Restaurant review: Hickory Tree Grill in Burleson

As I settled into my ruddy-dark-wood booth at the barely 4-month-old Hickory Tree Grill in Old Town Burleson, the first words from Markie, my attentive server, sent me back to another era: “We have RC Cola. I hope that’s all right?”

Forget about a hot-tub time machine, this was the drinks-order version: I hadn’t had the vintage brand offered to me in decades.

Between the old blues, a steady stream of roadhouse-worthy classic rock playing on the sound system, the barbecue and Texas-regional offerings of the menu, I felt as if I had stepped through some restaurant time warp.

I was hurtling back to a simpler time of embroidered pot holders and chefs who weren’t celebrities, when your ideal restaurant night out involved a tasty yet unfussy meal — with constant refills of RC Cola.

Many of Hickory Tree Grill’s throwback touches start with its history as a ’60s-era Enco gas station. Today, it has been the beneficiary of a total DIY makeover. Owner Barry Hodges, a Fort Worth native, and his mother, Ginger Eccles, spent four months and $100,000 to remodel the place.

With his wife, Hilary Hodges, Barry replaced all the ductwork, polished to a Zamboni-smoothness the original concrete floors and constructed an outdoor fire pit. He cut and pressed the walnut-stained poplar-wood tables, and added stained-fence posts under the main concrete bar.

Most impressively, the owners installed hundreds of hand-cut hickory logs — individually stapled and glued, puzzlelike — into most of the restaurant’s walls.

As I munched on chips and chunky, tomato-stippled guacamole ($6.50), Hickory Tree Grill’s menu presented an affordable list of options. Starters ran $3.25-$8.50, tacos $3.75-$5.25, fajitas $12.50, burgers $8.50, and a substantial chicken breast main dish was $12.95.

The diverse menu allowed me to engage in one of my favorite pastimes: the protein tour. First up, the fish taco ($4.75), with its greaselessly fried fillet of swai, a clean-tasting river fish, served in a corn tortilla, with a tangle of crispy lettuce, shards of cilantro and cabbage slaw — all of it greatly enlivened by a zesty remoulade.

The beef portion of the meal came in a sizzling fajitas platter ($16). A substantial 10 slices of what was a juicy cut of skirt steak were paired with burnished, caramelized onions.

In this always fun DIY dish, I could fold the steak into one of many soft, warmed tortillas, and accessorize it with sour cream and a drift of Monterey Jack cheese. Creamy refried beans and Mexican red rice so fluffy I could count the grains rounded out the enjoyable plate.

Next on the protein parade: pork, in the form of pulled-pork sliders ($9.75). These were the meal’s stars, owing to the silken tenderness of the meat, and the hickory and pecan (the kitchen’s clear woods of choice) smoke flavor running through it.

Served on a Hawaiian sweet roll, each of these sliders met their fate in two bites. Their equally smoky side of barbecue beans, along with the pulled pork, earned Hodges first place in a 2015 barbecue competition in Glen Rose.

The Del Rio chicken ($12.95) finished my protein round-up. The brawny slab of breast meat could have used some tenderizing, and it was almost completely camouflaged — veal-Parmigiana-style — by a layer of Monterey Jack cheese flecked with pico de gallo.

The dish’s saving graces were its satisfying, jalapeño-fueled cream sauce, along with its down-home sides of succulent sweet corn and a mix of slightly charred squash, carrots and zucchini.

All my server had to do was say the word “Nutella” when describing the Nutella cheesecake ($6.50) and my dessert decision was a no-brainer.

The chocolate-hazelnut combination, sitting atop a chocolate-flavored cookie crust, with its neighboring plume of Oreo-cookie cream filling, elevated the cheesecake from perfectly acceptable to habit-forming.

I’ve been a fan of Nutella for years. And not since my youth had I washed down a meal with slurps of RC Cola. Both were two of several key ingredients in a two-hour trip down a barbecue, Texas-regional memory lane where Hickory Tree Grill served as my amiable tour guide.

This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Restaurant review: Hickory Tree Grill in Burleson."