Here’s the best Fort Worth-area BBQ joint Michelin missed. It sells kolaches, too
Gone from its old location to make way for “Landman”’s Patch Cafe set, Dayne’s Craft BBQ has struck its own motherlode.
Ashley and Dayne Weaver took a chance last year when they moved their craft barbecue-and-burgers restaurant to a timeworn Aledo burrito shop along the railroad tracks at 100 S. Front St.
Now, Dayne’s is such a huge success that it’s probably the best Texas barbecue restaurant that didn’t make the hoity-toity Michelin Guide ratings.
New at Dayne’s: burritos with barbecue from 7 a.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, and fluffy kolaches on Fridays only.
This week, because of the holidays, the kolaches will be served from 7 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30. Dayne’s will take Nov. 28-29 off for Thanksgiving..
Dayne’s was already hugely popular for brisket or house-made sausage and for burgers and sides such as Flamin’ Hot street corn or a banana-bourbon dessert.
Now, it draws lines of customers from 7 a.m. Fridays for kolaches in flavors such as strawberry, blueberry, Key lime, caramel-pecan-apple or cookies-and-cream.
These are not your typical doughnut-shop kolaches.
They’re bigger and more buttery, like you’d find in the McLennan County town of West, the kolache homeland for Czech-Texans.
“It’s a tradition for our family to always stop in West,” Dayne Weaver wrote in a message. “I feel like kolaches are a very Texas thing.”
Czech kolaches were introduced to Texas in McLennan County in 1951, when West still had a Czech-language newspaper and the language was often heard on the street and in shops.
Now, West kolaches are a must-stop Texas tradition, like Whataburger or Buc-ee’s or Collin Street Bakery for fruitcake or ... well, anyplace for barbecue.
More than a year ago, before he moved to Aledo, Dayne Weaver started thinking about baking kolaches.
But first, he wrote, “I had to learn how to bake.”
To sweeten the traditional Czech recipe, he uses more butter and eggs. The result is a brioche kolache, thicker and lighter than most.
Like most Texans, Weaver started out loving the sweetbreads at the Czech Stop on Interstate 35 in West. That’s the home of Texas’ gateway kolaches.
But he soon found West’s best kolaches. They’re two blocks east of the Czech Stop at Gerik’s Ole Czech Bakery, and Weaver’s kolaches are closer to those.
He bakes 27 dozen kolaches on Fridays, he wrote.
“We just wanted to test the market and see how well they would sell,” he wrote. He hopes to add more days, he added.
That’s how his burgers started: as a Sunday-only special that became a daily demand.
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Dayne’s has been packed ever since it moved to Aledo, leaving a Camp Bowie West Boulevard building.
That space was quickly leased to filmmaker Taylor Sheridan for his new Paramount+ adult series, “Landman.”
The old Dayne’s at 9840 Camp Bowie West Blvd. became the set for the “Patch Cafe.” In the show, it’s in Odessa.
“It was cool to see our old spot on a show,” he wrote.
“But we’re so happy it didn’t work out. ... Our spot in Aledo is everything we could dream for.”
Dayne’s is open Wednesdays through Fridays for breakfast and lunch, weekends for lunch; 682-789-6590, daynescraftbarbecue.com.
This story was originally published November 25, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
