“I learned how to make an Elgin hot gut. I just have a little different seasoning, but that’s how I got started, and then, uh, people just wanted my sausage, the way I make mine. I put a little more seasoning in than they did, you know. And put a little more meat in, too. Right now, I’m making turkey sausage and beef sausage and started making pork sausage, too. I serve quite a few turkey sausage, because it’s not fattening if you’ve got twenty percent pork and eighty percent turkey. We just go and smoke them up.”
—Vencil Mare, owner (From Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket, a UT/SFA oral history project. Read more»)
Taylor Café
Taylor, TX 76574
Hours: Open 7 days 7–10.
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Texas Monthly rating: 4.00
TEXAS MONTHLY SAYS: 2008: Sign inside says: “I’m not a dog, don’t whistle.”
Eighty-four-year-old Vencil Mares has been perfecting his skills on the brick pit since 1948. We’d heard about his chicken, but the day we visited, the pork ribs were the highlight, with brisket not far behind. Mares’s trick is wrapping the meat in butcher paper and smoking it over post oak for eight or nine hours. “Don’t ever turn it over,” he says. After the meat is cooked, he rewraps it and stores it in an ice chest for seven hours. His place, a sort of working-class tavern, is practically under a bridge.
2008: Octogenarian Vencil Mares has been perfecting his skills on the brick pit since 1948. We’d heard about his chicken, but the day we visited, the pork ribs were the highlight, with brisket not far behind. Mares’s trick is wrapping the meat in butcher paper and smoking it over post oak for eight or nine hours. “Don’t ever turn it over,” he says. After the meat is cooked, he rewraps it and stores it in an ice chest for seven hours.
BBQ SNOB SAYS: 2008: This joint is more of a bar that serves decent barbecue. The ramshackle wooden building lies in the shadow of the concrete bridge spanning the railroad tracks in the middle of town. Walking through the screen door, I received the proverbial simultaneous head turn of every patron at the bar, all of whom were over fifty. I ordered a plate of brisket and ribs and a cold one (beers here are only $1.75, which is cheap for a Dallasite). The ’cue came out sauced, and all too soon I found out why—beyond the smoky crust, there was no flavor. The ribs were almost too tender, falling of the bone into a heap. It was hard to separate the taste of the sauce from the meat, but the crust had an intense smoke flavor much like the brisket. Also like the brisket, the flavor disappeared with the crust.
