Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Vaughn, Barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and this
is Fire and Smoke, the Texas Monthly Barbecue podcast, brought
to you by YETI. Well, it's that time of year again.
A Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival is coming up this weekend.
We've got events on Saturday. Both of those are sold
out at the Q Course at styles Switch and Franklin
and Friends Dinner at the Franklin Barbecue. We wanted to
have a little conversation with one of the pitmasters who's
going to be part of the festival, Miguel Vidal of
Valentina's text mex Barbecue. He's going to be out there
with twenty nine of the best barbecue pit masters the
state has to offer, serving their best dishes to anybody
who wants to walk by a table and grab a dish.
Here's Miguel Vidall, Hello, how's it going?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: How are you dealing with this whole boiling water thing?
And got a problem here in Austin.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just telling some of my guys earlier today.
We were kind of talking about this issue. It hasn't
really affected us too much because as you guys know
we or if you don't know, we operate out of
a series of food trucks creating a compound down in
South Austin, and so having minimal water and working with
you know, three compartment sinks and and maybe some sort
of water issues once in a while, is no, nothing
new to us.
Speaker 1: So well, and I guess you're cooking barbecue all the
time and in the smokers, you don't need any water
to operate those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, non non necessarily need any water. And you know
we boiling water to make our pental beans or to
get the water hot for our massa for the tortillas
is not really a big deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so masa for your tortillas. So you must be
making your own down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we make our own, so we have to, you know,
get that water nice and hot and mix it all in.
We make our flour right now. We do make corn
from time to time, but not always in this mostly
just a spacing issue at the moment. Once we finally
get this restaurant up and running.
Speaker 1: One day, the restaurant up and running, well, let's before
we get to the restaurant, let's go back to where
you started and when you.
Speaker 3: Started we started back in twenty thirteen. We opened up
behind the Star Bar on West sixth Street in February,
and that was pretty daunting because it was about it
was the weekend of Valentine's Day. It was Valentine's weekend,
and it was two weeks before south By Southwest, and
I opened up, you know, just like guns blazing. I
was all on fire, like we're gonna go tear this up.
I'm gonna show people what text next barbeque is. We
got our butts kicked and hand it to us that
week and I was running out checking fires with the
two little baby pits we had at the time and
cutting and slicing mean and rolling tortillas by hand, and
I had to call for reinforcements. So I reached back
and my mom she came up and help us.
Speaker 2: Rose, your mom helps you. Oh yeah, you had to call.
Speaker 3: We got the familia involved, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well you told me at one point that you make
great tortillas, but your tortillas aren't never going to be
as good as what your mom made.
Speaker 3: It doesn'll never be as good as my mom's. Uh,
you know, they come pretty close, but there's just something
about my mom can have like a three or four
day tortillas sitting on the counter. I could go eat
it and it tastes fresh. No, I don't know what
it is. It must be the oils in the hands
or something.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: And so you you made me weren't so successful that
first week or whatever, but you certainly turned Valentinas into
something quite successful on Sixth Street.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I had actually run a restaurant down
there for quite some time. It was called ran Sticks
one six. So I thought that my you know, my
experience and the opportunities that were presented to me at
rand Chicks one six helped out significantly. I had been
in that neighborhood for many years, and I think that
when we opened up Valentina's there was kind of like
that anticipation to see if I was gonna come through
with what I had been talking about, and that was
really There was a lot of support from the local
businesses around, from the bars around us, and people that
would frequent the area. And I think the biggest key
to the success was us knowing that, you know, I
had a really great team as far as my brother
was around, and my wife is a really big part
of our business, and my family would help out. But
the dedication that we put in from the very beginning,
and us going and knowing that it was going to
be eighteen twenty one hour days and people seeing us
around the clock smoking barbecue in the middle of downtown
in the alley between the Rato N and Star War,
I think that that had a big part of our
success or white people would flock to us to try
our food, and you know, not just the small little,
you know, reputation I had in the neighborhood from running
ran Hicks one six, But I think the combination of
things kind of helped helped out well.
Speaker 1: And the fact too that you had this the sign
on the side of the trailer that was text Mes Barbecue,
which back in twenty thirteen that didn't mean a whole
lot to anybody. Nobody knew quite what that what that
term meant, or what that meant for the sort of
barbecue you were going to be putting out. What does
it mean to you when you open it up and
you use that name.
Speaker 3: Well, that was kind of a when I was working
at rand Hicks one six. Throughout the many years, I
was always you know, working closely with my cousin who
was a chef and helping create dishes or having ideas
for it. But I was always going back home and
doing my own thing, and I would go back to
my parents' house and the same thing my dad was.
My dad has barbecued or grew my whole life. I've
always been around it, and so I have my uncles
and my grandfather's and whatnot. But the initial idea for
Valentino's was to have a smaller restaurant that was full
service with servers and whatnot, and using the elements of
smoke and fire in my childhood of barbecue, and mostly
trying to elevate San Antonio style or I guess a
text Mex style of cooking. I guess an example of
that would be having feedale, which is a dish I
grew up on eating, which is I used to say
vermicelling noodles for the longest time, and I was corrected,
like about five years ago. Its vermicelli. I guess that's
what happens to grow up on the south side of
San Antonio. But so this dish classically at home is
you know, either chattle beans or rewrite beans with with
the brown Vermonicillian noodles brown the with butter, and then
we create a broth that has this Spanish rice or
Mexican rice type flavor, and the noodles are dropped in
the broth and it's served sometimes a little soupy, sometimes
it's a little thicker. It's depending on the preference of
whoever's cooking it, but always with like a gutta nipeak,
other a beef piccadillo and beans and side of tortillas.
So the idea initially Valentinos was stemmed around dishes like that,
and I wanted to elevate those and do like tricolored
roasted potatoes with the video and have smoked tenor loins
sliced off on top with fannoln avocado and some pickled
veggies or onions or something to go along with it.
Maybe taking the idea of having a sixteen hour brisket
that was sliced up on top of enchiladas.
Speaker 1: So taking all these comfort foods from your childhood, from
your home in San Antonio and adding a layer of
smoke to.
Speaker 3: It, in the layer of smoke and fire and really
kind of you know, infusing those together and elevating the
Mexican food that I grew up eating.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't about sort of starting with starting with
barbecue like smoke brisket or ribs, and trying to figure
out how to provide a textmex flavor to it. No,
you were starting with the text mech side of what
you grew up with and adding the barbecue and.
Speaker 3: Adding to it and adding the barbecue because barbecue is
something that's always been around. But I wanted to really
emphasize the Mexican dishes I guess that we were doing.
But I had gotten carried away a little bit, like
how's that like the dishes were ever getting too complex?
You know what I mean? I was like, I was
kind of you know, I had just like put everything
together and it was it was going to be too much.
And I remember that there's a distinct moment in time
that is very clear memory of how Valentine has became
what it is today. I have a notebook cook all
these different recipes and dishes using you know, having different
like fish entrees and whatnot, and using lamb and goat
and all these things. But I remember going home and
I had gone home for the weekend visit my parents,
and my mom had made rice, beans, some tortillas. She
made some fresh salcea. And you know, my mom never
made what you would think of typical guacamolli, right with
basically onions, tomato, cilantro and torontos mixed in with the avocado.
It was always just some avocado taken out, smashed up
with the fork, a little bit of salt. So that's
what my mom had on the table. And my dad
had made. I remember he'd loved doing half chickens on
the grill. He would grow him. He'd likes some hot
he likes the skin to get a little crispy. Always
used the mesquite wood to fire it up. So he
had some like quarter chicken is what it was, maybe
some country style pork ribs. And he had smoked a brisket.
So I remember going home to this meal which had like,
you know, the true essence of Texas barbecue with the brisket,
and my mom's home cooking and her rice and beans
are to die for, and of course the tortillas. And
we sit down to have dinner, and I just take
a couple of slices off my dad's brisket, put in
a tortilla, get the avocado, my mom made in the salsa,
you know. And as I'm eating a bite of the
country style pork, grab some rice, I eat the taco
and I just look over with my dad and I
was like, this is what it needs to be. He's like,
what are you talking about. I was like, text, mex barbecue, man,
this is what it is. Like, Oh, this is what
you've done for a long time. This is what we've
done for a long time. And other families in Texas,
whether they're from Laredo, l Passeo del Rio, Dallas, Houston, Austin,
I think that the Mexican American culture or the Hano culture,
this is what is naturally being done in the household,
and it's not showcased in restaurants. It's not being presented
this way.
Speaker 1: And it's not about trying to take these ingredients and
turn it into a fancy dish or a complicated dish, right,
It's about taking the most simple versions, the most simple
ingredients that go into these things and just putting them
together in a way that to me seems natural. It's
kind of crazy that what you're doing in twenty what
you were doing in twenty thirteen seem different when it's like, well,
of course these things go together, you know, and not
just taking a slice of brisket and put it in
a taco, but or put it in a good tortilla.
But it's like, these flavors of a salsa to me
go together better with brisket than barbecue sauce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in my opinion though too. I mean
I like a little bit more of the freshness that's
coming with it than rather in a citrus rather than
the vinegar, you know, I like those complimenting the meat
and smoke better. But yeah, it was it was more
stemming from wanting to represent something that I felt would
connect with people across the board, no matter what walk
of life you came from, because when you eat something
that's home cooked and you can present it into a
restaurant setting or a food establishment and you can recreate
those feelings and have that nostalgia, That's what it was about,
because I remember going home and eating and it was
just so comforting to me, and it was very simple,
and my dad was just trying to create the best
brisket he could, while my mom knew she was awesome
at making these tortillas and freez but it wasn't about
her showing off or anything either. It was just her
creating great food for her family, my dad trying to
create something good for all of us to enjoy and
eat well.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that first struck me
about going to eat at Valentinas was that the brisket
that I was eating, the ribs, all the barbecue I
was eating, was all good enough to stand on its own.
It was all fantastic barbecue on its own, when so
often taco barbecue tacos that I'd had in the past
were it was a way to cover up at barbecue.
You know, you put enough stuff on it and it
doesn't really matter how good the brisket was in the
first place.
Speaker 3: That's almost how I felt about when I moved to
Austin in nineteen ninety nine. I kind of felt that
way about the taco scene here. You know, I felt
that people were creating tacos that had so much substance
on them that you weren't really getting the true essence
of like the meat or what was supposed to be
the show stopper inside, right if you got to add
ks on top of it and adding this stuff on
it to like make it better or for your preference,
but I think that each individual ingredient needs to be
able to stand on its own. And when I had
told my dad, like, yeah, text makes barbecue, this is
what Valentina's needs to be, this is what I want
to represent, I decided to strip everything down and think
about barbecue on his own and think about the style
of Mexican food. I grew up eating San Antonio, which
is different from Austin, and it's really similar more I
think to like Laredo del Rio, Apasso type stuff. But
I needed to think about them separately, because the barbecue
did need to stand up, to my opinion, the best
that was around, and the flower tortillas, rice beans and
any of them, you know, the Mexican side of it
didn't necessarily have to meet up stand up to anybody
or anyone in particular, except for what my grandmother and
my mom and my aunts were making.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's a hard act to follow, that rightway.
Speaker 3: Because if anyone want to grows up that way and
they know what Ablita's making, like you have to, like,
you know, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I saw.
Speaker 1: I was down in Mexico City over the last weekend
and I was looking at a at a menu and
somebody was asking me what I wanted, and I was like,
da walita, Like.
Speaker 2: That's what I want.
Speaker 3: Whatever that is, Like, I don't even know what it is,
but that's why.
Speaker 1: If you're putting that on the description of the dish,
that's what I want to try. Well, so you're from
San Antonio. You started this place in downtown Austin, but
you've you've steadily been been drug closer and closer to
San Antonio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I was thinking about going back home.
I think maybe San Antonio might be ready for a
higher price tackles. No, so what is there still?
Speaker 1: Like the is the prevailing idea that taco should be cheap?
Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of like I was just hanging out
with some of the guys that are some of the
best at the in the business at Whole Halt Cooking,
you know, I was with Sam Jones and and Michael
and stuff, and uh, the idea of creating a dish
because it's for the people or it's kind of like this,
you know, kind of blue collar type cuisine and then
charging a lot for it. That's some people kind of like,
what are you doing, you know, And they talked about
that with their with their whole hogs where they charged
six dollars and seventy and sense for a whohawk sandwich
with coast law.
Speaker 2: And people still think it's too expensive.
Speaker 3: And anything it's too expensive, they want it for three
fifty nine or whatever. So the idea of like a tackle.
In the beginning, my dad looked at me like I
was crazy too, Like you're going to charge five dollars
for a brisket tackle. I was like, who's going to
want to pay for that? I mean, you know. But
the idea of like being able to sell it in Austin,
I think where people want. They want to see the
hard work. They want to see and know where you're
getting your meat from. They want to know that everything's
being handcrafted, handmade or made.
Speaker 2: Fresh, and all that stuff costs money.
Speaker 3: And all that stuff costs money. And in the beginning
some people did kind of be like, that's pretty expensive
for a tackle. But I've always been on the side
where I'm not in it for the money. I'm in
it for the love of the food and wanting to
share what I can do, and so I'm going to
charge what I need to make money and put back
into the business so we can be sustainable. Right, But
at the same time, I'm not going to like caamp
on meat and give you an ounce of meat and
some MENI tortilla like, we're gonna make it worth a while.
So we were, you know, putting close to quarter about
a quarter pounds of meat in the tacos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, don't tell me how much of Valentino's
taco was worth until you eat it.
Speaker 3: Right, And it's like I was, we were training some new
people earlier this morning, and I was telling into It's like,
you know, there's anywhere from twenty four up to thirty
six hours of like preparation before that taco is served.
You know, we get the meat in, we trim the meat,
we let it. We we trim a whole day before
we're seasoning it. In the morning, it's going on the pits.
It's going for about fourteen to sixteen hours. Then it's
resting for another about six hours or so, and then
we slice the brisket and then there's another We start
making the dough for the tortillas like at midnight, and
it rests. We start rolling them out at three in
the morning because.
Speaker 1: Those tortillas can't just be ready for lunch because you're
serving breakfast right then lunch and dinner.
Speaker 3: Right we serve three times a day. We try and
you know, I'm comfortable with running out of like some
staple items, but we are cooking around the clock to
ensure that we can serve three times a day. Because
I come from a restaurant background, not barbecue, I guess,
you know, as far as restaurant experience goes, and I
want to operate like a restaurant, not like a barbecue joint.
Speaker 2: Well, to do that, you need a building right where.
Speaker 3: We're working on it. But we've created this awesome hybrid
right now. So what did you just call it? Your
our compound, your compound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you got the covered dining area and a
couple of trailers. Yeah, but you've got this building that
they all surround.
Speaker 3: So the building has been quite undertaking. You know. I've
helped and assisted and kind of been like a project
manager or whatever with another restaurant, like seeing some renovations
and stuff go through, but I've never taken this on
completely on my own. When we moved to South Austin
the area, Travis County when we moved to the Minchaka location,
and briefly after moving there, it had gotten annexed by
City of Austin, so that had, you know, post some
problems for us to where we had to go through
the whole zoning process all over again. There was no zoning,
and that took about nine months or so.
Speaker 2: Nine months of you just sitting there looking at the building,
just waiting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that took roughly nine months. It's been a
year and a half since we've been down there. I
think right now we are in a good spot. There
is some light at the end of the tunnel, and
we actually probably have I think have a meeting on
Monday to see exactly where we're at.
Speaker 1: Okay, So any idea where we when we might expect
to see I got a grand.
Speaker 3: Opening date chosen yet, no grand opening day, but I
hopefully anticipate like breaking ground on building in the next
like three months.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I'm sure your employees got to be looking
forward to.
Speaker 3: These guys are tough, man, I can't I you know,
we have a good core group of people. We have
about thirty employees right now, I'd say seventy five percent.
Speaker 2: That is quite a compound.
Speaker 3: That is quite a compound. It's about seventy five percent
of those employees have stuck around for a year plus.
We do have a rotation of some people that come
in and out, but that's the nature of the business,
and I think it's a little extra hard working at
Valentino's when summer hits and getting used to that heat.
We try and do everything we can to make our
guys comfortable. You know, we have deliveries of bottled waters
coming in for the gator rades, and you know, we
try and take care of our guys much as we can.
But the crew down there is, uh, there's some hard
workers and there's a lot of young kids that are
working for us now and they do a really great job.
Speaker 1: Now, you you do the text mix barbecue, But the
last time I was in, I had this sandwich called
Lorena the Queen.
Speaker 3: The Queen, and that's because beef is king in Texas.
Speaker 1: Beef is king, so the pork is queen. Well, so
where did the inspiration for that dish come from?
Speaker 2: Because it wasn't San Antonio, right.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't san Antonio. So my son plays with
the Barcelona Academy team here, and this past summer he
had the opportunity to go to Barcelona and train for
about two and a half to three weeks or so,
so we decided to make a family trip out of it.
You know, my son and I left first, so I
was in Spain by myself for about three or four
days before my wife and daughter joined us.
Speaker 2: But he was on the soccer field.
Speaker 3: He was on a soccer field, so I was able
to see him, you know, I watched I was able
to watch him practice and maybe have a quick like
evening dinner with him for about forty five minutes or
so during some of the weeks, but for the most
time he was with the soccer team, so I was
able to really just get out and walk around and
enjoy the city and just take everything in. I knew
right away though, once I landed the first thing I
was gonna get with some harmony medical and that was
a fact, Like that was That's exactly what I was
shooting for, you know, because.
Speaker 2: That stuff is so expensive here.
Speaker 3: It's so expensive. I mean, I feel I think it
was like one hundred and thirty bucks a pound or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably, so it's about two hundred dollars a pound
at a store that I go to in Dallas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe maybe it was a little bit more.
But the Central Market used to carry it, but I
don't know if they always do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you're if you're in Spain, I mean
it's like, I mean, it's like as common as uh
as as honey here.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's everywhere.
Speaker 3: It's everywhere, and even like the fast food versions of it,
Like there's companies that kind of put it in a
cone you can just pick it up and walk away,
and that even that's really good. But I had tried
Harmony Medical almost every place I went to, because there's
these little sandwich shops serving you know, the bocadios, the
Spanish sandwiches and whatnot, like on every corner, and you
can get coffee and get some pastries and get the sandwich.
And it was, you know, the most common one or
the easiest one to grab. The one that I was
eating quite a bit had a fresh tomato paste that
was made of was like olive oil and just like
some fresh tomatoes, and that was spread onto like a
baguette and the hormone was shaved off onto it. So
you would just grab that sandwich and I keep on
walking the snack on that and uh, the whole time there,
I'm just like thinking trying different foods all the top
of us, the gambas and whatnot, and you know, I
just I love that hormon and uh, I wanted to
recreate that dish, but give it a Texas spin. You know,
of course everything is bigger in Texas, so I wasn't
gonna have the little bag yet with some little shade pieces.
Speaker 2: No thin down.
Speaker 3: So before we had traveled to Spain, I had gotten
one of my childhood friends I grew up with on
the south side of San Antonio since like the age
of like five. He's a broker for a particular food business,
and he had brought these pork colors in and I
love them because they're like, you know, four by four
inches or whatever. They're pretty, they're fairly small, and I
think you can get like the fattiness almost of almost
like a pork belly type deal in them, but there's
also some the leanness of like a pork loin, and
it comes out tasting like this really awesome ham when
it's cooked properly. And I had got those in before
I left, and I had cooked them up a little
bit and just eating them on their own. And so
when I got to Spain and was eating the Harmony
vehicle there, I kind of almost instantly knew what I
wanted to do with the pork collars. And growing up
in San Antonio, you know, my grandmother always had Boleo bread,
or if you guys don't know, bolio bread. It's almost
like a Mexican kind of French bread, is a little
bit shorter. You use it for tortas and whatnot. But
my grandmother always made boleo bread and with her manudal,
you know, or would make like breakfast sandwiches on it.
I wanted to put that pork collar on Boleo bread,
and I wanted to make like this Texas grand version
of the bolok ideas I was experiencing in Spain. So
when we got home, there wasn't really any overthinking about anything.
I knew that I wanted to use tomatoes, but I
didn't want to keep them raw and fresh. I wanted
to add smoke to them. And we use a little
bit of our dry up as the seasoning and olive oil.
Speaker 1: And so you're like slicing those tomatoes and smoking them
bright in the smoker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're slicing bread on the smoker and they go
for about twenty minutes. The pork collars are going for
anywhere from about four to six hours. It kind of
depends on which section of the pit they're cooking on.
But we start glazing them with a We just take
our homemade barbecue sae our house barbecue sauce, and we
ad a little bit of honey to it to give
a little sweetness, and we start glazing the pork colors
about hour to hour and a half into the cook
and we pull those off roughly about four and a
half five hours, and they rest for about, you know,
twenty minutes or so, and we start to slice them
up and we get them ready for service. And this
is only done on Saturday and Sundays, but pork colors
come off sliced up, and what we'll do is we'll
hit them on that flat top for each sandwich and
we'll put very healthy portions of the of the pork
collar about three or four lice fat slices. But before
we do that, we toast off the bilio bread with
butter and we make like this kind of very kind
of a chunky onion paste with white onions that we
cook down for about three and a half hours and
we just take.
Speaker 2: A slow cooking everything.
Speaker 3: So cook it and take a little smasher and we
just smash them up and we just kind of create
this pace that goes onto uh this, and we spread
it onto the bilio bread. Then we place support collars
on top after they come off off the flat top
and we hit we top it off with the smoked
tomatoes and a little bit more drizzle of the honey
barbecue sauce.
Speaker 2: And then served open face.
Speaker 3: Served open faces.
Speaker 2: I want another one right now.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll be doing that the Texas Monthly Barbecue Fest.
We'll be doing small bite sized versions of that sandwich.
Speaker 1: Well that is good news, yeah for anybody who doesn't know.
So Valentinos will be there along with twenty nine other
pit masters at the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival coming up
November fourth. Tickets are still available. And you're you're not
just cooking that though, right? I think you told me
a rumor of maybe some barbico.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna be doing barba CoA that day, So
we'll be using all cheek meat in the very beginning
of are of us serving the bottabaclea every Sunday. We
were using whole heads and he took up a lot
of room on my smoke.
Speaker 2: That would be so cheek meat versus an entire cow skull.
Speaker 3: And we couldn't produce like we were running out like
in an hour, so we started we switched over to
cheek meat and it usually lasts about three or four
o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: Now, well, that's something I'm seeing a lot more now.
Like cheek meat was, cheek meat was always kind of
just basically put off to the side just for just
for barbaco. It usually steamed at a tac area. But
more and more Texas barbecue joints are now putting that
cheek meat into the smoker, uh and using that almost
as a replacement for brisket.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, I mean there's uh, you know, Evan LeRoy's
doing that quite a bit at his place. And there's
different techniques that you can apply to that. And you know,
the two most basic one would be to treat it
almost like ah, like the like a fat cap of
a brisket. And the other one would be to almost
do like a smoke and braised technique at the same
time in the pit, and I've triggered it like a
brisket before and slice it up. But that's mainly just
for personal type use and for my guys at the restaurant.
I don't think I will serve it that way. I
like serving our bottle Blea col the way I, you know,
grew up eating it. At Valentine's. We try and utilize
the pit to its full potential, and we will use
certain parts of the pits for different things. And we
cook the bottleba coil closer to the fire on the
hotter side so it can once it develops the smoke,
and once it gets the smoke in it, and we
start to flip the cheek meats in this broth that
we make so it's brazing at the same time, and
then we cover it halfway through so it can basically
finish off and steam while it's already been smoked, still
getting a little fire.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And that goes about twelve to thirteen hours on the pits.
Speaker 1: Well, so you know it's those those cheeks are like
Mani fatty briskets. Basically they've got so much gelatin on them.
They're just so incredibly juicy and almost impossible to overcook,
which is starting.
Speaker 2: To make them more popular.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the price increase for those as you're
ordering them these days or is it pretty much holding steady.
Speaker 3: Well, they've been holding steady for us. We have a
pretty good little deal on them. But man, I've noticed
it shoot out from when I was like I would
I would mess with cheek meat when I was young too,
just as far as cooking as like you know, eighteen
nineteen year olds now. And I remember and even in
twenty thirteen and fourteen going maybe just to a grocery
store and picking out some cheek meat and it was
probably around five dollars a pound then, and that that's
pretty expensive to me, thinking like all those things have
gone up in price, right, skirt steak, oxtails, oxtail skirt steak,
like even even like lingua and stuff like that. All
these things that people were deemed us like scraps and
stuff before, are now you know, being used a lot
more and utilized into barbecue or more cooking in general.
Speaker 1: Well, once they taste these incredible versions of them at
Valentinas and other barbecue joints, so I guess, well, hey,
maybe I could throw it on my own smoker. Yeah,
let's let's just hope for your sake the pork collars
don't start shooting up in price as well.
Speaker 3: Right, those are pretty good to us right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that Lorana sandwich, you might have a you might
have an excuse though, with a name like that, to charge.
Speaker 2: A little premium for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well it is a pretty hefty sandwich. I think
you shared it with three people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: I have to I have to come back and get
one on my own, or I guess I can just
go to the go to the Barbecue Festival and uh
and get my own mini version there as well. And
it's Sunday, so having some smoke barbeco is just appropriate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be perfect. We'll be doing barbacoa mini versions
of La Rena and there might be a surprise or
two in there that won't last long, but we might
bring a few. We always bring a little extra, something something.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I can't wait to see you there
at the festival.
Speaker 1: Thanks for thanks for coming in to talk with us,
and look forward to coming back to Valentine as well
and seeing the brick and mortar as it finally comes together.
Speaker 3: Oh me too. I appreciate you having me. Thank you
very much.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Texas barbecue is built from the ground up, from the
wood to the smoke to the meat. You have to
have the right tools to create a masterpiece on but
your paper.
Speaker 3: Yedti coolers have you covered?
Speaker 2: Built to be indestructible, keep ice for days and keep the.
Speaker 1: Brisket hot for hours. Yetti is built for Texas barbecue.
You've been listening to Fire and Smoke Texas Monthly is
Barbecue podcast. I'm Daniel Vaughn, and I'll see you out
there on the barbecue trail.