Willow's Smokehouse & Tavern opens Thursday, August 13, inside a restored century-old grocery building at 4109 McKinney St. in Houston's Eastwood neighborhood, giving pitmaster Willow Villarreal and his partner Jasmine Barela their own brick-and-mortar home after more than a decade of pop-ups, television appearances, and one very public breakup with a former business partner. The menu leans on modern Central Texas-style barbecue, with brisket, pork ribs, two kinds of house-made sausage, turkey, pulled pork, and smoked chicken anchoring the smoker list.
Villarreal is the pitmaster behind the new tavern, according to CultureMap Houston, and he told the outlet the restaurant serves Central Texas barbecue without changing the style, adding that he wants the place to feel like an affordable neighborhood spot rather than a destination restaurant. Barela is handling the sides, including marinated tomatoes, coleslaw, mac and cheese, cornbread, and potato salad, and the kitchen also plans to serve burgers, smoked-and-fried chicken wings, a fried chicken sandwich, and smoked crab dip. Banana pudding and pies made with an all-butter crust round out dessert, and cauliflower au gratin and additional sandwiches are expected to join the menu once operations settle in.
The couple has more than a decade of combined experience in Houston's barbecue business. Villarreal began his career with pop-ups at Grand Prize and Big Star Bar, and Hoodline first covered the Heights food truck he and Barela ran outside Big Star Bar in 2018, where their smoked meats and specialty items like the “Brisket Hug” drew a loyal following. That truck earned a three-star review from former Houston Chronicle food critic Alison Cook, per CultureMap's reporting, and Villarreal also operated the barbecue concession at Typhoon Texas water park alongside Russell Roegals during those early years.
A High-Profile Split Set the Stage
Villarreal and Barela's path to their own tavern ran through EaDo's J-Bar-M Barbecue, which recruited the pair to lead its opening team in November 2021. The venture was short-lived: the couple departed just five months after the restaurant's grand opening, following conflict with owner John Toomey, as CultureMap Houston reported in April 2022. The sudden exit stirred plenty of discussion in Houston's barbecue circles, especially since general manager Edgar Gomez was dismissed around the same time.
Villarreal's national profile had already been cemented that same spring, when he appeared as a featured host pitmaster on Episode 5 of Bravo's Top Chef Season 19, filmed in Houston, guiding contestants on trimming and smoking Texas brisket using J-Bar-M's Moberg smokers. After leaving J-Bar-M, Villarreal joined Ronnie Killen's Killen's Barbecue restaurant group in January 2024, a move Hoodline reported at the time kept him working in the industry while he pursued permits and a lease for his own East End venue.
Reviving a Century-Old Eastwood Grocery
The building housing Willow's Smokehouse & Tavern dates to 1922, when Italian grocer L.M. Greco built it as the Eastwood Community Market, a primary grocery store during the neighborhood's early development. Father-and-son developers Tim and David Cisneros of Romulus Development Partners acquired the property in March 2023, aiming to restore it into a shared retail and dining destination with an outdoor courtyard and a refurbished Southern Pacific train caboose, according to reporting cited from Bisnow. City permit records reviewed by WhatNow Houston put the renovation budget at roughly $390,000, converting the structure into a two-story restaurant with a first-floor kitchen and bar and an upstairs dining room, preserving roughly 2,000 square feet per floor along with the building's original architectural features.
Barela told CultureMap she wanted the restaurant to preserve the building's character rather than feel overly polished, and the finished space reflects that instinct: vintage signs, an Iron Maiden pinball machine, and a jukebox fill the room, and most of the furniture was sourced second-hand. She also said the couple settled on “tavern” for the name because they wanted a cozy bar with good food and barbecue rather than a strictly formal dining room. Getting there required clearing a specific regulatory hurdle, too — because the building sits near Lantrip Elementary School, Texas alcohol rules required food to account for more than half of total revenue, a requirement the Houston Chronicle reported Romulus Development helped the couple navigate during the permitting process.
Sharing a Patio With the Neighboring Pizzeria
Willow's Smokehouse & Tavern sits next to Eastwood Station, the train-car pizzeria that opened in the same complex in July, and the two businesses share a patio along with the upstairs dining room. Hoodline reported on Eastwood Station's arrival inside the caboose, where chefs Chris Zettlemoyer and Amanda Mendez serve Roman-style pizza, fresh pastas, and sandwiches out of a counter-service kitchen; the pair previously ran Figo Sugo at Bravery Chef Hall before partnering with Romulus Development on the caboose concept.
Cocktails at Willow's come from Zack Palmer, who built a menu including the Summer of George, a frozen drink made with Big Red, and the Cabana Boy, made with tequila, orange, passion fruit, and bergamot. The additions round out a bar program built to complement the smoker rather than overshadow it, fitting with Villarreal's stated goal of keeping the place approachable.
Filling a Gap in East End Barbecue
The opening also lands in a neighborhood that has had relatively few standalone barbecue joints. The Houston Chronicle has noted that Lenox Bar-B-Q, operating since the 1940s, long served as the East End's main historic barbecue presence before a recent wave of openings began reshaping Greater Eastwood into a more active dining corridor. Villarreal and Barela's tavern, born from a food truck outside a Heights bar and tempered by a rocky stint at one of the city's higher-profile barbecue openings, now becomes part of that shift — housed in a building that has anchored the neighborhood for more than a century.
