San Antonio slowly raising barbecue profile
San Antonio is known for many things — the Alamo, the Spurs, the Riverwalk and, more recently, a booming culinary scene anchored by a long tradition of Tex-Mex cooking.
It’s not known for Texas barbecue. That is slowly changing.
The recent opening of 2M Smokehouse, along with the continued success of The Granary ’Cue & Brew, are signs that demand for highquality barbecue in San Antonio is far from saturated.
During a recent visit, I returned to what is the pioneer of craft barbecue in San Antonio — Two Bros. BBQ Market. Opened in 2009 by prominent chef and restaurateur Jason Dady and his brother Jake, Two Bros. boasts a superb selection of smoked meats that is often overshadowed by the hype surrounding other Central Texas-style barbecue joints that seem to open every week.
Some six years after my initial visit, I wanted to see how this San Antonio trendsetter was holding up.
Two Bros. BBQ is a collection of low-slung, mustard-colored wood buildings nestled in a grove of oak trees just northwest of the San Antonio International Airport. There’s a comfortable, open-raftered dining room and an expansive outdoor patio. An adjacent, screened-in smokehouse and a jumble of barrel pits tended by a staff of scrambling pit hands offers a measure of entertainment for guests sipping beers on the patio.
The smoked meats are as good or better than they’ve ever been. This is certainly a testament to Dady’s commitment to barbecue, even as his restaurant mini-empire continues to grow (he also owns Tre Trattoria and B&D Ice House, among other restaurants).
Upon arrival, I noticed two obvious changes since my last visit. First, the smoker collection has grown. In addition to the two original brick pits in the smoke room, Dady has several steel barrel smokers in his arsenal.
This reflects the growing demand for barbecue in San Antonio, both at the restaurant and in catering jobs. On this day, the Two Bros. staff was loading up a van with coolers full of briskets for a hundred- person wedding event.
Also new is the pitmaster who oversees barbecue operations at the restaurant. Laura Loomis took over the job last year.
Loomis is in rarefied company. She is one of only a handful of female pitmasters in Texas. And at 29, she is also one of the youngest.
“I’ve always been a tomboy,” says Loomis, who grew up an Air Force brat. Her father was stationed at Randolph Air Force Base when she was growing up. She graduated from Ronald Reagan High School and got her start in the restaurant business as a cashier at Chuck E. Cheese’s.
Loomis later began working as a cashier at several of Dady’s restaurants, including Two Bros. BBQ Market.
She eventually began helping out with the pits and even found herself coming in on her days off just to watch the pit hands manage the smoking process. When previous pitmaster Javier Rodriguez left, Dady tapped Loomis for the top job.
I ask Loomis why there aren’t more female pitmasters in Texas barbecue. “Honestly, I just don’t think they want to do this job,” she says. “It’s hot, it’s dirty, and there just aren’t a lot of women who want to do it.”
Loomis, on the other hand, clearly thrives in the searing, eye-burning atmosphere of the Two Bros. smokehouse. And she’s put her own stamp on its cooking processes.
She’s introduced the technique of “resting” the meat after cooking it in the smoker for 12-14 hours. The meat is wrapped and held in coolers for several more hours to let it slowly cool, theoretically increasing moisture and tenderness.
As for the future, she hopes to take on a supervisory role in the continued expansion of the Jason Dady Restaurant Group, specifically in the expansion of the smoked-meat offerings — B&D Ice House already has an extensive barbecue menu.
It’s an ambition that matches the growing reputation of the barbecue scene in San Antonio.