Dallas chef John Tesar takes aim at Tim Love in Playboy article

Dallas chef John Tesar may mince garlic or even ginger, but he never minces words.

And in a recent interview with Playboy, the man once dubbed the Most Hated Chef in Dallas slices and dices everyone from Anthony Bourdain to Fort Worth chef Tim Love.

In between, he also takes aim at the city of Dallas for being backward and racist, Southern cooking for being peasant food, and suggests that Donald Trump may have a point about illegal immigrants.

Love, the celebrity chef and owner of Lonesome Dove, Love Shack and Woodshed Smokehouse in Fort Worth and co-star of MSNBC’s Restaurant Startup, has always been a somehwhat polarizing figure. But Tesar took dead aim at him, stating point blank what many in Cowtown have only whispered about for years:

“Does anybody really like Tim Love? Because it doesn’t seem like they do,” Tesar said in the Playboy interview. “They start off liking him and then after they get to know him they’re just like, douche bag.”

After initially praising Love for being “a self-made man,” in response to a question about Love opening a Lonesome Dove in Austin, Tesar went on to skewer his former friend.

“Tim Love used to be my friend then fame bit him in the ass and then he just kind of turned on everybody. Like he’s not cooperating in Fort Worth Food and Wine Festival because he does the Austin Food and Wine Festival. Tim is a very shrewd businessman. I used to like him, but he’s been very snotty to me lately because he thinks he’s a big TV star.”

He also went on to say that “Lonesome Dove in New York was a freakin’ disaster. Let’s see what happens to Lonesome Dove in Austin.”

No response yet from Love, who is active on Twitter and has more than 20,000 followers but perhaps doesn’t want to get into a flamewar with the former Top Chef contestant.

For now, though, Tesar is being praised for his candor in the Playboy article. And fans are applauding his expansion plans, which include opening locations of his popular Dallas steakhouse Knife in Austin and Nashville, as well as Memphis and Chicago.

He also is slated to open three new restaurants in Dallas in 2016, including a burger joint. All of which means the quoteable chef will keep things fired up in the kitchen.

This story was originally published December 30, 2015 at 2:11 PM with the headline "Dallas chef John Tesar takes aim at Tim Love in Playboy article."