A Valentine’s Weekend Dinner Built on Local Love (and a Little Magic)
On Friday the 13th — yes, the day before Valentine's Day — we took over the backyard at Micklethwait BBQ and threw an unforgettable dinner.
Here’s how it started. Veronica Meewes, BBQ writer extraordinaire, and Adrienne Newman, international chocolate tasting judge, had a weird idea: Barbecue and chocolate.
Adrienne came to Liang and me. I immediately felt hesitation: “These things don’t seem like they should go together...” But when Adrienne introduced us to Tom Micklethwait, I was so thrilled to work with a local BBQ legend that I decided we were gonna crack the nut no matter what it took.
And honestly, Liang and I have been in a bit of a competition, egging each other on to see how far we can push chocolate into the savory realm for some time now.
I started it all when I threw caution to the wind one night and decided to replicate the flavor of my favorite Beijing street food, lamb skewers, in a chocolate. If you’re wondering: It’s a chocolate with cumin, goat milk, and chili pepper.
I loved the bar. But when Liang found out, she was irked: “Stop wasting ingredients!” Oops. But I insisted we give people samples of the bars and it turned out to be a hit.
So savory could work. Next up: mushroom chocolate. Liang and I made a porcini bar and the pairing is obvious after you’ve tasted it. It’s more of a niche bar, but if you know you know.
And then, for some reason, Liang decided we needed to put the flavors of Sichuan hotpot into a chocolate: fermented black beans, chili powder, numbing peppercorns, sesame, and more. “No, no, no, no” was my response. But she did it anyway. Another hit. I’ve grown to love it.
So it was my turn. Chocolate on barbecue was kind of the final boss of savory chocolate, right?
The makers behind the menu: Micklethwait BBQ x KESSHŌ x The Austin Winery x Veronica Meewes x Adrienne Newman (who connected all of us!) — February 13, 2026. (Photo: Veronica Meewes)
Enter Micklethwait.
I knew Micklethwait held a Bib Gourmand from the MICHELIN Guide (“good quality, good value cooking”), but until I started working with him, I didn’t realize just how versatile and talented Tom is. I gave him a few of my favorite bars to sample, including the savory ones, and I rattled off a few potential meat pairings: Salted plum chocolate and duck, lamb skewer chocolate and lamb. A few days layer, he hit back with his own modifications. And as we moved into tasting prototypes, he kept surprising me. Who knew a pitmaster could make a killer sourdough baguette?
Our idea wasn't “put chocolate on things." It was treating chocolate the way you'd treat any other ingredient in the pantry: as a seasoning, a sauce base, a way to connect one flavor to the next. No dessert-only rules.
So without further ado, here’s the 5 course meal we crafted together.
The menu: smoked meats + craft chocolate in every course, paired with wines from The Austin Winery. (Photo: Veronica Meewes)
Snack Board
Salted Porcini Chocolate Ganache with Unexpected Cheddar, garlic & rosemary summer sausage, fresh focaccia, and garden veggies pickled with Austin Winery vinegar.
The ganache set the whole tone. Porcini is already earthy and umami-heavy, and blended into the dark milk chocolate spiked with white miso it didn't read as sweet at all. More like a savory spread you keep going back to while pretending you're "just having one more bite with the bread."
First Course — Duck + Plum
Salted Plum Chocolate Sauce over five-spice smoked duck rillettes, with toasted duck fat brioche, spring onion aioli, and Thai basil.
Duck rillettes are rich. Like, aggressively rich. So the salted plum chocolate worked as a counterweight — tangy, a little salty, with enough depth to hang with the smoke. Think of it like a BBQ glaze's more interesting older sibling. The five-spice and basil kept everything moving between East and Texas, which is basically our favorite place to be.
Five-spice smoked duck rillettes + salted plum chocolate sauce - where richness meets brightness. (Photo: Veronica Meewes)
Second Course — Brisket Meets Hot Pot
Smoked brisket in a hot pot chocolate broth, with buckwheat soba noodles and a shaved celery-cucumber salad.
OK. This was the one. If there was a "wait, chocolate can do that?" moment, it was watching people take their first sip of this broth.
Our Sichuan Hot Pot bar is intense on its own — deep cacao layered with the kind of warmth and numbing tingle that makes your whole mouth wake up. Turned into a sauce and poured over smoked brisket and noodles, it became this thing that was somehow comforting and electric at the same time. The cold soba and crisp salad kept it from getting heavy. A few people quietly asked if we'd ever sell this as an actual hot pot base. (We're thinking about it.)
Smoked brisket served with a hot pot-inspired chocolate broth, soba noodles, and shaved cucumber-celery salad. (Photo: Veronica Meewes)
Third Course — Smoke + Mole + Street Food Memories
Lamb skewer chocolate mole — smoked lamb shank, hibiscus-tangerine pickled onion, mint, scallion, togarashi.
This one tasted like three traditions crashing into each other in the best way. Texas smoke. Mole's deep, dark complexity. And the lamb-skewer flavors that I loved from the streets of Beijing.
The Lamb Skewer Goat Milk Chocolate brought a creamy, tangy edge that folded right into the mole without making it sweet. The hibiscus-tangerine pickled onion was doing a lot of heavy lifting — bright, acidic, just enough bite. And the mint and togarashi at the end kept it fresh.
Lamb skewer + chocolate mole - smoke, spice, and cacao in harmony. (Photo: Veronica Meewes)
Dessert — Texas Sheet Cake, Slightly Unhinged
Dark Chocolate-Guava Texas Sheet Cake with cacao crumble, candied smoked pecans, guava gelato, and a guava-plum sorbet.
After four savory courses of "chocolate can go anywhere," we finally let it just be dessert — but we weren't going to play it straight. Guava Lime Dark Chocolate in a Texas Sheet Cake gave it this tropical brightness that the classic version doesn't have, while the smoked pecans pulled everything back to the pit.
And then there was the guava-plum sorbet. Cold, vivid, a little tart. Multiple people asked if we'd scoop it at the shop. (Also thinking about it.)
Dark chocolate guava Texas sheet cake topped with cacao crumble and smoked pecans, served with guava-plum sorbet. (Photo: Veronica Meewes)
Austin Winery
Our 5 course meal (for $85! remember: “good quality, good value cooking”) wouldn’t have been complete without wine pairings for every course. Austin Winery is doing for Texan wine what we are doing for Asian-inspired chocolates - bringing out the natural and unique flavors of Texan grapes in careful and creative ways. It was great having the co-founders Cooper and Ross pouring on-site all night.
Veronica's Book
Finally, we were lucky to have Veronica Meewes, the visionary behind this whole chocolate-BBQ-fusion event, there signing copies of Texas BBQ: The Art of Low and Slow. It's a real love letter to the people and culture behind the craft — not just recipes.
If you want a copy locally:
Vintage Bookstore & Wine Bar (call ahead for current stock)
Also available on Amazon.
Austin Makes This Possible
A pitmaster, a winemaker, a chocolatier, and an author walk into a backyard — that's not a joke, that's just a Tuesday conversation in this city. I’m grateful to be making things alongside people like Tom, the Austin Winery crew, Veronica, and Adrienne.
And I am grateful for people who came and gave the chocolatey BBQ weirdness a shot.
Where should we take chocolate next?
Mark
P.S. — Seriously, email us at hello@kessho.com if you think we should bottle those BBQ sauces or the porcini miso chocolate spread. We've gotten enough DMs that we're starting to take it seriously.