade Kimchi, a Korean-inspired dish; although Love said the kimchi hadn't fermented quite as long as he would have liked, it had an almost citrus-y tang that went well with the spiced-up beef. The three-kale salad prepared for our photo isn't a vegetarian dish; it features small cubes of guanciale, an Italian bacon made from meat from a hog's jowls), with juice from the guanciale used to wilt the kale and remove some of its bitterness.

There's more to the menu, which ranges from snacks and small plates to dishes meant to serve four people; the menu I saw didn't include dessert, but Love said desserts will include a chef's variation on fried pies as well as a smoked jalapeno-apple pie with smoked vanilla-bean ice cream.