Woodshed Smokehouse — Restaurant in Fort Worth

Visited 1\17\2021. This was our first time in this restaurant. We come to try a new place, looking for a outdoor restaurant and to celebrate my Birthday. To park you have to use their $10 valet parking. Disabled parking is free of charge. The parking lot is not to big, so can get crowded easily and if you try to avoid the parking fee, finding a parking outside of the restaurant parking is barely impossible. We arrived around 3:30pm and was super busy. The hostess welcomes us very politely, take our temperatures taking all the health precautions for the Cov-19. The wait for we can eat outside of their patio was one hour. But the weather outside was so nice and the view in front of the riverwalk trail is very pleasant. We walk around, take pictures and enjoy watching the surroundings with our family. Our one hour pass, we receive the text to let us know our table was ready. The place was very crowded. The staff looks very stressed and overwhelm. The first table they give us wasn't completely outdoor, the table and chairs was to uncomfortable and tall to sitting. We have 3 people in our group with disabilities. We let it know to our first very nice server. So she accommodate our family needs to a better and more comfortable table. Outdoor like we ask and even with a better view. After the first nice server leaves, we waited close to 15 minutes for the new not so nice server notice that she have a new table of people. This second server welcoming wasn't happy at all. She must have a heck of the day, because she doesn't welcome us to excited and doesn't look happy. She explains the menu and their system of the food available for the day with some of distressing attitude. After that the only thing's that safe our day was first: my family positiveness, the pleasant and beautiful view of the river trail with the bird's flying over the trees getting ready to sleep and the nice live music they have. The server took forever to bring our drinks and she unfortunately wasn't continuously checking if everyone drinks and everything was ok. The food take forever to arrive and when finally did, the portions are not what we expect for the prices. The food taste was good. In conclusion, disregarding the poor service, the out of stock food that wasn't available from the menu. And in my personal opinion and what we witnessed the hour's we was in there, lack of diversity. The restaurant is ok. But we definitely not coming back and we are gonna keep going to a way better version of this restaurant in our personal opinions. With better service, better prices, more quantity and quality in the plates for the prices and free parking. Ubicated in Sandshell Drive, Fort Worth....

This review is from a few weeks ago after we had freezing temps that caused pipes to freeze, so keep that in mind:

We were going to have a nice sit down bbq dinner, but unfortunately most of the meal was inedible. We ordered The Texas trinity (which came with pork ribs, brisket, and sausage), and a dry aged beef rib. Let's just say it was doomed for failure. All the meats were very...dry.

The kids were hungry, so they did what they came to do, devour. But, there were no happy faces, just hungry faces. Their stomachs were still fed, albeit.

Me, on the otherhand, could not get another single bite of dry-aged beef rib down my throat. I understand that with dry aging, it'll draw out moisture and make the meat drier, BUT in making dry aged meat you should also keep enough meat on the bone so you can cut off the excess dry meat so you don't get a beef jerky consistency. It was jerky down to the bone.

After speaking to the waiter, he was very nonchalant and excused it to the restaurant being closed for 2 days due to icy weather issues. I was very surprised with that answer especially if I am going to spend $50 on a piece of meat, but I wanted to give them a chance before I wrote a bad review. After 10 minutes of trying to look for the edible bits on the bone, I flagged another person and told her I was not very impressed with their $50 dry-aged beef rib. She apologized and tried to rectify the situation by asking if we wanted to try the regular bbq beef rib. I agreed and they brought one out for us. It was a nice soft consistency, something I would expect of a normal bbq beef rib. It was unfortunate that I was not able to try the dry aged rib and give it a good review. I really hope that it was really just a one-time deal and that their dry-aged beef rib was just not up to par that day.

All in all, I did appreciate the lady who offered another option and also taking the $50 dry-aged rib off our ticket. I think a 2 star is very considerate considering I was going to give it a 1 star. Would I eat there...

This was my third visit to Woodshed. I wanted to give them one more shot before posting a negative review. Honestly, the food is subpar at best. We ordered the chicken skins to start…maybe I was expecting too much but they were very bland and feathers were not completely removed prior to frying. My daughter had the chicken fried steak (which came out after the rest of my table had eaten) and I don’t understand why the gravy was so sweet. It was overbreaded, overcooked, and the gravy was gross. My wife had the 3 kale salad and added shrimp. The server explained the shrimp were $3.50 each because they were large prawns. These were not large or prawns… standard gulf shrimp from the looks of it. I ate the bahn mi tacos which I was excited about because I love a good bahn mi. There was nothing about this dish which reminded me of bahn mi. It was also relatively bland. My son (toddler) got a side of pulled pork, which I tried to compare and honestly couldn’t tell much of a difference between the pork on my dish and his, and neither of which had a discernible smoked flavor. All in all, my tab was about $150. For the price it simply isn’t worth it in my opinion. We left half our food on the table and didn’t bother getting go boxes. I wouldn’t be this critical of say, a Fuzzy’s Taco Shop but honestly, the food at Fuzzy’s is as good or better, bigger portions, and about 1/2 the price. I think the restaurant might have a bit of an identity crisis… the menu and food prices are on par with a relaxed vibe higher end establishment, but the execution just isn’t there. I recall my first visit to Woodshed… I had axis deer tacos. I LOVE axis deer but almost couldn’t eat them, and found several bones in the tacos. Again, if this were a food truck serving $4 tacos, fair enough. But at these prices I expect better execution....