Braeswood brings Tex-Mex barbecue to Las Vegas
Though I’m no rookie when it comes to visiting Las Vegas, I made a rookie mistake. I decided to walk somewhere during the summer.
That “somewhere” was the newly formed Arts District north of the Strip and just south of downtown proper. I’d heard about some interesting restaurants and breweries there, and I figured I could make the hour walk from my hotel on the Strip just to burn off some calories from the epic meals we’d gorged on since arriving.
Even for this Houstonian, the 106-degree heat and 20 percent humidity, combined with the shadeless sidewalks of upper Las Vegas Boulevard, had me looking for a cool respite.
Fortunately, just as I approached the Arts District, I spied a “BBQ” sign on a storefront. I stepped in and ordered an ice-cold Topo Chico. I looked around the dining room and noticed the name of the place was Braeswood Tex Mex BBQ. I chatted up the counterman, Gerald Casas, who is also the owner.
“I’m from Houston, and we have a neighborhood called Braeswood,” I said.
“I know,” responded Casas. “That’s where I’m from, and this place is named after it.”
I’ve stumbled on some interesting barbecue joints all over the world, but this was a coincidence for the ages.
Casas grew up in Braeswood and graduated from nearby Houston Baptist University with a degree in mass communications. But his passion was always cooking, inspired by family tradition. He helped his paternal grandfather, Guadalupe Casas, cook barbecue in his backyard. His maternal grandfather, Reynaldo Jasso, owned Camilo’s Mexican Restaurant in Bacliff, where Casas worked and earned his Tex-Mex bona fides.
In 2010, he decided to follow his passion and move to Las Vegas, where restaurant jobs were plentiful. He worked at some of the biggest casinos on the Strip while going to culinary school.
Then in 2018, he faced the same burnout many chefs do after working 18-hour days for years. He decided if he was going to work that hard, he wanted to work for himself. But what kind of restaurant?
“I decided to go with what originally inspired me — Tex-Mex and barbecue.”
He started holding pop-ups at Las Vegas breweries. Those were so successful that he was able to open his storefront in the Arts District this May.
There are several counter seats inside and a few tables on
a sidewalk patio. The whole front of the store is a roll-up garage door so the kitchen, dining room and patio can be turned into one large open space in cooler weather.
A larger back patio features a 500-gallon offset barrel smoker, made by Cen-Tex Smokers in Luling, as the centerpiece.
Not surprisingly, Casas makes all the barbecue, sides and sauces from scratch. He partners with a nearby bake shop, Fatty’s, for his desserts. He gets his real-deal, nixtamalized corn tortillas from a local tortilla maker.
Though I had an ambitious agenda for visiting several restaurants and breweries in the neighborhood, I decided to hang out with Casas and ordered a tray of his excellent brisket tacos with sides of charro beans and Mexican rice. I washed it down with another ice-cold Topo Chico.
Resuscitated from the earlier, inadvisable walk north, I hailed an Uber to take me back to my hotel on the Strip and told Casas to look me up next time he’s in Houston.