The I-5 cease serving legendary barbecue that locals do not find out about

Perhaps the largest praise {that a} regionally owned, freeway-side restaurant might want to obtain got here from a trio of frequent patrons on a latest Wednesday morning: “It’s an oasis in the middle of a sea of nondescript chains.”

These phrases are from Art Sotomayor, who, together with longtime mates Andrew Peckham and Rick Rodriguez, stopped off just lately at Willow Ranch in Buttonwillow. The restaurant, just some miles north of Bakersfield, is a well-liked spot for the trio to replenish throughout their travels. Their vacation spot this time? The Duel at Mojave, a three-day filth monitor race in Bullhead City, Arizona. 

The three males grew up wrenching and racing vehicles collectively on the Central Coast. Peckham, now dwelling in Grass Valley, is the motive force within the group; the opposite two symbolize the pit crew. The crew of three mentioned their travels — trailering their automobile to varied filth monitor races within the West — usually make them Willow Ranch, a considerably hidden, particularly from those that don’t traverse this freeway usually, Interstate 5 cease. 

Even on a non-holiday midweek morning, Willow Ranch had an expectant hum to it. The teams that got here in had been in numerous types of workwear: street crews, oil area employees, farmers and truckers. As Nineteen Seventies soul requirements trickled out from the audio system overhead, quiet murmurs of dialog stuffed the golden-brown Naugahyde cubicles that line the western aspect of the constructing. There, a stunning quantity of pure gentle spilled in from the still-rising valley solar. 

On the east aspect, a lunch counter runs the size of the restaurant and faces the open kitchen. The counter dead-ends towards the again, giving solution to a darkened nook the place the neon beer indicators, for now, had been darkened and uninteresting. The solely gentle that emanated from the restaurant’s far recesses was a flat-screen tv showcasing cable sports activities highlights.

The trio of gearheads shifted from vehicles into dialog. The well-oiled machine of lifelong friendship kicked in effortlessly, and with an inclination to anticipate what one another was going to say, they engaged in seamless banter about their most popular pit cease. 

“Well, I just like coming here,” Peckham mentioned. “The atmosphere. The food. The portions are huge.”

“Usually not breakfast,” Sotomayor mentioned. “Usually it’s lunch or dinner.”

“I’ve been coming here 15 years, 16 years — every time I come through, I stop here. It’s always been good,” Peckham continued.

“No complaints here,” Rodriguez chimed in.

“It’s an old-school restaurant,” Sotomayor jumped again in. “All the chains take over. And you don’t get places like this.”

“I’m kind of a truck stop kind of person,” Rodriguez admitted.

“To find a good one can be tough,” Sotomayor continued. “I refer to them as greasy spoons. This isn’t a greasy spoon.”

The three males gestured at their empty plates to sign that each the meals and the expertise at Willow Ranch, though routine, are issues they by no means take with no consideration. 

In the center, extra cubicles result in a sequence of bigger tables within the again. As packs of oldsters entered the glass entrance door, by behavior they made their solution to their favourite seats. Hardly anybody bothered to have a look at a menu whereas waters had been dropped. 

The patrons and servers greeted each other by first title, and most took a second to have a fast catch-up chat whereas ready for his or her meals to come back out — which it did, rapidly. Others took the pause to scooch out of the sales space and do a tableside stretching routine in makes an attempt to maintain from knotting up earlier than having to return to work. 

“I’d actually never been out here even though I live in Bakersfield,” Jessika Neri, Willow Ranch’s supervisor, advised SFGATE as she took a second from her shift to take a seat down in a sales space and examine on the meals.

“I really liked the owner,” she recalled of her first impressions of the restaurant when she got here out for an interview three years in the past. “He’s a really nice, chill guy. And I like the atmosphere. It was family-owned. The original owner — his daughter is still a server here. We get a lot of regulars here. We get a lot of farmers here. We also get a lot of travelers here, north to south. ‘We’re either going to San Jose, San Francisco, or Sacramento.’ I like to hear all that, all the stories. It’s been a different company to work for. I say company, but it’s a mom-and-pop business.”

Willow Ranch was began in 1998 by a neighborhood farming household with a knack for barbecue, making ready meats Texas-style in a smoker behind the restaurant, in addition to over an open flame, Santa Maria-style, because the area calls for.

The restaurant was offered to Michael Downum and his household in 2017. Downum hails from Tehachapi about an hour east within the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada. There, he owns and runs the favored Henry’s Cafe.

The thought for the brand new possession, in accordance with Neri, was to maintain Willow Ranch’s barbecue custom intact and proceed to cater to these road-weary employees and laborers who’ve stored the restaurant’s lights on by the previous half decade of pandemic-induced shutdowns and waves of financial uncertainty.

And loyal patrons have responded in sort, as they proceed to come back again, she mentioned. The environment and the old-school method the restaurant is run are additionally disappearing, mirroring the patrons’ sentiments that almost all I-5 stops now appear to be extra about prominently positioned “boxy” quick meals and fast-casual joints than locations like Willow Ranch, she famous. 

Because of this, Willow Ranch has to ship, every time, for each patron, Neri mentioned. And if the meals itself — the parts and the freshness — isn’t sufficient to do it, there’s at all times the secret-recipe barbecue sauce: “Our sauce is very popular,” she mentioned. “I ship it out all the time. We get orders online all the time. I send it all up and down California, of course, the Midwest, Florida.”

She mentioned the unique homeowners had a deli in Buttonwillow (the precise 1,200-person city of Buttonwillow is about three miles west of the freeway cease most motorists mistake for the city’s middle). “He’d do barbecue at the deli,” she mentioned. “He made his own sauce, and the [current] owner who bought the restaurant also bought the recipe.”

The Willow Ranch model of barbecue sauce is a tried-and-true formula: tomato paste, honey, molasses, brown sugar, hickory smoke, onion, garlic, parsley, distilled vinegar and spices, however its secret parts and alchemy give it a spicy, dry kick in contrast to sweeter, tangier counterparts from Kansas City or Memphis. The result’s a sauce that brings out the smoke of the meats as maybe all Central California barbecue was supposed. 

The restaurant’s signature merchandise is named the Plow Boy, and if there’s a extra formidable sandwich within the state, it’s but to disclose itself. The Plow Boy options brisket, pastrami and bacon, topped with pepper jack, onion rings and grilled jalapeños. It’s served piled excessive on a toasted open-faced French roll and doused in the home chipotle sauce (with ramekins of home barbecue sauce served on the aspect). It’s an exploding tower of meat and smoky taste on first chunk, after which the warmth kicks in. It’s a type of life-affirming choices that flip right into a race towards time: Can you end it earlier than the fireplace will get to you?

“The Plow Boy is our biggest seller,” Neri confirmed. “So, I mean, it’s very hearty — so much meat. But we get a lot of workers, oil field workers, a lot of men who order that kind of stuff. Yeah, they’re hungry. They somehow finish it.”

There are additionally A-listers who cease into Willow Ranch every so often, however the celebs come and go and not using a fuss and are “treated like everyone else,” Neri mentioned. Those who’ve been frequent friends embody John Madden, a recognized knower and lover of meats, who would roll by on his legendary Madden Cruiser. Rick Fox, the Nineteen Nineties Laker heartthrob who just lately performed a model of himself in Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” apparently can also’t resist the smoky siren tune of Willow Ranch.

But it’s the regulars who make the restaurant go. Kameron Stewart, a neighborhood farmer, and his father-in-law Richard Hatley had been stopping for a fast breakfast on the best way again into Bakersfield after a morning spent within the duck blinds of close by Wasco. The looking wasn’t so good, they mentioned, however the breakfast and the corporate, alternatively, delivered.

“We watched the sun come up today, but that’s about it,” Stewart mentioned, noting that whereas they caught to breakfast fundamentals — bacon and eggs — on this specific morning, he normally goes for the tri-tip, a steak or the brisket. 

The pair, nonetheless clad in looking fatigues, had been simply pleased to be having fun with one another’s firm within the wake of an early morning spent collectively squatting in a marsh. Stewart regarded round because the restaurant began to replenish with employees coming in for an early lunch. “It’s good to be out,” he concluded.