Why my barbecue addiction bodes well for the future
Although restaurant dining rooms are closed, barbecue joints are still serving takeout and in some cases doing a brisk business. Many pitmasters have turned to social media to advertise their menus and opening hours, complete with photos of pepper-encrusted beef ribs and juicy jalapeñoand-cheese sausage.
For those Houstonians working from home and splitting screen time between actual work and a never-ending stream of social-media feeds, this visual stimuli is a mouthwatering reminder about how ingrained barbecue is in our daily lives.
If the stay-at-home order has taught me anything, it is that I am addicted to barbecue.
Pre-pandemic, I ate barbecue on average five times a week. Reactions to this fact ranged from, “You poor thing, being forced to eat all that barbecue!” to “Wow, you’ve got the best job in the world!”
I can assure you, reality supports the latter reaction. Getting paid to eat barbecue and talk to pitmasters certainly does rank as one of the best jobs in the world.
Recently, however, that steady diet of smoked meats has been cut to about one visit a week to a takeout or curbside order.
On other days, my craving reveals itself in different ways. Aside from the Pavlovian response caused by social-media feeds, there are random times throughout the day when there’s a tingling on the back and sides of my tongue where the flavor receptors for salt, pepper, smoke and fat are located. There’s a sensation not unlike a very mild headache that ebbs and flows, usually around lunch time, a reminder of my withdrawal symptoms.
Also missing are the smells.
Curbside service is great in a pinch, but there’s no substitute for walking into a barbecue joint and being overwhelmed by the fragrance of burning post oak.
I’ve not experienced that in several weeks, and its absence is notable.
One high point in recent days was the discovery of a vacuumsealed rack of pork ribs in my freezer. Before the stay-at-home order went into effect, I visited Tejas To-Go Market and stocked up on a few freezer-friendly rations of pork ribs, a flat-cut of brisket and some chile relleno sausage.
I took the ribs out of the freezer and let them thaw in the refrigerator for a couple of days. Then I unpacked them and fired up my trusty backyard grill to warm them up.
As soon as the ribs hit the grates, the fragrance of fire, salt, pepper and fat brought me back. The flavor and texture was even more remarkable, setting off a cascade of memory receptors in my brain and a flood of serotonin — the chemical most associated with the pleasure of eating food.
There’s an old saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that is definitely the case for me and barbecue. Not being able to eat barbecue regularly anymore, and not being able to visit with all my good friends in the business, has made me wistful for the recent past, when those things were possible.
And yet there is hope among the collective loss of our beloved barbecue. I suspect that I’m not the only Houstonian feeling that tingle on the back and side of the tongue. I’m probably not the only one whose mouth starts watering when we get a whiff of burning coal or wood when our neighbor fires up the grill.
In economics, there’s a concept known as deferred demand. Certain circumstances — a pandemic, for instance — mute the demand for a product or service. And yet that change in demand is artificial, only temporary, and ultimately deferred until those circumstances change. We are all sitting at our computers watching the mouthwatering pictures of barbecue scroll by and waiting until the day we can return to our favorite dining room.
And that’s good news for the Texas barbecue business. When normality returns, so will our visits to our favorite neighborhood joints to dive into a tray of glistening smoked meats, smell the fragrance of burning wood and catch up with friends.