USA, TX: Wild Barley Kitchen Co. to add brewery and new restaurant

Holland Lawrence and Marc Fogelsong never intended to be known for wood-fired bagels. When the owners of Wild Barley Kitchen Co. started talking about opening a business together more than 10 years ago, they envisioned a brewpub with craft beer, the San Antonio Magazine reported on October 27.

In their new brick-and-mortar location in the former Taco Garage on Broadway, the pair now specializes in both bagels and beer, plus wood-fired pizzas that are baked on the same hand-built oven as the bagels. “We wanted to have the capability to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner—that’s where the sourdough came in,” Fogelsong says. “The beer, bagels and pizza all have a common thread. It’s all tied together through fermentation.”

The friends, who met at Texas A&M University in College Station, admit there was a steep learning curve when they started making pizza and bagels in their food trailer two years ago. “We had never baked mass numbers of bagels, and we were doing it wrong for a while,” Fogelsong says. They’ve since learned the art of wood-fired dough, fermenting it for 48 hours while paying close attention to the oven’s ultra-hot temps. “My experience in the brewing world meant that I understood yeast, which helped and propelled us because yeast acts in a similar way no matter what you do,” says Lawrence, former head brewer at Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling.

The restaurant serves a rotating list of other company’s beers for now, but they plan to launch the brewing arm of their business by the end of the year. Lawrence says they’ll likely always have a lager and a hoppy American IPA available, and he expects to also brew a few seasonal beers each month. The food trailer helped the pair survive the pandemic, but they’re hopeful the restaurant will offer food, drinks and an experience. “We just hope people know that we are passionate about what we do,” Lawrence says.