THE GREAT HOUSTON BARBECUE BOOM
New restaurants, cooking festivals help fan flames of desire for smoked meats
Even with the continued slump in the price of oil and the associated economic downturn, 2016 proved to be a busy and prosperous year for Houston barbecue. Far from reaching “peak barbecue” — that theoretical state when the demand for smoked meats reaches a saturation point and the dining public becomes weary of eating and reading about barbecue — Houston saw what is surely the greatest number of high-quality barbecue joints ever to open in one year.
Barbecue events flourished. The World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in February was as big and rowdy as ever. The fourth edition of the Houston Barbecue Festival sold out in May, and the inaugural Woodlands BBQ Festival took place in September (disclosure: I co-founded the former and consulted on the latter). October’s second annual Southern Smoke fundraiser brought celebrity pitmasters to Montrose.
By most observable evidence — festivals at capacity, lines to get into popular joints and the inevitable “sold out” signs when the brisket is gone — Houstonians can’t seem to get enough of their beloved smoked meats.
With that in mind, I’ve narrowed down a year’s worth of Houston barbecue news to the two top stories of 2016.
The biggest story by far was the torrid pace of new barbecue joint openings across the city, as well as the expansion of several existing franchises.
Montrose and Midtown continue to be the focus of would-be barbecue entrepreneurs. Midtown Barbeque and The Pit Room are recent high-profile openings in those areas, and suburban chain Brookstreet BarB-Q debuted an outpost near Montrose and Westheimer.
Downtown saw El Burro & the Bull join an already deep roster of vendors, including Pappa Charlies Barbeque and Jackson Street BBQ. And, in time for the Super Bowl, Bud’s Pitmaster BBQ will open soon near the convention center. In the Heights, 27-year-old Grant Pinkerton opened Pinkerton’s Barbecue, an ambitious restaurant/cocktail bar.
Meanwhile, existing barbecue joints extended their reach. Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland now has a full-fledged location inside NRG Stadium, complete with two massive Oyler smokers that were lifted in by crane. Ray’s BBQ Shack, a Third Ward institution, acquired a prized franchise at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, with a branch in Terminal A. The Brisket House, which started as a tiny sliver of a restaurant in a Tanglewood strip mall, opened a huge stand-alone outpost on Cypress Creek Parkway in March.
The other big story was the rise of Houston barbecue in the national media. January started off with a bang when Texas’ open carry law went into effect, forcing restaurants of all stripes to decide if guns would be allowed in their establishments.
Trent Brooks of Brooks’ Place BBQ in Cypress, an avowed gun proponent, not only encouraged open carry at his barbecue trailer, but offered discounts to those who did. The Washington Post published an in-depth profile of Brooks. Gov. Greg Abbott even gave Brooks a shout-out on Twitter.
At the Houston Barbecue Festival, pitmaster Pinkerton attained a fleeting measure of social-media fame when a photo of his smoked alligator went viral on Instagram. Since then, the reptile delicacy has become something of a trend; a restaurant in Arkansas recently credited Pinkerton for helping out with a smoked gator for a college football tailgate there.
In July, Southern Living magazine published its list of The South’s Top 50 Barbecue Joints, which included CorkScrew BBQ in Spring and North Houston’s Southern Q. CorkScrew also nailed down first place in an episode of Travel Channel’s “Barbecue Paradise.”
In October, Burns Original BBQ was featured in the Houston episode of Anthony Bourdain’s CNN food and travel show, “Parts Unknown.”
Finally, no year-in-review would be complete without raising a glass to a few members of the barbecue community that we lost in 2016: Roy Burns Jr., son of legendary Houston pitmaster Roy Burns Sr.; local barbecue icon Jim Goode, of Goode Company BBQ; and Carlton Gould, longtime pitmaster at Pizzitola’s Bar-BCue.
After all, as we celebrate smoked-meat prosperity and look forward to 2017, it’s important to remember those who helped us get where we are today.