It’s just a mile or so off 190, the state highway that runs through Livingston, but Florida’s Kitchen feels like it’s way out in the country. I passed it on my way to visit Hitch-N-Post BBQ, a Texas Monthly top 5o barbecue joint, just another mile…
“There is no one definitive way to make Memphis barbecue.” So says Craig David Meek, author of Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce & Soul. After a four day tour through the River City, I must agree with him. Those…
The joys and perils (but mostly joys) of being the nation’s first full-time barbecue editor.
Smoking brisket takes time—sixteen, eighteen, even twenty hours. These cooking times get thrown around with a little pride, but none of the braggarts can top the hours a brisket spends in the smoker at Clark’s Outpost in Tioga. I’m talking more time in the smoker than Jesus spent in the tomb. It takes…
Barbecue joints come and go, and they usually take their signs with them. Some linger. They either cling to our memory or remain attached to the building that no longer serves as their home, becoming ghosts of the past. A few have become revered – their images shared with the…
As one third of the Texas barbecue trinity, smoked sausage has important stature in Texas. Central Texas has its beef sausages, East Texas has got hot links, and you’ll find plenty of smoked boudin along the Louisiana border. In Houston, they have it all as J.C. Reid and Michael Fulmer…
Photo by Nicholas McWhirter Owner/Pitmaster: Gatlin’s BBQ; Opened 2010 Age: 34 Smoker: Indirect Heat Wood-Fired Pit Wood: Hickory Greg Gatlin went from breaking up pass plays as a member of the Rice Owls to the world of corporate real estate, but he…
Brown’s Bar-B-Que has one of the best briskets in Austin, and one of the best side items in Texas. When I visited a year ago (at their previous location) I found the brisket to be the weak link, but no longer. Pitmaster Daniel Brown has found the sweet spot in his…
During the nineteenth century public barbecues in Texas, you were likely to find a whole calf, goat, or lamb roasting for the crowd. But it was more likely that you’d find a whole hog. Hogs were prevalent in the eastern part of the state, which made them easier to come by,…
Johnny Doyle cooks on a gas rotisserie, but he’d do it differently if he could. He takes pride in the barbecue he puts out in his nearly forty-year-old Denison restaurant, so when a pit fire destroyed his Oylers, he wanted to replace them. “[J&R Manufacturing] told me it would be…
Last week I went searching for good barbecue in Oklahoma. I wasn’t looking just for barbecue joints in the state, but was instead trying to find a defining factor of how barbecue in Oklahoma is unique to that state. With my wife’s family still living in Oklahoma City, I’d canvassed the…
Photo by Nicolas McWhirter Owner/Pitmaster: Virgie’s Bar-B-Que; Opened 2005 Age: 49 Smoker: Wood-Fired Offset Smoker Wood: Post Oak On Virgie’s website they have a brief description of their restaurant, but what has stuck with me was their promise…
A accolade from two years back brought me to this renovated Sonic on the east side of San Antonio. A local media outlet (I don’t recall which one) wrote that Ed’s Smok-N-Q served the best brisket in the city. That claim in San Antonio doesn’t carry quite the weight as the same…
Arguably the most beloved figure in Texas barbecue is Tootsie Tomanetz, a septuagenarian pitmaster who’s been tending the fires at Snow’s BBQ since it opened in 2003. She was first discovered by Texas Monthly in 2008, stooped over the hot smoker on the outskirts of Lexington,…
If 2013 was the year of the new barbecue joint, 2014 will be the year of barbecue expansion. Some legendary Texas barbecue stalwarts who for decades were happy to be one-offs are looking to write their sequels. Southside Market (1882), in Elgin,…
Owner/Pitmaster: Mama E’s BBQ & Home Cooking, opened 2006 Age: 61 Smoker: Wood-fired offset smoker Wood: Pecan, Oak, Pear Ernestine Edmond has cooked most of her life. She learned about killing and processing chickens from her mother, and her mother-in-law taught her about cleaning a fresh hog. She’s never…
Bresaola A beef eye of round, salt-cured and aged for several months. Coppa Marbled pork neck muscle, salt-cured and aged for several months. Lardo Pork back fat rubbed with salt and aromatics and aged for several months. Lonzino A whole pork loin, salt-cured and…
At Prause Meat Market in La Grange, there is a green paper sign right next to the barbecue counter. It reads “Sorry We Do NOT Make Sandwiches.” It’s a reminder to customers that this is a meat market where meat—smoked or raw—is sold by the pound. If you want a…
Owner/Pitmaster: Mac’s Bar-B-Que; Opened 1955 (1982 in current location) Age: 60 Smoker: Indirect Heat Wood-Fired Pit Wood: Hickory The McDonalds have been a fixture in the Dallas barbecue scene since 1949. Mac’s has moved around a bit, but Billy McDonald has no plans to leave his current spot on Main Street just outside…
Michael Twitty was cold, and his pig wasn’t much warmer. He was six hours into an eight hour cook, and the February winds were whipping across the top of the hill at the French Legation in Austin. A makeshift pit about the size…
Editor’s note: The name of this joint has been changed to DBQ since this article was published. Kyle Lewallen started his barbecue catering company while still a junior at Texas A&M. A few years later he bought a food trailer and parked it just a block away from campus. He…
The director of Foodways Texas, Marvin Bendele, asked me to come and lead a couple of panel discussions at the organization’s annual Camp Brisket, held last weekend at the Rosenthal Meat Center on Texas A&M’s campus. And even though I was presented…
Alan Caldwell, the pitmaster at Fargo’s Pit BBQ in Bryan, has been making great barbecue for fourteen years. And for all of those fourteen years, he has denied people access to his pit room. When he denied my first request to take a look at his pit, in 2010, he…
If I had it my way, City Market in Schulenburg would have a warning sign on their barbecue menu: “Pit in use only on Saturday, microwaves the rest of the week.” You see, first and foremost this is a meat market. Making sausage (including weiners) is their biggest business, on…
Photo by Nicholas McWhirter Owner/Co-Pitmaster: Bob’s Bar-B-Que, opened 1980 Age: 74 Smoker: Wood-fired offset smoker Wood: Hickory Henderson, Texas is a small town of about 13,000 between Tyler and Nacogdoches in East Texas. This is where Bob Allen was born and raised, and where he aims to stay.
For more than a quarter century, Roy Perez has been tending the fires at Kreuz Market and posing for photos with barbecue aficionados. It’s given him a lot of time to think.
Travis Mayes at his walk-up window. Pitmaster: Meshack’s Bar-Be-Que, opened 2009 Age: 64 Smoker: Wood-fired Brick Smoker w/ gas assist Wood: Pecan It was a Monday morning and Meshack’s was closed like normal. Travis and I had arranged this time to meet since the tasks to get ready for…
In this age of barbecue’s expansion and experimentation we see cuts of meat enter the smoker that have never previously been even figments of barbecue culture. But, there’s one protein that has gone largely ignored in real life, but has a rich history in art and film – human flesh.
If you live in Austin, chances are you wouldn’t pass by Larrie’s Smokehouse in Bastrop. Billy’s, Cartwright’s and Fittie’s along busy four-lane Highway 71 may be familiar, but Larrie’s sits on the north side of town along tree-lined Highway 95. Coming south from Elgin the sign is hard to miss.
The Texas Trinity combo plate—beef, ribs, and sausage—is probably the most commonly served dish at Texas barbecue joints, and usually, the beef brisket gets all the glory. But we should shine a little more light on pork ribs, which are often a joint’s better tasting meat (it’s difficult to perfectly…
If you’re headed south on Highway 77 you won’t see the sign for Harris Bar-B-Que, but it doesn’t matter. A huge, black offset smoker will likely be blowing smoke across the road just south of downtown Waxahachie. Kelvin Harris used this smoker when he was darting around Cedar Hill and…
Sifting through old Texas newspapers, I found the first mention of commercial smoked meat from the Brenham Weekly Banner, which announced that a Bastrop butcher "keeps on hand at his stall a ready stock of barbecued meats and cooked sausages."…
Since 1960, A.N. Bewley Fabricators has been bending, slicing and welding steel for high-quality barbecue pits that can easily cost $20,000.
Owner/Pitmaster: Fargo’s Pit BBQ, opened 2000 Age: 50 Smoker: Wood-fired offset pit Wood: Oak with a bit more mixed in As we sat at a table inside Fargo’s Pit BBQ in Bryan, I asked owner and pitmaster Alan Caldwell if I could see his pit. He said no. In…
Photo by Nicholas McWhirter Owner: Stanley’s Famous Pit Barbecue since 2006 Age: 36 Smoker: Gas-fired rotisserie for ribs, offset wood-fired smoker for everything else. Wood: Pecan Nick Pencis was once the pitmaster at Stanley’s Famous Pit Barbecue in Tyler. He tried his best, but knew he had a real…
The beef short rib has become the ultimate carnivore trophy, but they're a costly menu item to produce.
In the business world, verbal partnerships are notoriously fraught with discord, and Kenny Hatfield, the pitmaster at Hatfield’s BBQ and Blackjacks Beer Garden in Rockport, Texas, recently learned this firsthand. Earlier this year, just six months after opening the restaurant with two friends, he was celebrating the news that his…
Can you get the same quality barbecue from a gas-fired rotisserie?…
How to "hold your meat" and make a brisket taste fresh for hours.
From packer cuts to Certified Angus Beef, all you wanted to know about that succulent, juicy, tender, and tasty brisket you tear through at your favorite barbecue joint.
Answers to your questions about our Top 50 Barbecue Joints list, including why Smitty's didn't make the list. …
Mark your calendar, and start your fasting now. The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is on . . .
Robert Sietsema, the Village Voice's food critic, thinks New York can now be considered a "'cue capital." Isn't that cute?…
Daniel Vaughn's top picks for where to get good BBQ in NYC. (And a few places one should avoid.)…
