Richard W. Rodriguez
“Lonesome Dove represents the foundation of everything I’ve built over the last 25 years,” says Tim Love.
Tim Love has experienced the peaks and valleys of a life in restaurants and a business that today, despite setbacks and punches absorbed from a “notoriously unforgiving” industry, borders on something akin to empire.
On this evening, he is embracing the moment as we sit out back of his original Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in the Stockyards, alongside Marine Creek, overlooking Saunders Park.
The occasion is a media preview of the 25-course retrospective tasting menu he is deploying to mark the 25th anniversary of Lonesome Dove. The menu reflects the daring personality of its creator, who now shares the stories behind each dish as these little packages of righteousness sit before us on a plate over a white cloth.
It’s as big as what Lonesome Dove represents to the culinary renaissance of the city. The menu will be available May 2-6, priced at $250 a person.
You can tell that the 25th is a big deal to Love, who has not only survived but expanded his portfolio to include more than a dozen concepts.
“Lonesome Dove represents the foundation of everything I’ve built over the last 25 years,” says Love. “It’s where my career took full force, and it’s the heart of what drives me every day. Celebrating this milestone isn’t just about looking back — it’s about acknowledging the creativity, collaboration, and community that have fueled the journey and looking forward to what’s ahead. It’s a celebration of the incredibly talented team who has been part of this journey and the generations of diners who have made Lonesome Dove a place where memories are created.”
It has always been about the experience, Love says.
It’s just as clear that Love has a lot of life and ideas — and ambition — left in him. He is as much a serial restaurateur as he is serial competitor. The latter is a word he likes to use to describe himself. There’s plenty of competing to do for a guy approaching his mid-50s.
Just last month, Love Management Inc. announced Love’s most recent concept, which will come to life in the next few months. Stewart’s Croquet & Cocktails, a refined cocktail bar and croquet club designed to capture the charm of an English country club — without the exclusivity of private membership, not to mention the snobbery of the pompous and self-important — is set to open this spring in the River District at 4424 White Settlement Road.
It will be, he says, “a country club for the people.”
Stewart’s follows in a line of Love creations that dot the map of North Texas, including, in no particular order, Woodshed Smokehouse, Love Shack, Queenie’s Steakhouse in Denton, the renowned White Elephant Saloon, Gemelle, Hotel Otto, and Atico, Paloma Suerte, Caterina’s, and Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall, all sharing space with Lonesome Dove in the Stockyards.
His portfolio includes 14 hospitality brands and 18 total concepts across the South. And he mentioned a desire to take Love Management across the pond. Stay tuned for all of that. London, hardly known for flavor, might get turned over on its head.
It’s not a bad rise for a guy who didn’t discover the craft until he was 18 and only because he needed a job to pay his way through college. Love grew up with his mother in Denton and spent his summers with his father in Cookeville, Tennessee. As a freshman at the University of Tennessee, he applied for a position as a waiter at a Greek restaurant in Knoxville. Instead, the restaurant hired him to make salads.
That’s where this story all began and really started to take shape with Love’s employ at Reata and then, ultimately, in June 2000 with the opening of Lonesome Dove, a “daring concept” which pairs globally inspired flavors with Western traditions.
Lonesome Dove was designed to pay homage to all the influences of the Old West — including Spanish, Mexican, French, and Asian cultures — as well as the diverse traditions that evolved over time across the Southwest.
The curated journey through the restaurant’s most iconic dishes will be accompanied by new creations “inspired by its evolution.”
The menu, he said then, would be a “melding of foods.” The 25-course menu includes items such as Hamachi Tostada, a rabbit and rattlesnake sausage dumpling, a garlic-stuffed tenderloin, and snow-aged wagyu with mole.
The restaurant was the beginning of making the Stockyards a destination for dining. And since its opening, Lonesome Dove has earned widespread acclaim for its use of wild game and inventive flavor profiles. I can’t recall how much of what I was eating, as I toured the 25 courses, Love had harvested himself. He learned to hunt and fish before he learned to read.
Only a few short years after opening, Love became the first Fort Worth chef to cook at the prestigious James Beard House, and the restaurant has been a regular on honor rolls, including a Zagat rating of 28 in 2004, the highest in Texas and among the top 50 in the U.S. Lonesome Dove was also named one of The Top 50 Restaurants in the World by American Way Magazine in 2002.
“This year is about celebrating the journey — both for myself and for everyone who has been a part of Lonesome Dove’s story,” Love said.
Love’s publicists are calling the 25-course retrospective a “culinary feat.”
The story of Lonesome Dove is nothing short of a feat. More like the story of a guy who fearlessly dared.