Dining Guide

Brooks’ Place

Brooks’s own style borrows from the Southern tradition of pork-centric barbecue, but he combines it with a mastery of smoked beef that is usually limited to Central Texas. In time, even the most skeptical of Houston ’cue hounds were making regular trips to Cypress to taste Brooks’s brisket. It’s minimally trimmed—an anomaly in Houston barbecue, where “fat” is a four-letter word—resulting in moist, perfectly rendered meat with a crusty, jiggly fat cap still attached. Ribs and sausage are top-notch too. Kicked-up baked beans redolent of oregano and simple, fresh-made garlic potatoes round out the menu.