Food is Love

A shared passion for gardening and community is the recipe for success for this Dallas culinary couple

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JEFFERY HOBBS AND RATNA GOENARDI

The story of Jeffery Hobbs and Ratna Goenardi is a classic his and hers story with a heartwarming meet cute. He’s from Indiana; she’s a native of Indonesia. He was a psychology major turned restaurateur; she was a graphic designer who became a specialty cake baker. He left the Midwest for school and a career in food service in Texas. She left Southeast Asia to attend college at Texas Christian University.

They met in Fort Worth 10 years ago, sharing food and conversation about their diverse backgrounds one night at a fine-dining restaurant that Hobbs helped open. “I stopped by and Jeffery was eating dinner at the bar,” says Goenardi. “Lucky for me, there was an open seat next to him.”

A friendship blossomed slowly as Hobbs segued into smoked meats as the managing partner of Slow Bone BBQ on the fringe of the Dallas Design District. The couple got engaged on Christmas Eve in 2019, and bought a house in Oak Cliff just as the COVID-19 pandemic snaked its way across the U.S.

“We were lucky to find the perfect pandemic house including a kitchen we both love,” says Goenardi. “We turned one room into an office that we still share.” It’s there that you’ll find Hobbs’ massive cookbook collection, which ranges in topic from barbecue to vegetarian cooking. Goenardi’s workspace—bulletin board, office supplies, work desk— is tucked into a closet, an organized example of her design skills. She is responsible for much of the signage at Slow Bone but takes only a few select cake orders now that she is a contract designer for Apple.

The open kitchen with a large island was a plus. In addition to their passion for cooking, they share affinities for gardening, the Dallas rock band Old 97’s and Star Wars memorabilia.

Their October 2020 wedding took place at Slow Bone with a limited guest list including Goenardi’s family in attendance via FaceTime from Indonesia. The couple offered a multicourse menu of dishes rooted in their past with a modern twist. The Indonesian stew—beef rendang— used Slow Bone’s smoked brisket; deep-fried vegetable spring rolls accompanied ham salad empanadas inspired by the pimento cheese sandwiches made by Hobbs’ mother and paternal grandmother; and broccoli ramen salad and smoked lamb chops, both Hobbs family recipes, rounded out the banquet. The couple partnered on the desserts, including an amaretto cake and iced sugar cookies.

Hobbs grew up eating lots of fresh vegetables as his family ran a plant nursery business and had a large garden at home. In college, he kept a journal for a creative writing class. “Most of what I wrote about was family gatherings, dinners and special meals out,” says Hobbs. These memories prompted him to venture into the hospitality industry. His love of vegetables shows up at Slow Bone, where the abundance of side dishes should make even a non-meat eater happy.

Goenardi nurtured a fervor for food while growing up in Southeast Asia. “I fell in love with fried chicken at a young age. The Indonesian style is more crispy with less coating, and it’s heavily seasoned with turmeric and other spices. At Slow Bone, the chicken is my favorite meat item. The crust is perfectly crispy, not too thick and not
too thin.”

At home, Goenardi enjoys handling most of the kitchen duties since she works out of their house. Meanwhile, Hobbs offers tips honed over his many years in restaurants. He’s the one to suggest cooking basmati rice on the stovetop rather than in a rice cooker to get the desired crust. She also gladly turns over the grilling to Hobbs, who uses a small portable Nomad grill and smoker that he also takes to festivals. Whether at home or in festivals, his set-up is simple: concrete blocks, a chimney starter and quality charcoal.

Maximalism suits the food-loving duo as Hobbs and Goenardi share a wide-ranging love for all things culinary. The kitchen counters are stocked with everything from an air fryer to tools for making matcha. Bottles and jars of spices and oils share the expansive island with a sourdough starter Goenardi got from a San Francisco colleague last June. They both bake, and sourdough has become one of her obsessions. “Our mornings typically start with me toasting a sourdough English muffin and making coffee for Ratna before she starts her work day,” says Hobbs.

They also love to share. For a dinner party for Goenardi’s birthday, the couple made Indian food. Hobbs grilled the yogurt-marinated chicken for tikka masala and Goenardi sliced and diced veggies for pakoras and samosas. She also stitched placemats, used her calligraphy skills for name cards and wrapped loaves of homemade sourdough for guests to take home as gifts.

During growing season in North Texas, their garden yields an abundance of fruit, vegetables and herbs, which they use in their own meal prep and share with friends. Goenardi credits her husband for designing and transforming both the front and backyards into edible landscapes along with a cozy pavered patio next to their garage. Every inch of space is carefully packed with raised beds and pots that contain everything from cucumbers and tomatoes to various greens, peppers of all varieties, corn, strawberries, boysenberries and herbs. Bitter melon and Chinese and Indian eggplants, which Goenardi sources from Doan’s Nursery in Irving, find their way into curries and other Southeast Asian dishes, and Goenardi often consults her mom in Indonesia via a phone call. In the front of the house, cactus, wildflowers and other pollinator-friendly plants commingle with more herbs and other edible greens.

Goenardi has introduced many facets of her Southeast Asian background to her husband, and he has fully embraced the culture partly due to their yearly trips to Indonesia. In 2022, for their first trip together, fried chicken and 8 pounds of carefully wrapped Slow Bone smoked brisket went with them. Goenardi’s family fell in love with Hobbs’ food. He, in turn, fell in love with her homeland.

Hobbs’ fondest memories of these sojourns include not only the food—everything from street food to fine-dining desserts—but also the welcoming people, the skilled artisans and the verdant countryside. The couple picked fresh tea leaves, ate lunch next to a rice paddy and bought sea salt packaged in small woven-reed containers from an oceanside farm.

“Ratna is an incredible trip planner, so that helped give me an intimate look at her homeland,” says Hobbs. This included a side trip in 2023 to visit Dapur Bali Mula, a kitchen run by a chef who’s also a priest, and to Bali’s Nusa Penida, a relatively underdeveloped island, in 2024. “Everything there was cooked in hand-built clay stoves over a woodfire,” says Hobbs.

During his visits, Hobbs fell in love with the Balinese headdress known as a udeng as well as with traditional batik textiles. He is now the owner of 19 custom batik shirts and a ceremonial udeng. He proudly wore the headdress while representing Slow Bone at the 2024 Texas Monthly BBQ Fest in Lockhart, for which Ratna designed T-shirts. With his wife as part of the pit crew, Hobbs served a Balinese-style pork belly. It was so popular that it promptly graced Slow Bone’s November menu. “The taste, the look, the smells are all inspiring, and they go straight to Jeffery’s culinary memory storage,” says Goenardi with a smile.