Building an audience for barbecue
Drive down any urban thoroughfare or country road in Texas, and a “Pit-smoked barbecue” sign will inevitably beckon. It’s part of our culture, landscape and DNA.
Obviously, that’s not the case in other parts of the world. Less than 10 years ago, finding legitimate Texas barbecue outside the Lone Star State was impossible.
How times have changed. Today, expatriate Texans as well as locals in cities such as Seattle, New York, Paris and London can find credible outlets to quench their smoked-meat cravings.
How did this come to be?
Think of it in terms of supply and demand. First, you need a supply of Texas barbecue. Pitmasters including Jack Timmons at Jack’s BBQ in Seattle and Billy Durney at Hometown Bar-BQue in Brooklyn trained in Texas and returned to their respective hometowns armed with our techniques and a taste of our culture. They are now supplying real-deal Texas barbecue to their non-Texan friends, family, neighbors and fellow citizens.
The question is, Does the dining public outside Texas want — i.e., demand — world-class Texas barbecue?
In many cities outside Texas, the answer is now emphatically, Yes!
The marketing and advertising techniques used to create educated audiences of Texas-barbecue connoisseurs in places like New York and London is one of the most fascinating stories I’ve followed in the past 10 years.
One effective marketing tactic is to get people to cook barbecue before they eat it. Over the past decade, American companies such as Weber have marketed their grills worldwide by sponsoring barbecue competitions in Europe and especially in the United Kingdom.
Sponsoring these events has a double-sided effect — it creates knowledgeable producers of barbecue as well as an educated audience for barbecue. Weekend barbecue warriors will inevitably seek out — demand — restaurants that use legitimate techniques for smoking meats.
Another way to create demand is to encourage knowledgeable people to write and report about it. This is a factor in the rise of Texas barbecue in New York City. Barbecue-savvy food writers such as Robert Sietsema, formerly of the Village Voice and now with Eater, have helped create a knowledgeable audience of barbecue connoisseurs in the Big Apple.
Festivals also help create demand. The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party provided many New Yorkers with their first exposure to great barbecue. By bringing world-class pitmasters from all over the country, this event raised the bar for barbecue there.
I recently attended a barbecue festival in Los Angeles — a city where the demand for legitimate Texas barbecue is slowly catching up with the supply.
The All-Star BBQ, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times as part of its monthlong Food Bowl event, brought prominent pitmasters from across the country to join local barbecue joints to present the best in smoked meats to nascent LA barbecue enthusiasts.
By all accounts, the event accomplished its goal. Curious Angelenos watched as North
Carolina pitmaster Sam Jones cooked a whole hog in an improvised concrete block pit. They lined up to take selfies with Austin-based brisket master Aaron Franklin. They formed respectable lines to partake of local favorites, including APL Restaurant, Slab BBQ and Moo’s Craft Barbecue.
The audience for barbecue in Los Angeles, and California at large, is growing but still a work in progress. One of best dishes at the All-Star BBQ event was presented by pitmaster Matt Horn of Horn Barbecue in Oakland. His smoked oxtails with collard greens would be instantly recognizable and quickly consumed by any Houston barbecue connoisseur.
Yet in LA, the line at his booth never quite grew to the length of Franklin’s or Jones’ queue.
Which was fine by me. On that unseasonably warm day, I crouched in the shade of Horn’s booth and happily consumed several trays of his superb smoked oxtails. We chatted about how hard it is to create an audience for Texas barbecue in his hometown of Oakland, and how he’s slowly bringing California diners around to the glory of Texas barbecue, one smoked oxtail at a time.