Barbecue is coming to a breakfast menu near you
For most barbecue consumers, lunch is where it’s at. Eating a half-pound of beef and pork naturally requires a few hours of digestion, and after a cup or two of coffee, powering through an afternoon at the office is a great way to accomplish this before settling in for dinner.
That’s not to discount barbecue for dinner. A chopped beef sandwich or even a rack of ribs makes a mighty fine evening meal. Restaurants that are known for dinner service — The Brisket House, Killen’s Barbecue and Goode Co. Barbeque — are doing a community service for smoked-meat-obsessed Houstonians.
But what about the so-called “most important meal of the day”? Until recently, the idea of eating barbecue for breakfast was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, named the best barbecue in Texas (and therefore the world) by Texas Monthly magazine.
Every Saturday, guests begin lining up so early in the morning — sometimes as early as 4 a.m. — that owner Kerry Bexley and pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz start serving brisket, ribs and sausage at 8 a.m. Though there are no recognizable breakfast items on the menu, Snow’s has earned the moniker “best barbecue breakfast in Texas.”
There is a precedent for a real-deal barbecue breakfast, however. The Tejano tradition of barbacoa (cooked cow’s head) is a staple of weekend mornings at places such as Gerardo’s Drive-in in Houston’s near north side. The sign at Gerardo’s states “Viernes – Sábado – Domingo” — that is, barbacoa is served only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
One of my favorite things to do in Houston is head to Gerardo’s on a Sunday morning, order
a pound of cachete (cheek) barbacoa with tortillas, cilantro, onion and green sauce to make my own breakfast tacos while I sit in a booth and watch the comings and goings of the neighborhood clientele.
Craft barbecue is also dipping its toes into the breakfast game. Recently, pitmaster Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin announced he is opening a coffee and breakfast taco trailer outside his eponymous barbecue joint. As at Snow’s, guests start lining up at his joint in the early hours of the morning, and a cup of coffee and even a small bite
before the main course of barbecue for lunch would be welcome.
Austinites love their coffee and breakfast tacos, so incorporating Central Texas-style barbecue into the equation is a no-brainer — think brisket breakfast tacos.
From a business perspective, barbecue breakfast tacos make a lot of sense. The profit margin on brisket served alone is razor thin, but combining it with less expensive ingredients such as eggs and tortillas is a way to offset the cost.
This is especially true for joints that are open for dinner because they will sometimes have meat left over at the end of the night. It is a normal and accepted procedure to reuse that meat the next day as chopped beef combined with sauce for barbecue sandwiches. It is certainly plausible that same chopped beef can be repurposed for breakfast tacos, too.
In Houston, Feges BBQ in Greenway Plaza is well known for its BBQ Breakfast Tacos which
come in brisket, pork, and vegetarian varieties. Henderson & Kane in Sixth Ward serves barbecue breakfast tacos as well as a full-featured brunch on weekends. Buck’s in Galveston also has an expansive weekends-only barbecue brunch. Other Houston barbecue joints known for breakfast tacos include Pappas Bar-B-Q and Rudy’s Bar-B-Q.
Pappas, in particular, has a full daily menu of barbecue breakfast items including sandwiches, tacos and tamales. If I’m craving barbecue for breakfast, I’ll stop in a Pappas drive-thru and grab a sausage link, egg and cheese taco, or if I’m hungrier, the larger smoked chicken taco with green chile, egg, cheese tortilla strips and pico de gallo.
Your neighborhood barbecue joint may never replace IHOP or Denny’s for breakfast supremacy, but it’s nice to know an earlymorning craving for brisket can be satisfied if you know where to go.