A sneak peek at the new Little Miss BBQ
Smoked meat makes people a little crazy.
Never mind that it’s a second Phoenix location. The fact that barbecue fiends can already smother themselves with Scott Holmes’ brisket five days a week at the original Little Miss BBQ on University Drive is doing little to dampen their excitement.
The new Little Miss BBQ, on the northeast corner of Seventh Street and Townley Avenue in Sunnyslope, is one of the most hotly anticipated Valley restaurants of 2018, if not the past several years.
Thankfully, when it opens — before the end of November, Holmes insists — the newly minted Little Miss will be prepped and fully equipped to handle the ravenous crowds, this time for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Room for 150 guests
It took a little longer than anticipated (as restaurants do), but Little Miss BBQ Sunnyslope is just about ready to throw open its doors — and it has a whole lot more of them.
One gets the sense that the original Little Miss could fit comfortably within the footprint of the new Little Miss’ dining room, to say nothing of the patio and kitchen.
Situated in a spacious building that formerly housed a bank, the Sunnyslope restaurant is modern but unfussy, and brings a whole lot more chairs. It nearly quadruples the indoor capacity of the south Phoenix location, housing roughly 150 diners when it’s loaded to capacity. In a bid to keep the wait short, cutting responsibilities are handled by three cutters, shoulder-to-shoulder at the end of the line.
“People hate waiting at the old one,”
Holmes says, giving a sneak peek at the new restaurant. “So how do we alleviate those concerns but yet still try to create a really cool experience?”
The line has been moved indoors out of the heat and sun. It will wind past a small display portraying the history of the restaurant and the Sunnyslope area; a wall of Little Miss merch; and a window that looks into the part of the kitchen where the real business happens.
3 tons of brisket a week
To handle the increased capacity and reduce wait times, the restaurant features three Oyler pits, and they’re monsters. Lined up side by side, they create a floor-to-ceiling wall of jet-black smokers fed by wood-burning fire boxes that handle rotating trays of meat.
How much meat? For every week of operation, Holmes anticipates prepping, smoking and serving 3 tons of brisket. As in 6,000 pounds. Literal, actual tons. And that doesn’t even include the pulled pork, pork ribs, sausage, turkey and daily specials.
But if there’s a pitmaster obsessive enough to find a way to handle that kind of volume while maintaining the same quality, it’s Holmes.
In fact, he’s trying to make it even better.
The search for the mystery brisket
“Every once in a while, we’d get a case of brisket and it was like, ‘where did these come from?’ They’re absolutely amazing,” he recalls.
Thus began the quest to find the best brisket Holmes had tasted.
Meat suppliers bring in their product from multiple sources, and after the briskets have changed hands a couple of times, it can be difficult to pinpoint the precise ranch that raised the piece of beef sitting in front of you.
But after nearly a year of trying to locate his favorite product through his supplier, a distributor, an investment firm and a meatpacking plant that closed and left the trail cold, Holmes finally found the source: an independent ranch in Minnesota.
“It’s absolutely the best beef I’ve been able to find,” Holmes declares.
Though he’s not yet revealing its name, Holmes describes a family farm that has been developing its line of Black Angus since the 1950s. All of the feed is grown right there on the ranch, and the cows are fed sugar beets and sweet peas, with only 20 percent of their feed comprised of corn.
“It’s so sweet, and the color is beautiful and the grain structure...”
Here, Holmes falls into a lengthy, hypnotic reverie of marbling, intramuscular fat and mouth feel and, mostly, just makes you wish the restaurant would hurry up and open.
Booze and breakfast
In addition to the Minnesota super brisket, fans of Little Miss can expect some changes to the menu at the new location.
For starters, there’s booze, something that was always missing at the original. Holmes is keeping it simple — a few local brews from producers like Wren House, The Shop Beer Co. and North Mountain Brewing — along with a selection of keg wines and batch cocktails developed by manager Ella Perez (formerly of The Gladly and UnderTow) and guest mixologists.
Another major change: The Sunnyslope location will offer breakfast, including breakfast burritos, avocado and barbecue egg bowls, biscuits and gravy, and biscuit sandwiches stuffed with barbecue.
The restaurant will launch with dinner service only. Breakfast will be fast on its heels, and Holmes anticipates being open for three meals a day by the end of the year.
New dishes and specials
Other tweaks and specials will be immediately evident to fans of the original.
In answer to one of his most frequent requests, Holmes is adding a mac and cheese to the menu, along with vegetables that will be roasted in the juicy, fatty drippings from the smoked brisket.
“I’m sorry, vegetarians,” Holmes says, sheepishly.
Holmes plans to offer platters for large groups — cutter’s choice — in a small size that will feed four or five diners, and a mountain of meat that will serve seven or eight.
In a possibly controversial but necessary move, an order of brisket will include both fatty and lean. “If I don’t, I’m going to be out of all of our fatty brisket by 4 o’clock, and there won’t be any for dinner.”
Daily specials like smoked pastrami and short ribs will be in attendance, and Holmes hopes to work in a green chile smoked meatloaf down the line, along with the smoked salmon he teased when the restaurant was first announced.
Sweet and sticky pork belly
Holmes has been developing recipes for his smoked salmon and sweet and sticky ribs. He still hopes to offer smoked salmon, probably a once-aweek special due to kitchen logistics. Those who were looking forward to Holmes’ sweet and sticky ribs will still get the sweet and sticky, but not precisely as Holmes initially envisioned.
“I was working on the sweet and sticky ribs, cooking ribs three times a week at the house, and my daughter, her favorite food in the world is pork ribs,” Holmes explains. “I decided to play with some pork belly, and she takes a bite of the rib, and then a bite of the pork belly, and she did not put that pork belly down.
“She completely forgot about the rib. And I thought, ‘Hmmmm,’ because I like the pork belly better too.”
And so, partly thanks to Holmes’ 6year-old daughter, sweet and sticky pork belly it is, sizzled up to a crisp on the flat top in a caramelized, sweet barbecue sauce. He’s guessing his guests won’t mind the switch. They might mind waiting to get their hands on it, though.
Hang in there, everybody. It’s almost here.