Hildee’s Texas dine-inn

By Bonnie Eissler

Ryan Hildebrand grew up in Houston and experienced big city success there as an acclaimed chef at Triniti and FM Kitchen & Bar, a restaurant he co-founded. Many expressed surprise when he decided to take his talents elsewhere and build a new restaurant from the ground up in Wimberley. Ryan and his family had actually been looking for about seven years before buying property on Winters Mill Parkway. Ryan says, “my wife’s grandfather’s house is on the Blanco River so we were familiar with this area and had been visiting regularly for about 15 years.”

With hindsight now, knowing that Ryan’s early 2020 plans for construction were about to crash right into the fear and uncertainty associated with the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s heartening to know he and his family navigated successfully through that strange difficult time of working remotely with architects and engineers while homeschooling their two daughters during lockdown. Hildee’s Texas Dine-Inn opened its doors to the public in March 2022.

“We wanted Hildee’s to be part of the landscape,” Ryan says, “and to be representative of the region.” The restaurant accomplishes this goal beautifully, with an exterior that balances the warmth of wood

See HILDEE’S DINE-INN, Page 16

HILDEE’S DINE-INN, from Page 14 with steel, stone masonry and a tin roof. The outside and breezeway is large and airy. “We especially like that the property backs up to the Blue Hole Trail and is only a mile or so from the town square.”

Ryan’s close attention to the architecture and interior design of Hildee’s is reminiscent of his early interest in drawing and illustrating. “I always loved art,” he says. He attended Baylor University, earning a degree in graphic design just as the field shifted toward computer aided design, which didn’t appeal to him at all, so he decided to go in another direction.

That’s when the idea for a culinary career began to take shape,. “Cooking can also be artistic and creative,” he says. Although Ryan says he didn’t cook when he was younger, his mother, aunt and grandma are all good cooks and were his early culinary inspirations.

Ryan first cooked for a paycheck in 1996. “My first job as a prep cook was at San Luis in Galveston,” he says. This upscale restaurant is famous for its impeccable service, award-winning cuisine, and an elegant setting featuring mahogany woodwork and leather furnishings, in other words, an introduction to the behind-thescenes demands of the more formal world of fine dining. He later attended the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY for two years where he honed his skills and had the opportunity to work with great chefs.

In Houston, Ryan was a chef at two renowned restaurants. First at Triniti, from 2011-2017, which was very high end, with seasonal and tasting menus; even their famously terrific burgers were creatively prepared, nothing ordinary.

Both the restaurant and Chef Ryan were praised by fans as bright stars in the culinary cosmos. The second restaurant, FM Kitchen and Bar, which he co-owned, was a casual patio style concept. It was almost the antithesis of Triniti featuring simple fare: burgers and chicken sandwiches, fries and tater tots. Hildee’s combines elements from Triniti and FM Kitchen and Bar, with an extra helping of inspiration from the Texas Hill Country.

“My background is in fine dining, with its artfulness and attention to detail and presentation,” he says, “but I want to combine that level of execution with more casual southern barbecue elements, a core menu of signature items with seasonal changes, like strawberries in summer.”

The menus at Hildee’s reflect the creativity of the chefs. Casual southern dishes (cornbread, collard greens, meatloaf and catfish) are enhanced with unexpected and delicious additions like candied jalapeno in the cornbread and mushroom duxelles in the meatloaf. The Texas Sheet Cake has a layer of chocolate mousse and is topped with candied pecans.

“That’s the process for creating a new dish,” Ryan says, “subtle changes in technique or ingredients, where you can tell there’s something different, but you don’t know exactly what it is and once you manipulate it, it becomes yours.”

Whenever possible, the chefs at Hildee’s use locally grown ingredients from Farm to Table, a company in Austin. “They source all through Central Texas so it’s one stop shopping, we check the website and see what’s available,” Ryan explains. Farm to Table works with more than 100 mostly family-owned farms and ranches that produce organically grown fruits and vegetables, meat, milk and cheese products.

Photos courtesy Hildee’s Texas Dine-Inn.

FYI • Hildee’s Texas Dine-Inn is located at 14111 Winters Mill Parkway. Hours are Wednesday and Thursday 11 am to 9 pm, Friday and Saturday 11 am to 10 pm, and Sunday 10 am to 3 pm. The restaurant is closed on Monday and Tuesday. For more information and to make reservations, visit hildeeswimberley.com or call 512-222-9904.