- Great Texas barbecue is always gonna be built on the Texas trinity. You should always have great brisket, you should always have great ribs and you should always have great sausage. But if you're going to
evolve in a market as dynamic and as competitive as Austin, you want to be able to
add some fresh elements. So the idea of doing a more
composed plate I think is fun. We serve are mole baby back ribs and we season the back side
with our mole spice blend. So it's got all the classic
ingredients in a mole, just set up as a powdered form and this is definitely one
of those dishes that we're coloring outside the
lines of traditional barbecue. The fact that we're saucing the meat and we're doing a composed
dish automatically lets people know that we're not following
the standard pathway. It's like we're serving a
composed barbecue dish with sauce. You don't sauce your meat in Texas. This is our version of mole. I just think it's better to
always be up front with people if you're taking a little
liberty with the dish. Then just tell them it's like, "Hey, this is our version of mole." It's not traditional. (upbeat music) So, you know when we start our day, 4:00 AM, our morning guy comes in. We usually have a good coal bed from the overnight cook still going. So the idea is to come
in, opening it back up, get the oxygen going back in
there again and then we'll stir up that bed of coals and get
some fresh logs on there. And then immediately
the fire comes back up. So I like logs like this too. We like the bark. It helps build smoke ring. So we're looking for a variety
of wood going in there too, pieces that burn a little bit cleaner and a little bit faster. It's funny enough that door's
become kind of like synonymous with the restaurant. Depending on the weather
and how things are going, sometimes I'll just run
it closed like this, 'cause I just want just a little
bit of air flow coming in. Other times I'll just crack it a touch, 'cause I want to catch,
like maybe the wind's coming from this direction, so
I want to force a little more air in there. It's a trip. We are fire builders at heart. That's what we do. So right now, we're cooking
all of our quick cook stuff. We're talking anything that
can be cooked and served the same day. We have our St. Louis ribs here, so right now we're spritzing the ribs. We'll spritz it with a blend
of a vinegar and Worcestershire and a few other ingredients
and that's one of the things that we look for when we're cooking. That just goes back to my time as a chef. Whenever I add an element to a product, the idea is to add some
sort of layer of flavors. We're gonna close these back up. What I take from my time
running high-end restaurants is just treating it like every day. We're going to come in and do
our best to work as a team, create good camaraderie and
an environment where hopefully everybody on the team you can excel, which means then the food is
even better for the customers. Today we're gonna show you guys how we do our pastrami beef ribs. We get nice super thick stack
chuck ribs or plate ribs. They are brined in a wet brine
to cure them to get to that classic pastrami flavor and
essentially it's what we call a corned beef brine. A lot of these things are very classic and like a corn beef brine. We like adding the
vegetables to it, allspice, the peppercorn, the thyme. All that comes together to create that classic pastrami flavor. These guys have been on brine
for a little bit of time. Warren's going to season them
up with our pastrami rub. So this is Warren. He is also affectionately known as Wardog. He's my right hand man
here at the restaurant. - Call me Warren Peace, the
Warren G, the Regulator. Then all of a sudden it was
Wardog and then that just kind of rolls off the tongue better, I guess. We're gonna spray these
off in the dish pit, Get a little of this off or
it'll tend to get a little salty and there is no salt in the rub. You'd think the fatty part
of the brisket is rich. You get a few chunks of this. You've really got something there. I mean, you just want to want
to curl up and take a nap after eating one of these. It is just a gelatinous
wonderland of richness. Take 'em over here and then
we'll put the rub on 'em. Sometimes it can be a
little isolating here. So I've gotten into some great
conversations with whatever I have on the pit. I greet the briskets went I open up. I'll be like "Hello gentlemen,
how's your evening going?" And sometimes they
actually talk back to me. It depends how long the shift is going. And when the brisket starts talking back then I think it's time to go home. - Beef ribs are a staple in
Texas barbecue restaurants. So how do we approach
that Texas standard item and make it our own? We decided to make it
into a pastrami beef rib. So take this great classic
cut, still smoke it, but apply a different flavor
profile in a different spice blend in order to create kind
of a newer dining experience with the beef rib. Once they get a really nice color, we're going to loosely wrap them in foil. It kind of steams them. We care about the whole menu
from brisket to pickles. Everything matters here. One of the dishes that I
think really sums us up is our smoked scalloped potatoes. So the scalloped potatoes is a dish. It can be called like an au gratin. Basically it's a layered potato dish. So we use a russet potato. Nothing fancy, 'cause it makes
the best scalloped potato. It's russet potatoes, cream, Parmesan, and salt, pepper, garlic. Oddly enough, I think we're more popular for the scalloped potatoes
than probably almost anything. (laughs) People talk about the sides
in equal billing as the meats I think is one of the things
that really sums us up, because we did want to
create a menu where not only was the barbecue great
but the sides were great. Very unceremoniously dump it all in there. This gets finished with a
little bit of Parmesan on top. This helps create a really nice crust, almost like a bark, if you will. People have said that this
dish is about the closest you can get to having vegetarian barbecue, because it's rich and
decadent like brisket and it's got this great
crust and barky exterior when it comes out of the smoker. - That's one of the side dishes
I can just curl up with and just eat it. I mean, I'm like a goldfish with that. I'll just eat it until
I roll over and float. (laughs) When it comes to executing
the classics here, I mean you have to have
your s*** together. You can't serve poor brisket. You have to nail brisket to
be taken serious in this town. - So what is up with these things today? Good Lord. - Wow, that's enormous. - This is like a whole cow. Stay, stay there. Do not move. They'll jump. - Before you do anything,
you gotta make sure that you have your brisket down. It's got to be rock solid. You can't have errors in it. It's gotta be moist and juicy
and tender and flavorful. It's gotta have good bark. - It's time, fellas. Is that what you've been
waiting your whole lives for? I like to put the really
big ones towards the back, and a lot of times we'll go four-breast, but I think we'll do these at three. My ADHD nature does not
like to do repetitive things and while I cook brisket every day, there's something always
seems to be different. At last night's cook I
was out of here by 11:30. Everything went great. The night before, it was raining and I got out of here at one. I was just stressing out
and I just had visions that the whole cook was ruined. We were gonna have to close the next day, because when I'm the
last one touching them, it's still every single day
that just stresses me out. So whenever John rolls
one and cuts into it, I'm always right there going, how was it? How was it? Is it okay? - Briskets look nice, Warren. This is a relaxing moment for me and this is a nerve-wracking
moment for Warren. - Well, I just want them to be good. - It's like Christmas every time, man. Santa brings me brisket. When you do really good
job with the basics, hopefully you've built up
good will with your clientele, because they know well,
"These guys killed on brisket and that special sounds
pretty intriguing." I should give it a try. Well, so we'll run out
of this moist brisket by about one o'clock. The lean is what we judge ourselves on. Like we don't really
worry about the moist side nearly as much. It's the lean side that's
harder to cook right. So when we taste brisket and
determine if we'd like how we're cooking things, we
always taste the lean side, not the fatty side. And that's our goal on a daily basis. Like take care of my business,
making good Texas barbecue. And then when we had the
opportunity to play a little bit outside the lines. - I call this the Enforcer. When the fire's giving me a hard time, I'll fire that sucker up
and it'll certainly change the attitude of the wood. And then, we can go over
here and we can give this a little boost if you want it. - When it comes to
cooking with live fires, it's just a hell of a lot more fun than working in a restaurant. I don't think I could ever
go back to a line situation where tickets were popping
up in some random cave where we're cooking food and
slaving over a hot stove. So it's a much more relaxed
and rewarding style of cooking. We're gonna build our banana cream tart. Idea behind this dessert was
taking a classic barbecue item, like banana pudding and make it our own. So we want to fill the bottom
of this tart shell up with a nice layer of banana,
so you get banana flavor every time you bite into the dessert. We're trying to present
a menu that speaks of classic Texas barbecue from
a chef's point of view. Because of my background running high-end American fine dining
restaurants in the past, whenever I cook anything
I'm just leaning on my past experience and knowledge. To top it off with dulce de leche. And this is an ingredient from
my childhood in South Texas and that is our banana cream tart. I think people really enjoy it. I tell them that this is a handheld, so you go in tostada-style
and you just crush it. It's not a fork and knife dish. It's a lot more fun if you
eat it with your hands. - All right, guys, you
know what time it is? It's about 10 o'clock, so we want to be out of here by 10:30. You think you can do that? Give these ribs about 10 more
minutes and wrap them back up and they'll bring them in. - These are our St. Louis ribs. St. Louis rib is similar to a spare rib. However, a full spare
rib is gonna be bigger and a little bit wider. It's gonna have thinner
sections where the meat runs off and St. Louis is basically a
trimmed out section of that. So it's a slightly nicer cut
versus the whole spare rib. This is actually my
favorite time of the day when all the moving pieces
finally come together and we can just sit back
and enjoy a lunch service. How's it going, guys? - Pretty good. - What can I do for you today? There's a ton of great barbecue
restaurants that are run by guys who just, all they've
ever done is cook barbecue. We're coming at this from
the perspective of being restaurant lifers, having
worked in lots of restaurant situations and having lots
of different experiences. Whereas maybe some of the
other guys that we hope to be one day are just all they've
really done is barbecue. When we decided to
switch over to barbecue, a lot of people were like,
"Why are you doing that? We don't need any more barbecue places." For me running the barbecue
place is just as natural as running a fine-dining restaurant. For me, it was a really easy transition, but people were surprised
that we decided to get out of our lane and do
something different. I just love barbecue. (upbeat music)
Best free beans in town!
I just had some of their brisket mac and cheese and was absolutely blown away.
I love this place. Their pork belly is always fantastic too. And if you haven’t tried the smoked scalloped potatoes, you’re missing out!
I live like 3 minutes from here and still haven't tried them yet :((
This is my favorite food in Austin and maybe best BBQ in the state. I used to sneak over here for lunch once a week but haven't been back since the apocalypse started though I'd love to throw them some support. Anyone know if they do curbside?
So good