Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Bond, barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and this
was Fire and Smoke, the Texas Monthly Barbecue podcast, brought
to you by YETI. For this episode, we're going to
do something a little different. We usually bring you stories
about barbecue from around Texas, but Matthew Odom is the
food critic here in Austin at the Austin American Statesman.
He made quite a stir when he put out an
article about the brisket and Lockhart. I'm not sure if
he was responsible for the headline or not, but it
read that, you know, Lockhart barbecue is basically overrated. It
was certainly a shot across the bow from a guy
from Austin. A lot of the folks in Lockhart were
certainly upset that an Austin food critic would come down
to their hallowed grounds and dare speak ill of their
prize barbecue. So I wanted to sit down with him
and talk to him about what his motivation was for
writing that article and if he's had a chance to
reflect on it. I guess see what some of the
feedback has been from folks in Lockhart and across Texas
who either love or maybe agree with him about Lockhart brisket.
So let's talk with Matthew Odom. You had a recent article.
I guess this was last month. The headline of the
article is legendary Lockhart barbecue is overrated now or was
that the headline? That was the headline. We're in the
same business here, so I think we both understand or
both are certainly familiar with the fact that we don't
get to choose our headlines all the time.
Speaker 2: I might have written I don't know. Maybe I wrote that,
but I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No, that didn't end up in your article.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the spirit of the article was though, that
Lockhart barbecue is a bit overrated. One of the things
that you said was something has changed over the past decade.
I'm not sure if it is Lockhart or me. Maybe both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't, you know. It's that's how it is
with anything, right, Like I remember Shaky's pizza as a
kid being great, and I don't think Shaky's pizza was
probably great. I'm in Houston, Texas, and same with Panjo's pizza.
Maybe it was great. I don't know. You have a
lot of these memories. I remembered loving eating hot dogs
from the food trucks in Washington, DC on the National Mall.
It was like the first place I encountered food trucks
when I was like nineteen seventy nine or something. And
I'm sure those hot dogs are terrible. Now I'm not
saying this food is the equivalent of hot dogs from
a food truck on the mall in DC. But I
remember going to Smitty's, you know, over the past twenty years,
and really specifically, I remember going. I did a blog
for The Statesman in two thousand and seven and went
down to Smitty's and it blew my mind. And christ
was good. At the time. I didn't think Blacks was
as good, but Smitty's, to me at that time was amazing.
And then I go about every two years and I
just hadn't been down in a while, and so I
went back for this article. It wasn't supposed to be
a hot take.
Speaker 1: Honestly, What was the purpose of the article in your
mind when you were traveling down to Lockhart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I get asked every now and then, I
get asked by people visiting town and people who live here,
what's your favorite place in Lockhart? Because that was the
place everybody would want to go to eat barbecue. Now,
over the past ten years, really, probably since Aaron opened
his truck and everything and started happening or trailer, everything's
changed so much here that I don't get asked that
as much because people ask where do you go to
eat barbecue in Austin. But people used to make sojourns
and pilgrimages down to Lockhart, and they still do and
would ask for my favorite And so I'd go down
every eighteen months, every two years, and I generally had
a sense of them, but I hadn't been in a while.
I went to Krit's about a year ago on my
way down to South Texas to do a taco story,
and I think I went to Blacks about a year
before that, so I hadn't been in a while. And
my folks called me and they were in Wimberley and said,
we're going to go to Blacks and have barbecue. Do
you want to come? And I said, yeah, let me
bring my nephew, my thirteen year old nephew, fourteen years nephew, Charlie.
Speaker 1: And like a true food critic, You're like, why just
go to Black exactly?
Speaker 2: I mean, it really was. I was like, you know,
I don't come down here all that often. I'm already
going to be at Blacks. The other ones are within
a mile or two, so this would be a good
time to run around, try all of them and get
a sense. So when people ask me what your favorite place,
I could tell them. And now the problem becomes, unless
your name is Daniel Vaughan, you're not going to go
have four meals, four full meals, at four different restaurants
in one afternoon. So I thought, well what should I do?
And I thought, well, brisket is kind of the standard
bear or the what do you call it, the measuring
stick of barbecue in central Texas.
Speaker 1: And not just the measuring stick. But I also think
if out of towners are asking you where to go
get barbecue, what they really mean is where should I
go on Lockhart to get brisket? Everybody outside of Texas
thinks of that's all we do here in Texas, so
and they're often going to be looking for the bar
for the brisket specifically.
Speaker 2: Right And as you know my much better than I,
and I said this in my article, and I think
a lot of people probably just read the headline the
ones that got upset anyways, is that I know that
Lockhart is not necessarily the brisket capital of Texas. You know,
I think I used to get the n cut pork
chop at Smitty's. I know that the pork chop and
the sausage are great at Krits. I know that the
beef rib is really great at Blacks. I'm sure Chisholm
Trail is known for something that I can't that I
don't know. So I know that these places don't pride
themselves on being the best brisket makers in the world.
I'm sure they pride themselves on their brisket, but I
don't think they would say it's their best thing they do.
I mean, as you know, I think a lot of them.
When you ask for lean, a couple of them anyways
give you claud instead shoulder claud. So you know, it's
not like you're going to Franklin or you're going to
love Barbecue and you say, give me, give me lean,
give me a little lean, give me a little fatty,
and you're getting it from the brisket. And then on
top of that, I think you know, these guys smoke
their bit differently, so it's it's just a different animal,
not you know, literally and figuratively, literally in the sense
that it's it's not prime brisket that you're finding it
some places in Austin. And figuratively it's a different animal
in the sense that it's cooked differently. And so it's
kind of comparing apples and oranges to some degree to
compare Austin. We'll get to love and that, and that.
Speaker 1: Would be my argument is that uh, going to Lockhart
and just focusing on the brisket in in comparing it
to Austin. Now you eat all over Austin because you're
always trying to update your your best barbecue list here
in Austin proper, and so of course you become more
and more familiar with the with the brisket here in
Austin and in the style that people are looking for
when they come here to town. To me, the style
of brisket and Lockhart is just something completely different. Like uh,
you know Tim Mkeska Mkeska's barbecue it was up in Taylor, Texas.
He calls it a full term brisket. Here in Austin,
he says, uh, he told me once He's like, if
you cooked it any further, it would fall through net.
Speaker 2: And you know it's that nice render, right.
Speaker 1: So I mean here here in Austin, it's all about
cooking it low, cooking it for a really long time,
usually starting with a prime product, maybe a prime brisket
or maybe even better, and cooking it a really long time,
so you end up with a really super tender brisket.
I mean in the time that a brisket at Franklin
Barbecue is resting at the end of its cooking time
in that four or five hour period, they'll cook a
whole brisket at Krite's Market, right, And so that just
just the way that they cook it, the way that
they do it over that high heat, is you're just
going to end up with something different. So how much
of it, in your mind is that you're simply evaluating
a different style of brisket in Lockhart than what you
get here in Austin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a very fair point. And you know,
at some point I could have pulled back and said,
you know, as you said on the metadata search on
the Internet, I think it's when you google Matthew Odam
and Lockhart. I think what comes up is ranking the
best risk in Lockhart, and that really was the idea.
And then once I saw that it wasn't up to
the standard I used to hold it to, or the
standard that I have now, I guess or my memory
of the past. At first my standard of now, maybe
I should have gone back and eaten full meals at
all of them and then really judged how I would
rank the four of them based on entire meals, the
way I do when I visit restaurants here in town.
But I think the brisket was just so disappointing and
that my purpose was to rank the briskets. So you know,
maybe I got carried away. Maybe it's you. It would
be like going to an NBA game where the all
the starters are resting because Papovich rested all of his starters,
and you leave and you just say, man, the NBA
product's just not as good as it used to be,
and while you were watching the second team like you
weren't having you know, Manu Genobili pork chops. So you know,
maybe it's it's it's not fair. I was just really
surprised by because I'd had the brisket before, and I
remember the brisket being better I just remember all of
it being better. I did have some sausage at Smitty's
and Chrits.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to Lockhart, I think of Lockhart as
a sausage town right primarily, And I think maybe that's
just because if you look at the history of barbecue
and sausage, the smoke sausage has that really distinct tie
to meat market style barbecue, like it is the scraps,
something that you're gonna make from the scraps and smoke,
and all of these places in Lockhart are identified with
that meat market style of barbecue. So I mean, that's
that's what I think of primarily, and then maybe pork chops. Now.
One of the things I was really surprised about was,
you know, you had you did have some blowback, You
had these things. I wasn't surprised about as the fact
that you had said you got a letter from the
mayor of Lockhart. You also heard from the unofficial mayor
of Lockhart, Roy Perez, the the pitmaster at Krit's Market,
who who made the argument of you know, basically respect
your elders. Lockhart is the one who kind of made
this whole barbecue boom possible.
Speaker 2: Which which I totally agree with. And I just to
jump in. You know, Roy's response was on Facebook, which
I hadn't seen until you directed me to it, and
it was actually really respectful in the sense that, you know,
he didn't call me any names or anything, but his
point was, we bust our ass. We show up every day.
We've been doing it for decades. There's people that still
line up here every day for it, and we're going
to keep doing it until we can't do it anymore.
And respect the fact that we've been doing this forever.
And I get it. And I mean, I look, I've
worked in a couple of restaurants. I have no earthly
idea of how hard cooking barbecue is, what those hours
are like, how thinkless it is, how hard it is
to make a living doing it. So I get all that,
and I respect that, and I appreciated the tone that
Roy took. The one the one issue I take with
you know, both the mayor and with the head of
the Chamber of Commerce is.
Speaker 1: From both of them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and the Chamber of covers phone call or
there were emails, and the Chamber of Commerce president didn't
identify himself as such, but a Google cursory Google search
revealed as much, which, of course, he wants people to
come down there and live down there and all the
businesses to thrive. So I get it, and I get
where the mayor came from who asked me to next
time I return, I should have hat in hand, which
a couple of friends I read that too, who aren't
familiar with Texas jargon, we're a little bit confused by that.
I found it kind of charming. But you know, the
one thing I will say is just because you've been
doing it forever doesn't necessarily mean you should keep getting
people to come to your place based off the fact
that you've been doing it forever. Like, you know, you're
benefiting from your name ID and from your reputation, so
at a certain point you should still have to live
up to that reputation if you're going to be benefiting
from it. I think it cuts both ways.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, they certainly benefit from the fact that
they have all of them have earned legendary status. Yeah,
and because of that, guide books and lists and recommendations
will constantly include them and maybe won't be so critical
because they are so legendary. So maybe the fact that
you came in and were so critical. Was pretty Jarry,
and I know that. In our last Texas Monthly, last
top fifty list, well we got a lot of complaints
because Krit's Market made it on that top fifty, but
Black's Barbecue was not on it anymore, and the one before,
Smitty's Market came off of it. So in three lists
we got down to just one barbecue joint in Lockhart
and it was Krit's Market. Now, maybe a lot of
that is due to how much I love that pork chop.
That's one of my go to items and really all
of Texas.
Speaker 2: Okay, so have you there really pretty ones to Dayaniel.
Speaker 1: Well, I just always go early in the morning.
Speaker 2: You see, say when did they open?
Speaker 1: They open at ten thirty in the morning. Yeah, so
if you if you walk in at ten thirty, you
get a fresh, hot, juicy pork chop right off of there. Now,
the other thing, too is you'll get a fresh, hot
and juicy brisket right off of there. They serve it,
they cook it screaming hot, and they serve it screaming
hot too, So I mean it's when they're slicing into it,
you see all that that all the steam coming off
of it. And you know, for me, if I'm if
I'm getting a lot of things at Christ's Market, when
I sit down, especially with the group, I'm like, Okay,
eat the brisket first, right because it's just sitting there,
it's still cooking. It's it's losing a lot of its
moisture right now. But one of the things that I
thought was kind of funny or at least surprising, was
that I opened up an editorial from the local paper,
from the Lockhart paper, and I thought that he was
just gonna lambased you, like, here's here's my chance to
get back at the Austin Food critic. And he basically
said a lot of things that we're saying right now.
He said that he doesn't see Lockhart primarily as a
brisket town. He would think sausage and pork chops, even
the prime rib or something that is more identified there.
And I mean, really his criticisms of you, maybe this
is like a vast media conspiracy here, right, all the
food journalists here are banding together. But he didn't really
have a whole lot critical about what you had to
say about Lockhart brisket. What what's the sort of response
you've gotten from the general public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was a nice one. He had
a couple self effacing jokes in there, and he had
a couple of good, you know, kind of hacky newspaper quips,
and you know, I think he agreed with some of it.
He also has just said, you know, it's a matter
of perspective, and he'd pointed out the things that certain
places are better at than others. I thought it was
I thought it was a nice column. You know, I
would you know, I say this, I know that there's
going to be a lot of people that say, well,
let me send you an email and tell you what
I think. But the people that did email and call,
I mean, besides the Chamber of Commerce president and besides
the mayor, there was one other guy who had a
lot of colorful language for me. But you know, I
think I got about seventy five or eighty emails and
phone calls, and about ninety five percent of them agreed
with me. And you know, and I wasn't looking for that.
I you know, I was almost kind of surprised, thinking, well,
you know, I didn't mean to kick somebody while they
were down, not that not that they're down but I
was like, oh, I guess a lot of people already
felt this way. And you know, I had people thank
me publicly and privately for colin something out because I
think people go out of their way to go down
there still and they've had some bad experiences. And again, like,
you know, you went down there about a week after
I did and posted a picture of that pork shop,
which looked amazing, and I'm sure it was great, and
I'm just busting chops. I'm sure it wasn't just because
it was you, And so I'm not saying there's not
a reason for people to go down there. It was
more of a I'm having to reconsider my relationship with
Lockhart and where I placed it in my head versus
what I've been experiencing lately.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Some of the harder criticism I heard, which wasn't that
terrible or personal, was I heard a couple pit masters,
I think they are, you know, barbecue cooks on a
different podcast because somebody sent it to me and they
were upset and thought that I was disrespectful because I
wasn't appreciating the history of the place, and you know,
they did just recognize that, you know, it's just one
person's opinion, which I recognize as well, but I think
they took more umbrage with the fact that maybe I
didn't appreciate the history of it and the amount of
work that goes into something like that, And you know
I do, but you still, you still got to say
what you've got to say. And you know I've got
a question for you. I mean, you eat everywhere, and
you eat regular food besides barbecue. I don't know that
that kind of barbecue, which is about community, it's about
preserving meat to some degree, it's about coming up with
ways to make off cuts better. It's about a place
where people gather on weekends to eat. It's about fourteen
dollars a pound meat, not twenty five dollars a pound.
Twenty dollars a pound meat. I don't know that it
necessarily holds up to critical scrutiny the way you know
a four star restaurant does necessarily well.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of that has to go
I would agree with you there, and I think a
lot of it has to do with you can't go
to Lockhart, especially for the first time, and not be
in complete all.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: You walk into a spot like Smitty's. You walk past
those huge brick pits, you go into Krit's market and
you meet Roy Perez, and I mean, if you're lucky
that day and they're not too busy, he might even,
like he did for me, ask my son to come
back and like help him cut a piece of brisket.
Like these are things that aren't about how good the
barbecue is. But in a lot of people's experience, they're
not going in looking that critically at the barbecue. They're
going in looking at the full experience. And it's hard
to get an experience like that outside of Lockhart. Now
when you switch and change to your strictly your critics
hat and go down, and it's hard to strip all
that away, but you have to. You know, you've got
to try and get that all out of your mind.
That the fact that Krit's has been opened since nineteen hundred,
and you know the fact that they've been on all
these lists. Trying to strip that away is kind of tough.
And so I guess that's what you had to go do,
is try and get all of that out of your
mind and just simply say, okay, side by side by,
side by side, how are these briskets performing, and I
mean I think your conclusion was you thought you were
going to get this really clear ranking of which one
was best. But they were all just sort of okay, yeah,
you know, and some of them bad.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Smitty's and Chishem Trail weren't weren't very good.
Blacks was actually decent. The smoke taste, to me, I
just didn't sit well with me. And and Christ was
I think the best of the four, uh, but quite greasy,
you know. And I do acknowledge and appreciate the history
and and the esthetic and the scene when you go
down there, and you know, I've taken my nephews, I've
taken girlfriends in the past, I took I think I
took my wife once, you know, the press ten ceiling
at Smitty's and that fire pit, as you say, and
getting some Bluebelt ice cream afterwards, and walking over by
the courthouse. You know, every time I walk through that
that county square, I go over to the little real
estate office and just look at, you know, the property
values in Lockhart and dream of what it would be
like to move down there and have a house for
a fifth of the cost of Austin. But I don't
know that that that they'd let me do that anymore.
Speaker 1: You don't even know if you'd be welcome to be
a homeowner within Lockhart, right. Oh boy, Well, so do
you think that it's time for places like, you know,
these legendary places to start to start evolving.
Speaker 2: No, I think just do what you do. You know,
like you said, the pork shop was good. I did
have some, really, you know. I had some not good
sausage at Smitty's and I had some okay sausage at
Crites recently. But your pork shop was great. The beef
rib I had at Blacks was great. You know, again,
you're not going down to these places because they're the
top ten barbecue places in Texas. You're going down for
the history, for the fact that they're all right there,
for the quaint field of the small town, for the nostalgia,
for the esthetic, just for getting in touch with those roots.
You know, there's not a lot of people taking Instagram
photos at these restaurants, thank god, So you know, they
should just do what they do. And as roy Pres said,
people keep showing up and lining up outside the door
when we open, and so more power to them. I
don't I don't think that they should try and do
big city barbecue. I mean, they do what they do,
and they do it as well as they need to
do it, and they do it the way they want
to do it. And I think that's the biggest thing
is that's they cook the way they want to cook,
and they're they're okay with it, and they're happy with it,
and they should be proud of it. And I don't
think trying to replicate the sausages at Mickelthwaite, or the
tacos at Valentina's or the brisket at Franklin is going
to do anybody any good.
Speaker 1: Now, I did go down a week after you wrote
the article, and I went into Christ's Market to eat
there and talk with the owner, talk with Roy, and
when I sat down with Keith Schmidt, certainly your article
came up, but my main reason for being there was
to look at the ways in which they have evolved.
I know, I know people like to go down there
and they like to think that it's always been that way.
And now I wrote about the barbecue sauce at Krit's,
which after over one hundred years, they had never served
barbecue sauce. And I wrote specifically about the fact that
they now serve that sauce and they have forks, which
changed a big part of their identity. But I would
argue that the other thing that I ate there showed
a lot more about the evolution of Christ's market than anything,
and that was the fact that they had pork billy
burnt ends on the menu.
Speaker 2: No I didn't. I don't think I saw that.
Speaker 1: Now you can argue that, okay, Chrits should have kept
the no sauce, no forks policy just for posterity, like
they just should have stuck to their guns and damned
the yelpers.
Speaker 2: But do yelpers get upset about that?
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean yelpers, customers, customers who were coming in.
They said that they had they had to throw people
out because some of the arguments got so they just
got so loud.
Speaker 2: So why do people care so much about adding for
besides just now tradition sauce.
Speaker 1: Before they added sauce and forks.
Speaker 2: Oh, they were mad that they weren't going ahead.
Speaker 1: People who were yelling like, what am I an animal?
I'm gonna you expect me to just eat with my hands?
Speaker 2: Idiots?
Speaker 1: You know, where's the barbecue? Sauce. So they did, they
acquiesced and just went ahead and they added sauce. There's
no longer any barbecue joint in Texas anymore that does
not serve barbecue sauce. They were the sort of loan holdout.
But again I think that it's the pork belly burn
in say a lot more about the fact of how
willing Christ's market is to evolve into a sort of
more modern barbecue menu. That to me was a lot
more jarring than the fact that they now offer a
sauce on the side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's very interesting. I mean, if they
started doing lamb belly bond me the only No. Things
have really gone sideways. But I mean, I think it's
completely their prerogative. They've earned it after decades and decades
are a century now to do what they want. I
would have totally understood if they never added forks or sauce.
But if he felt he was getting the heat from
customers and it was easier to acquiesce than not, than
you know, I can't blame him for that. Nobody wants
to listen to angry customers and yelpers, and you know,
the customer is generally right, or you want them to
be happy anyways, But I think it's interesting that they've
added these pork belly Brennan's. I'd see'd be curious to
see what I mean, where do you think they would
go next? Like, what do you see them doing, you know,
other cuts of meat and other preparations the way like
somebody at Leroy and Lewis does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think maybe looking towards other cuts of meat.
I doubt they'll ever change the way that they the
way that they cook cotton fast and they do. I
think maybe adding other menu items might be the direction
they go.
Speaker 2: Do krist Smith as far as you know, do Kriste,
Smitty Blacks and chisholm All smoke brisket for the same
length at time.
Speaker 1: No, Krits and Smitty's are the two that they really
do the hot and fast, like four hours, four to
five hours they get a brisket done. Yeah, yeah, it
Black's barbecue. They started in a in a gas fired rotisserie.
It cooks a half to two thirds of the way through,
they chill it down and then it goes onto that
the old brick pit that they've got in the back.
So if you take a tour. You'll see that brick
pit with the briskets on there, so that's where they
finish everything. They get the last dose of smoke on there.
Speaker 2: How long has Krit's been doing that pickling bar that
they have there in the main dining hall.
Speaker 1: That's a good question, because I think that's a.
Speaker 2: Cool like I don't remember that from ten to fifteen
years ago, and little small innovations like that I like
a lot, because that's not changing what you do with barbecue,
is just kind of supplementing it with things on the
side because I love all that acid and tang kind
of getting into the smoky meat.
Speaker 1: I just really like the fact that they take credit cards. Now,
oh yeah, smitty' smitty still does not know they must
make a killing off of that atm over there. Now,
this might sound a little far fetched, but I think
I think if you look at your article the points
that it makes, I think maybe some far off time,
some food historian and the future is going to look
back at this article and see it as something that
does mark a change or a transition in Texas barbecues,
something about the transformation of Texas barbecue from looking only
at its roots, looking only at the legendary places of
being infallible to you know, maybe more of a shift
to the newer way that things are being cooked for
those future food historians. At this point, could you offer
any guesses to where Texas barbecue itself might go from here?
Speaker 2: Hello, future food historians. You know, I went recently to Whitfields,
which is a trailer owned by Casey Studdard and chef
Josh Josh Watkins down at Brody Lane in South Austin,
Deep South Austin.
Speaker 1: He used to be in there where Valentine Is used
to be.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And so there's there's a there's a there's a
strip mall going up there and they're going to have
a standalone brick and mortar building. So I don't know
if we're breaking any news here, but it's partially owned
by Casey Stuttard, who's a former longworn and Josh Watkins,
who's a chef, And it was my buddy when we
were eating there the other day, said, boy, you don't
need a chef to cook barbecue, but it sure doesn't hurt.
And what he meant was besides the level of quality
of meat that they were using, because they don't I
don't know if Jeff, I don't know if Josh smokes it.
They have a veteran of Valentina's down there, but they
were doing all these side dishes. They had a slaw made.
It was like an Indian curry slaw and they roast
and toast all their own spices and then grind them
up for this real you know, electric curry flavor. And
they pickle strawberries and they char and pickle broccoli and vinegar,
and so you've got those kind of innovations are what
can we do to compliment the food.
Speaker 1: But still serve pickles and slaw?
Speaker 2: But still serve pickles and slaw. And it's just I
don't know, you know than I do the different ways
you might approach smoking. I mean, I think what Evan
Leroy does with his beef cheeks with the process. I
think he calm fees them and then smokes them, then
finishes them on the grill or something. So I mean,
I think things like that are going to push the game.
I think coming up with these complimentary flavors besides just
deal pickles and white onions can help evolve the game.
I think desserts can can change the game and make
it a more well, well rounded meal. I mean it's again,
if you go back when we talk about what barbecue
meals are for and what they mean to the community
and the place that they hold in people's lives, people
weren't going down thinking, oh, I hope we get some
homemade buttermilk pie to go with this. You know, it's
just give me my basic banana pudding with a nail
a wafer on top. And that's fine. But I think
you're taking and you know, it's always you gotta be
careful talking in these terms, but you're taking a humble
food product and you're kind of you know, to some degree,
you're elevating it. You're making it fanci er, You're making
it more thoughtful, you're making it more evolved, you're making
it more complex.
Speaker 1: And sometimes just having some fun with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, because I mean it's got to be a
grind and it's got to be boring. I know that
you talk to these barbecue cooks and every cook is different,
and every pit's different, and every piece of meat is different,
and every fire is different and the wind changes every day,
so there are variables. But you once you get it dialed,
you you're kind of doing the same thing every day,
and that's kind of also, you know, in a set
or something like, that's the beauty of it of you're
doing this repetitive thing over and over and you're.
Speaker 1: Perfectable to Japanese choken and yeah, just the same process over.
Speaker 2: And over what you sit under a tree, right, And
so that would be you know, I understand that kind
of philosophical interest behind it, but I think making it
more dynamic and giving it more variables and more complexity
couldn't hurt, you know. But you know, I'm not going
to begrudge anybody if they want to keep doing it
the way they're doing it and serving it. I mean
that it's one of the great foods that you could
argue you don't jack with because this is how we've
always eaten it and this is how we like it.
I got into a big text battle the other day
with a group of buddies because I went to Via
three one three Pizza and got a pizza with pineapple
and ham and bacon on it. Because i'd seen Francis
Lamb from the Splendid Table arguing with somebody on Twitter
about why that makes sense, and he said, you know,
the thing we love about tomato sauce is the sweetness
and the acid, and you find that in tomato and
pineapple apple as well, So it makes great sense. And look,
I'll never all I've lived in Italy. I love pizza.
I love New York pizza. I understand people freaking out
about putting pineapple on pizza. I won't put chicken on pizza.
But you know, there's some things that people think shouldn't
be messed with, either because that's how we've always done it,
or because that's how it should be. And now, you know,
I think barbecue has been around longer than pizza and
America's been around, so it's probably got more reason to
not be messed with in pizza. So if people want
to do it the way they do it and serve
it with white bread or crackers and pickles and onions,
then far be it from some big city critic to
tell them how to live their lives.
Speaker 1: Well, I think just looking at it statewide and eating
barbecue all over the country as well. The only thing
that stay is constant about barbecue is that it's always changing.
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always there's always innovation happening. There's always
changes in procedures different individual restaurants, whether they be new
ones or ones that have been around forever.
Speaker 2: So, but do you think that was true thirty and
forty years ago. Do you think barbecue in nineteen sixty
eight changed that much to nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: I think so, because I think just the way that
we share information now, I mean, pork belly burn In
isn't going to make its way to Lockhart from you know,
the originator Heim Barbecue and Fort Worth that quickly unless
you start sharing it on Instagram or start sharing it
on other social media channels, and you know, it starts
to pick up steam. And now you can find pork
belly burn In's a whole ton of barbecue joints around Texas.
Which that's that's only something that's been within the last
couple of years.
Speaker 2: Right, So what I think, So you agree and that
from the middle of the twentieth century it wasn't changing
and evolving that much.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think the I think we were. I
think we had such distinct styles, such distinct regional styles
and micro regional styles because all these different pitmasters were
learning from the same people or the same group of
people and ideas weren't really spreading so much is staying
insulated within a community. So that helped foster a specific
style of barbecue in that community or maybe within a
few cities over. And now we have the ability to
share information in a way that makes those styles spread rapidly,
so that I mean, you could see just the people
setting up thousand gallons smokers in California doing Texas style
barbecue just like they do it here. You know, that
sort of evolution wouldn't have happened in those days without
somebody literally leaving Texas who knew how to cook that
style of barbecue and going to California and making it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I mean, if you look at fine dining
in the sixties in New York City, it was all
French and stodgy French food. And that's not what dining
fine or otherwise looks like today in America. So barbecue
is falling in line with other cuisines and that it's
finally evolving instead of just having its place rooted in
the community and that's what people know and go to.
It's you know the fact that these guys were these
kind of country barbecue cooks were on a podcast talking
about you know, a guy coming from Austin and being
critical of their barbecue or holding it to a certain scrutiny.
It's like, well, podcasts and blogs and everybody obsessing over
barbecue is part of what's changed this thing, because before
it was just the way people ate and it wasn't
something to be critiqued and considered. It was a way
to you know, preserve meat. It was a way to
feed your family. It was a way to feed a
community literally and physically. And so now that it's becoming
like these other cuisines of America and of the world,
you know, people are just thinking about it differently. They're
thinking about all sorts of food differently. You know, they
think about tie food differently in America. So, you know,
I think it's become there's a consequence of that in
there as well. Well.
Speaker 1: I think we could go on about this for a
long time, but I got a smoke brisket bond me
from Brotherson's Barbecue to get back to. If that tells
you anything about the transformation of Texas barbecue, it sounds good. Yes, indeed,
Well thanks for coming on, Matthew.
Speaker 2: Odem Thanks about always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, I look forward to more barbecue meals with
you in the future.
Speaker 2: Me too.
Speaker 1: And now let's talk about YETI built for the water.
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been listening to Fire and Smoke Texas Monthly's Barbecue podcast.
I'm Daniel Vaughn working with producer Brian Standleford, and I'll
see you out there on the barbecue trail.