Feges BBQ in Greenway Plaza shows great promise
U nder the futuristic skylight dome that flanks Greenway Plaza’s food court, the aroma was faint but unmistakable: woodsmoke.
That alluring Texas scent smelled strange and exciting in such a setting. It snaked around the angular armchairs and crisp white tables populated by office workers on their lunch breaks, beckoning them toward Feges BBQ’s big, sleek counter set-up, which sits front and center at the head of the dining plaza.
Serious smoked-on-site barbecue and office towers have not gone together in our tribal food history. The highgrade exhaust and fire-extinguishing systems required in an urban setting have militated against it. So has the low common denominator that has long prevailed in workaday American food courts.
Well, goodbye to all that. Feges BBQ at Greenway heralds a new day — and a new chapter in Houston’s brave new barbecue era, which has seen such rapid evolution since Ronnie Killen opened his landmark Killen’s Barbecue a little over four years ago.
I used to see Patrick Feges (pronounced fee-jis, as a wall graphic announces) manning the cutting board back in Killen’s early days, when the
self-taught pitmaster and classically trained chef was soaking up barbecue techniques and refining his own.
The lanky Purple Heart veteran, who served with the Army in Iraq, had already smoked barbecue from a trailer outside local bars while working in the kitchens of Underbelly and Brennan’s. He went on to make a name for himself doing weekend barbecue specials at the late Southern Goods.
He got married, too — to Erin Smith, the talented chef who burst on the Houston scene at Plonk after working in New York at Per Se and Babbo. Together they have fashioned a very modern barbecue joint: polished and invigorating, with his solid meat classics for connoisseurs and her fascinating vegetable side dishes for adventurers.
It’s a fertile collaboration that has produced a menu that seems deeply local, running from earthy smoked boudin to exuberantly funky dirty rice, elotes-style corn salad to big ol’ pork cracklings. And if quality can get a bit bumpy in these very early days, rest assured there is no way to eat here and be bored.
Consider, if you will, the riveting brisket sandwich that is chopped to order, piled high on a buttered-and-toasted potato bun, and set forth with no further adornment. None is necessary: The saltiness of the peppered, charry crust edges sets off the suave, smoky quality of the well-rendered beef just so, and it all pops out against the delicious canvas of that bun.
You can add some squiggles of pickled red onion if you like, and dip an edge into a tiny cup of the sweet and tangy house barbecue sauce on occasion. But this is one brisket sandwich that stands very nicely on its own. I had to stop myself from wolfing it down like a savage.
Consider, too, the Feges version of that hallowed barbecue trope, the loaded baked potato. Here, the potato is sweet — yeah, the orange kind — and it can cradle a blissful tangle of pulled pork gussied up with whatever you like from the fixings array as you pass through the serving counter: grated cheese, green onions, sour cream — or maybe you’d rather try some of the zippy house buttermilk ranch dressing drizzled on top. Somehow the combo of sweet and savory, soft and crisp and chewy works together way, way better than I expected it to do.
You can get choppedto-order smoked turkey on that potato, and the assertive saltiness of the juicy meat actually works better in that sweet context than it does on its own. If there’s one weakness here, it’s a tendency toward aggressive seasoning that can run away with a meal if you don’t try to balance things out.
My first sample of brisket seemed wildly salty, but on another occasion the salt, though pronounced, was not overdone. A special of Korean-style burnt ends was simply too salty and sweet, both, for me to eat with pleasure. And though I bow to the style and sass of the side dishes, so many of them possess what a staffer called “a kick on the end” — or a sharp pickly twang — that I longed for a couple of more gentle concoctions that would give my palate a place to rest.
I thought I had found one in the smooth fluff of sweet potatoes puréed with banana, which gave them an elusive tropicality. But on my next visit, a vigorous dusting of chipotle rub made the sweet potatoes hot, not mild. Elotes-style corn salad the first time I sampled it was so tart and peppery I could hardly tell that the kernels had been tantalizingly smoked. Yet on the second go-round, even the mild cotija cheese crumbles came through.
The barbecue side staples of cole slaw and potato salad emerge in unfamiliar guises. I loved the spare neutrality of a cabbage slaw barely moistened with tart yogurt, flavored with a bit of sesame oil and given a twinge of cilantro. And a “loaded potato salad” turned out to be a bacon-y, black-peppery, vinegar-shot amalgam that reminded me — happily — of what might happen if you mashed a skilletful of German fried potatoes.
There are no beans, interestingly enough. But there are frisky roasted Brussels sprouts, and exuberantly pickled Asian cucumbers, and little baby carrots glossed with a warm, complex Moroccan spice mixture. In fact, Feges may be one of the few barbecue places extant where a “pick 3” vegetable plate is a scintillating option.
Curiously, I found myself eating kale salad and liking it — enough so that I ordered it again on another trip. Usually I avoid the raspy, virtuous raw leaves, but Smith’s additions of tart/sweet dressing, slivered almonds and dried cherries are happy ones. I could even imagine ordering the big $9 kale salad and springing for some smoked chicken on top. Although at that point, my Texas barbecue credentials might well be revoked.
Never mind. I’ll win back plenty of points for the vast quantity of smoked Ruffino pork sausage I have eaten here, judiciously seasoned stuff with a garlicky undercurrent, stout casings and a lovely tight texture that tilts toward the finely ground.
Also to my card-carrying ’cue credit, I have happily consumed numerous St. Louis-cut pork ribs here, meaty specimens neatly trimmed of their cartilage and not so long-smoked that they are tender and falling off the bone. Thank goodness. I much prefer a more bite-able rib, and the ones at Feges are wonderfully gnawable, with a dark bark that bears only a trace of sweetness, not a boatload.
Smith’s desserts are delicate and dreamy, from a subtle banana cream pielet with an irresistible underlay of salted caramel, to a chocolatey peanut butter and jelly layer cake that tastes like a birthday.
The line moves smoothly. You pick up napkins and plastic utensils at an end point, near soda and iced tea dispensers. Big vats of the house barbecue sauce — in which I thought I tasted tomato, dark brown sugar, Worcestershire and vinegar — are on tap, along with an Alabamastyle white sauce that’s like a thinned, spicy mayonnaise, as well as something called “Texas Gold,” a vigorously sweet-sour mustard sauce.
Yes, there are slices of white bread for the taking, too. Look for big jars of jalapeños, and if you require onion, ask for the pickled red variety as you pass through the line.
Then take your tray to one of the pristine white two-tops or the glossy slabs of raw-edged wood that make for dramatic communal tables off to one side. Your fellow diners will be not only Greenway Plaza denizens, but the kind of barbecue hounds you run into all over the city.
On one recent Friday, quite by chance, I ran into Texas Monthly’s barbecue columnist Daniel Vaughn along with my barbecue colleague, J.C. Reid. The Blood Brothers barbecue team had already been and gone. Willet Feng wandered over during a lull at his neighboring Burger-chan kiosk to talk to friends. Chef Monica Pope showed up for a lunch meeting in the svelte new sunken atrium. David Kim, executive director of the Urban Land Institute, which offices upstairs, wandered by and stayed to kibitz.
It felt like a party at that huge wooden table, in that most unlikely setting. Tasted like one, too.
My sense is that Feges and Smith have only begun. Their restaurant is still in flux, and so full of promise. They do interesting, creative specials. They serve a small breakfast menu that includes barbecue tacos and biscuits with smoked boudin gravy. They’re still figuring out the market at Greenway; a weekly whole-hog special, Feges’ first love as a pit master, has been discontinued because it wasn’t selling well. I’m eager to see what their future will bring.