One of last year’s best trucks reimagined

Brisket barbacoa another hit for lauded chef

One of the best restaurant openings last year was a food truck called Lobo Provisions, cooking wood-grilled Texas comfort food from an Airstream trailer under oak trees and strings of lights off Old Blanco Road near Bulverde.

After an early crush of business, the pandemic forced owners Quinten Frye and Kristin Scharrer to rethink their approach. They moved the operation across the road this month and traded the Airstream for a stripped-down rolling smoker rig, and Lobo Provisions Smoke Shack was born.

The streamlined operation puts you one-on-one with Frye, a San Antonio chef who’s traveled from Austin to California to Hawaii, where he landed on a James Beard semifinalist list for Rising Star Chef.

At Lobo, he’s focused on smoked brisket, chicken, breakfast tacos and weekend specials like smoked pork pozole. That’s more than enough to make this weekend cookout worth a drive.

Best dish: Frye starts his brisket with a rub of salt, pepper and garlic confit. Then he smokes it for six hours before wrapping it in banana leaves for a while longer, letting the steam work its alchemical magic.

The menu calls it “brisket barbacoa,” and it brought together the best of those two barbecue styles: brisket with its symphony of fat and lean, and

barbacoa with its silky, slowroasted velvet texture. It’s $14 for a half-pound with flour tortillas, queso fresco, pickled onions and creamy green salsa for a do-ityourself taco kit or a sop-andglow fiesta for two.

Other dishes: The most humble of chicken parts, the leg quarter, got the same kind of careful attention as the brisket at Lobo, starting with an 18-hour brine in sweet tea, lemon peel and oregano. Frye smokes it high and hot to get the skin crispy and seal in the juices, then mellows it down for a smoky finish that marries the flavors happily ever after ($13 for a trio of leg quarters with tortillas,

salsa, pickled onions and queso fresco).

A weekend special of smoked pork pozole, with big pieces of tender pork sharing a bowl with white and golden hominy in a chile-infused broth ($13), made me wish it were part of the regular menu.

Picnic-style sides rounded out the experience, including a creamy, spicy coleslaw ($4), sweet and smoky barbecue beans ($5), smoked and soylime-marinated jalapeños ($3) and a killer macaroni salad made with pimento cheese, Duke’s mayo and smoked paprika ($5).

Let’s get back to the brisket, though, because it’s a star from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays and Sundays when Frye folds it into fluffy, made-to-order eggs for breakfast tacos on sturdy flour tortillas from Culebra Meat Market ($9 for two). Expect that same big, bold flavor from breakfast tacos with eggs and sweet, smoky nuggets of lean chorizo ($8).

Bonus: On a cool, breezy January morning, those tacos made a perfect country breakfast with coffee from the QuickDraw Coffee trailer parked just across the lot.

Photos by Mike Sutter / Staff The brisket barbacoa, which is rubbed with salt, pepper and garlic confit, then smoked and finished in banana leaves, marries the best of the two barbecue styles.

After a sweet tea-lemon peel-oregano brine, chicken quarters come out of the smoker crispy on the outside and juicy inside.