The Back Porch café is just like the back porch you always wanted.
It has a simple beauty with its wooden tables and benches, floors and back wall. It gives you the option of dining under a roof or on the creek bank. Both areas are open and overlook one of the most scenic areas of Cypress Creek where people now often float, paddle, fish or swim.
“We wanted this place here,” says Lindsey Hastie, marketing director of the Cypress Falls Event Center in Woodcreek. “This place used to be the centerpiece of our community. We wanted it to open back up to the community and a restaurant was the best way to do it.”
Woodcreek is an incorporated area north of the city of Wimberley, off Ranch Road 12. Along with surrounding unincorporated areas, they make up the community of Wimberley. In the near past, the Woodcreek Lodge was a bustling place where visitors could stay, eat at the lodge’s restaurant, play in the creek or on the tennis court, ride horses, and just enjoy the serenity the area has become famous for.
For a variety of reasons, much of that was gone for several years, but the Cypress Falls Event Center and Chef Jay Bachman are bringing back that sense of community and fun on the creek with the Back Porch.
Chef Jay and wife Jennifer, a teacher at Wimberley High School, own the Back Porch, an extension of their Chef Jay Events catering service.
Jennifer pressured Jay to move from Fort Worth to Wimberley, a place he had never heard of before. He had job offers from surrounding cities like Austin and San Antonio but wanted to work in Wimberley. He eventually helped out at Highpoint Manor, a local bed and breakfast inn, with breakfasts and eventually catering special events at the inn. When the inn was sold, he began his Chef Jay Events business.
But Jay resisted the idea of a restaurant.
“I really didn’t want a restaurant at all, but Lindsey kept pressuring me,” Jay explains.
This might seem odd from a man with 22 years of experience in fine dining establishments in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and New Orleans.
But the man who got his passion for cooking when he was just a child was happy doing his catering. Then the devastating Memorial Day Flood of 2015 struck. Like many in the community, he had to help. He fed as many people as possible—those directly affected by the flood and those helping in the aftermath.
“That flood shut down the catering business and it just made sense for us to feed people. We had to do something,” he says.
He partnered up with Mercy Chefs, a charitable organization that prepares restaurant quality food for victims, volunteers and first responders in national emergencies and natural disasters. They’ve served up more than 1 million meals since their founding in 2006.
“We worked for three weeks until the emergency was over,” Jay recalls. They have now joined Mercy Chefs and help with other disasters as they can.
Lindsey applied more pressure on Jay to open a restaurant behind the old lodge, along the creek. Jennifer nudged him, too.
“Lindsey told us to just keep it Wimberley,” he says. So he did, deciding to do the simple structure and be open just for lunch, allowing him to continue his catering business that he could run out of the same kitchen.
One of the reasons for the Cypress Falls involvement was to reopen the creek and creek bank back up to visitors, and that also appealed to Jay and Jennifer.
They started building in early October last year, but on October 30 the Halloween Flood of 2015 slammed the Wimberley area and much of what they had built was badly damaged.
“We rebuilt it to withstand a flood and finished in January of this year,” Jay says. They catered out of the building and officially opened the Back Porch café in June.
“We were serving our fans,” Jay says with a broad smile. “Everyone wanted to be here. The community was excited for us to be here.”
Jay points out that the area was so quiet, so serene, that it demanded to be treated like a church.
A church that has great food—52-hour smoked premium briskets, 48-hour smoked pulled pork sandwiches with buttermilk slaw, 16-hour smoked turkeys, half-pound Black Angus hamburgers, veggie burgers, all-beef hot dogs. Add in side choices of seasoned fries, homemade potato chips, sweet corn and dill pickle potato salad, fried macaroni and cheese and more goodies that always fill up one of the Back Porch’s huge plates. And don’t forget the seasonal cobblers or hot fudge brownie sundaes with the huge marshmallow on top, also filling up the plate. You’d better be hungry.
Nancy and Wylie Lane of Wimberley recently discovered the Back Porch after recommendations from friends.
“We loved the view and the service was very good,” Nancy said. “The food was great, and we will return.”
Jay wanted nothing fancy because Wimberley is nothing fancy.
“You want to sit on your back porch and smoke brisket and watch your kids play outside,” Jay explains. “That’s what I wanted to give to people, the same food and atmosphere, the same as your back porch.”
Lindsey sums it up the best: “We love Chef Jay and we’re glad to have him here.”
Have a meal at the Back Porch and you will be glad he’s here, too.
The Back Porch is open Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Market Days (the first Saturday of the month) until 6 p.m.
For More Information: The Back Porch is located behind the Lodge at Cypress Falls in Woodcreek, www.backporchwimberley.com, 512-722-3121
