The king of custom cooking
You may never have set foot in Lenox Bar-B-Q on Harrisburg, but there’s a good chance you’ve eaten barbecue that was cooked there. That’s because Lenox is one of the few joints in Houston that has become known for a niche service in the barbecue business referred to as “custom cooking.”
As the demand for barbecue at events such as weddings, business meetings and family reunions grows, owner Erik Mrok continues a long tradition at Lenox as a place where restaurants, catering companies and even backyard barbecue cooks outsource their meat-smoking needs.
Though Mrok won’t divulge which local restaurants and caterers currently subcontract with Lenox when their clients want real Texas barbecue on the menu, he has fond memories of a longtime partnership with legendary Houston caterer and restaurateur Frankie B. Mandola, who recently passed away. And in the 1980s, according to Mrok, Lenox provided barbecue to Tex-Mex godmother Ninfa Laurenzo when her Ninfa’s on Navigation needed extra cooking capacity or had a special order.
However, one of the biggest drivers of Lenox’s custom cooking business is individuals. Too busy to smoke meats for the backyard party you have scheduled this weekend? Simply go to the grocery store and buy a couple of briskets, drop them off at Lenox on Friday morning, then come back the next day to pick up your fully cooked and ready-to-serve briskets.
Lenox is one of the few barbecue joints in Houston that actively advertises its custom cooking services to individuals.
“It’s about price and convenience,” Mrok says. Buying your own meat and having Lenox cook it is often half the cost of buying the barbecue directly from the restaurant.
Needless to say, custom cooking is a niche market for a reason. Most barbecue joints aren’t willing to give up space in their smoker to cook other people’s meats when they make far more money cooking and selling their own.
But Lenox has a dedicated clientele and enough pit capacity to make the economics work.
“I can tell when a local supermarket chain has a special on meat without even reading the newspaper,” Mrok says. Recently, Kroger was selling briskets for $1.97 a pound. That Friday, his custom-cooking staging area was filled with Kroger-branded briskets.
The term “custom cooking” is somewhat of a misnomer. Mrok doesn’t actually cook the meat to the customer’s specifications. The customer just supplies the meat, and Mrok seasons and cooks it just like he does for the barbecue he serves on his own menu. Mrok charges by the pound to custom cook — $1 per pound for cooked only and $1.50 for cooked and sliced brisket, for example.
And he’ll cook just about anything a customer brings in — brisket, pork ribs and shoulder, chicken and sausage links are typical orders. Not surprisingly, he gets the occasional odd request.
“We had someone come in with a pack of hot dogs,” Mrok says. He cooked them. People also arrive with big trays of hamburger patties you buy at places such as Sam’s Club. Unfortunately, hamburgers don’t cook well on the big industrial smokers that Mrok uses.
“They taste like charred hockey pucks, if you ask me,” Mrok says. But some people love them.
Memorably, someone came in carrying a whole deer he had just hit with his car. After it had been properly dressed, Mrok cooked that, too.
The busiest times are holidays, especially Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. On the morning of Christmas Eve last year, the line of customers there to pick up their orders stretched through the parking lot.
For Mrok, there’s no order too large or too small.
“If you want to eat it,” he says, “we’ll cook it.”