Mouse over for captions, or click for full-size image. See ya next year (or tomorrow at your favorite joint)!

Tagged: austin, barbecue, bbq, beef, brisket, franklin bbq, pork, ribs, sausage, Stanley's, taylor, texas, Texas BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Wayne Mueller

While there isn’t one that features sausage, we’re still perfectly comfortable (and proud) to call these posters by Lubbock artist Dirk Fowler a Holy Trinity.

A regular TEXAS MONTHLY contributor, Fowler came up with the motif when he saw the iPhone icon for our BBQ Finder app, which is just a stylized letter “Q.”

“And so I started drawing the letter “Q” and I realized, some people, when you make a cursive “Q,” it looks like a number two as well,” says Fowler. “And this is the second annual BBQ Festival. So I just decided to make a “Q” that looked like a two.”

The poster in the shape of Texas was the first one Fowler finished. Then, he says, “the little Q tail for the pig happened.

“And I thought it was pretty funny and pretty great,” he continues. “But I also thought, well, if you do a pig you have to do a cow also, because obviously beef is an important part of Texas BBQ.”

Needless to say, creative director TJ Tucker decided Texas Monthly had to have all three.

The posters will be on sale at the festival, but you can also win them in our Twitter contests. You can enter by creating one or all of these three things: a BBQ haiku, a freeform “ode to BBQ,” or a picture of your greatest meaty moment. (Be sure to include the hashtag #tmbbqfest.)

Sadly, Fowler won’t be at the festival himself, as he’ll be making an appearance at Waxahachie’s Texas Country Reporter Festival on Saturday, and then needs to get back to Lubbock. But for the record, his favorite type of “Q” is pork ribs, and his favorite joint is The Smokehouse in Lindsay.

For more info on his work, which will soon also include a poster for Hayes Carll, visit the F-2 Design Facebook page.

Tagged: beef, Cows, Dirk Fowler, F-2 Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Lubbock, Pigs, pork, Posters, Q, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, the Smokehouse

Photograph by Jody Horton

The bad news. Texas has a feral hog problem, with an estimated 2.6 million-plus animals roaming in destructive packs around our ranchland, woods and suburbs. The good news. They’re delicious.

If you still haven’t picked up our August issue, check out writer Philipp Meyer and photographer Jody Horton’s feature, “Whole Hog,” in which South Texas hunter Tink Pinkard and Austin butcher/chef Jesse Griffiths (of Dai Due) lead a wild boar hunt, followed by a knives-on class in breaking down the beast. The piece includes a recipe for tomato-braised wild boar, and you can also check out Horton’s slide show.

On top of that, we gave Texasmonthly.com staff writer Sonia Smith a gun and , sent her on a helicopter hunt. Starting on September 1, outfitters (who were previously hired privately by landowners) will be able to take hunters “porkchopping” in an attempt to reduce feral populations. Writes Smith:

As we flew over a small reservoir on a 25,000-acre spread of land, we spotted a sounder of hogs—two sows and their piglets—lounging in the shallow water, seeking respite from the 103-degree heat. The pilot, Dustin Johnson, maneuvered his Robinson-22 helicopter over the group, flushing the pigs out of the water and onto a nearby wheat field. Terrified by the sound of our blades and the rat-tat-tat of my gun, they ran at a fast clip in single file, with striped young piglets bringing up the rear. It was dusk, and this was my final chance to score a kill. I stared down the barrel of my AR-15, gripping the trigger.

Read the rest here.

- JASON COHEN

Tagged: austin, bacon, Butcher, Chefs, Dai Due, Feral Hogs, pork, Porkchopper, texas, Wild Boar

Photo by Patrick Larson, http://patricklarson.com

There’s no wolf at Raymond Tatum’s new dining venture, Three Little Pigs, but the food will certainly blow your house down. The renowned chef, formerly of Austin institutions such as Jeffrey’s and Jean-Pierre’s Upstairs, has finally opened his own trailer, with the help of his son, Rory, featuring a pork-inspired menu that is inspirational.

The favorite entrée of the evening was definitely the cracklin’ meat loaf. Wrapped in just-crisp bacon, it was fork-tender, hearty, and relatively lean. It was hard to choose which was better: the meat itself, the generous serving of cheese grits hiding below, or the slightly sweet, stewed collard greens piled on top. Altogether, the three items formed the kind of down-home dish you dream about on a cool, hungry evening.

The pork belly slider proved good as well. The ever-popular pork belly was transformed with a maple-soy glaze, cozy fried onions, and a crunchy slice of green apple served on a griddle-toasted bun. The fatty parts of the belly were delicious, but a few meatier spots were on the tough side, and the edges were burned more than charred. But the Asian slaw, with long, thin slices of cabbage in a light sauce with plenty of sesame seeds, made up for any grill mishaps.

The only disappointments were the pig cheeks with daikon. The beef cheek craze has hit the ground running, almost fast enough to threaten the aforementioned golden child of food trends, the pork belly. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw the piggy version on the menu. The three or four large hunks of cheek were tender, but the texture and presentation were offputting, the lumps of fat inedible and spilling into the overly fatty sauce. I was also disappointed by the big blocks of pungent, anise-like daikon, which did not complement the cheeks well.

Surprisingly, one of the only kosher dishes on the menu turned out to be among the best: the Asian-inspired panko-crusted eggplant on a bed of aromatic jasmine rice. It’s hard to beat crispy panko with soft eggplant resting underneath or the accompanying fresh baby bok choy. The brown sauce with Thai chilis and peppers was spicy with a delicious kick of ginger, though I could have done with fewer chili chunks at the bottom of the bowl.

From these particular offerings (the menu changes almost weekly), I gather that Tatum and son are trying to match the gourmet sensibilities of other trailers around town (like Odd Duck). With a bit of work on presentation, they will definitely get there. And they’ve already proven that their food is hearty, comforting, and interesting enough to make this little piggy cry yum, yum, yum all the way home.

Trailer behind East End Wines, at 1209 Rosewood Ave (512-653-5088). Tue–Sat 5–10. Closed Sun & Mon.

Posted by Megan Giller

Tagged: pork, Raymond Tatum, Three Little Pigs, Trailer Thursday