Restaurant Review: Hildee’s Texas Dine-Inn

Chef Ryan Hildebrand, founder and former chef at Houston's FM Kitchen & Bar and erstwhile fine dining outfit Triniti, moved to Wimberley in 2019 and shortly afterward announced he'd be opening a "Hill Country bistro" adjacent to Blue Hole. One pandemic later, Hildee's Texas Dine-Inn opened its doors on March 31 of this year. The space, a modern barn with covered patio and indoor dining, was designed by Austin's Maker Architects and is simultaneously nostalgic and of the moment. The same is also true of the menu, which privileges seasonal Texas ingredients and weds traditional dishes with contemporary sensibilities.

Our first visit to Hildee's was for Sunday brunch. We're not ones for Sunday drives, but it was kind of fun to ramble through ranch roads flanked by land that hasn't been developed ... yet. In fact, I might have started yell-singing, "Country roaaaaads, take me hoooooooome," much to the annoyance of my fellow travelers, until we passed an Amazon fulfillment center. That shut me up right quick.

After about 45 minutes, we reached our destination, a shiny new red barn with an adjacent silver silo (it's unclear what the silo is for). We arrived not too long after Hildee's opened for brunch, so we were seated indoors right away. Several minutes and some pointed eye contact with staff transpired before our server greeted us, but she was quite attentive from that point forward. I ordered a mimosa, because brunch, which arrived with several edible flowers floating in it, which was puzzling. Was I supposed to drink them along with the mimosa? In general, I don't think mimosas need any garnish; I really don't think they need to have a nosegay floating in them.

The cornbread and pimento cheese were a kicky start to our meal; the tidy muffins flecked with jalapeño were a perfect complement to the creamy pimento cheese. The teen, whose primary food groups are bread and cheese, ordered the buttermilk pancakes, which arrived in a thick, fluffy tower of three topped with a huge dollop of cinnamon butter and a generous portion of mixed berries. While the cakes claim to be buttermilk, they bore an earthy, almost gingerbreadlike flavor while also being quite sweet. The generous portion meant that they made for great leftovers.

I selected the fried chicken-thigh biscuit sandwich, which tasted fine but was a little off-putting in texture. The thigh was a little too thick and fatty, and the pickles didn't provide enough acid to cut the fat. I also ordered a side of grits, which were subtly flavored, creamy, coarsely ground, and candy hued. My spouse's breakfast plate came with two eggs over medium (as requested, and it's a rare thing to have that request met), two links of truly excellent sausage, skillet potatoes, and a big, fluffy biscuit (served hot, which gets a gold star from me).

While our brunch experience was generally pleasant, our return visit for a Friday night dinner was decidedly more uneven and somewhat disappointing.

When we arrived, our party of four was seated outside at a picnic table, where we sat unnoticed for at least 10 minutes. I had a fond recollection of the Mule Skinner Blue cocktail (an iteration of the Moscow mule with muddled blueberries) at a preview dinner in March, so I ordered one for an aperitif. It didn't quite live up to my memory of it, as the ginger beer didn't have much of a bite, the sparkling water seemed flat, and the fresh blueberries appeared to have been replaced by syrup.

For starters, we ordered the fried green tomatoes; sadly, the brisket burnt end rangoons weren't available, so we opted for the wings with Valentina sauce. The fried green tomatoes, served with shredded pork between them, were soggy and got lost in the fatty meat. The accompanying caramelized cubes of beet and butternut squash, while out of season, were yummy little jewels, though. While the wings were both baked and fried, they did not deliver on the promise of crispiness, although they were delicious and disappeared rather quickly.

If the starter course was a little wobbly, the entrées are where this meal really went off the rails. One of my companions ordered the pork belly special, served with blue corn grits, a small garnish of bitter greens, and a blackberry barbecue sauce. The belly was soft and unctuous, but the skin was incredibly hard and difficult to eat; not quite the caramelized, porky candy you hope to encounter with pork belly. However, when the belly was combined with the bitter greens and the blackberry sauce, the flavors sang.

I was extremely disappointed when my smoked chicken arrived. I'd noticed on the menu that most of the other mains included a side, but the half chicken, at $21, included a "parsley salad." Reader, it was not a salad. It was a few sprigs of parsley on top of half a roasted lemon. It would have been really nice to have a few green beans or a wedge or two of potato to accompany the chicken, something to dance with the lemon jus in the bowl and break up the monotony of the salty meat.

My spouse was equally disappointed in his Hill Country Cobb salad, which arrived deconstructed on a tray, with the vegetables in the center, and cold ham and chicken in the corners. The green salad was lightly dressed with goat's milk green goddess dressing and was light flavorful. However, the chicken was flavorless and the ham was salty and gray, though the chicken improved when it was mixed in with the greens.

The gold-star entrée for this meal was the clams and shrimp with sausage, served in a heaping bowl anchored by a flavorful tarragon cream sauce that was meant for sopping (we could have used twice as many of the surfboard-shaped croutons that came with the dish).

We finally found our stride with dessert, choosing pastry chef Caroline Ramírez's Tex­as sheet cake and the Hildee bars. The former isn't really a Texas sheet cake apart from the flavor; traditional Texas sheet cake is a thin, single layer with a crackly, pecan-­studded icing. This was a two-layer cake filled with chocolate mousse and topped with smoked pecans. It was quite yummy, but it walked so that the Hildee bars could run. These leveled-up millionaire bars are the stars of the show, without question. The shortbread base layer is crunchy and augmented with chunks of chocolate, then topped with caramel and salted chocolate. We left nary a crumb; they alone were worth the drive from Austin, and if the folks at Hildee's are smart, they will make these available for retail sales and shipping.

The missteps at Hildee's weren't limited to the unevenness of the food, either; there were notable bumps in the service, too. The servers themselves were fine – friendly, efficient, and professional. They gamely answered questions and steered us to the most popular dishes on the menu as well as calling out their favorite items. The hosts, on the other hand, seemed confused and disconnected from the rest of the operation. On both visits, we sat for several minutes before our waitstaff greeted us; this suggests a lack of communication between the host stand and floor staff. Support staff, bless them, were trying their best, but lacked attention to detail, from trying to deliver us someone else's burgers (the tater tots smelled amazing) to sloshing a good portion of my cocktail onto the table and making no effort to clean it up. (I ended up using my dinner napkin, then having to request a clean one.)

Hildee's is a great concept with a lot of potential, and if I lived in Wimberley, I would probably frequent there for brunch, cocktails, and desserts. But in many ways, dining at Hildee's in its current stage is sort of like driving out to Wimberley during a time of expansion: You think you're in an idyllic countryside, driving rough, curvy roads and feeling a little isolated. Then you turn the corner and there's an Amazon fulfillment center and a $45 million electronics manufacturing facility, with more under construction. Meanwhile, staff in T-shirts and khaki shorts serve midpriced Southern food and craft cocktails inside a simulacrum of a barn. Change is inevitable, and that process creates tension; we just have to give it time.

Hildee's Texas Dine-Inn

14111 Winters Mill Pkwy., Wimberley
Wed.-Sat., 11am-10pm; Sun., 10am-3pm
Mon.-Tue., closed
hildeeswimberley.com