The State of BBQ: A Texas Monthly Special

-What does it take to be Texas Monthly's barbecue editor?

I have been to over 2,500 barbecue joints in just about every community in Texas.

About 50 a month is about what I can do.

I eat so much barbecue.

It takes intestinal fortitude.

[ Coughs ] What was that?

No.

You're fine.

You're fine.

[ Chuckles ] Texas barbecue is expanding.

We're using different immigrant cuisines and using smoked meats as a way to tell our story.

Being able to get the stories of each one of these pitmasters, to really understand what their struggles are, what their personal reward is.

That's why I love doing what I do.

When I started this job, I would write a little bit about the restaurant and the restaurateur and a lot about the food.

I've really switched that because the story of the people is just more interesting.

And the motivations of them to go into this business is what interests me.

-Thank you.

-Kareem has got so many layers to his own story, which makes the article that I wrote about him a lot less about the food at the restaurant than about his journey into Texas barbecue.

I'm Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and I wrote about KG Barbecue.

KG Barbecue is a barbecue food truck in Austin that blends Egyptian cuisine with traditional Texas barbecue techniques.

[ Chatter ] KG Barbecue is run by Kareem El-Ghayesh.

He is from Cairo, Egypt.

[ Plane engines roar ] The barbecue trailer is popular, but I think Kareem himself is more popular.

-How is everything?

-Delicious.

-Hi...meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Thank you.

-He has become quite a barbecue star.

He's the Egyptian cowboy.

And along with the cowboy hat is that massive smile and mustache.

-Through barbecue and two-stepping, I think I earned my Texanship.

[ Laughs ] Alright.

You know what they say, right?

Brisket is king in Texas.

-When I first listened to Kareem tell his story, it was sort of unbelievable.

He came to Texas really just on a whim to visit.

-I just remember taking my first bite of brisket and my eyes rolling in the back of my head and being just blown away by the experience.

I really think it's magic.

-Kareem loves it and wants to figure out how to cook it.

So he went back to Egypt with the goal of really learning how to cook Texas barbecue.

But the first challenge he found was finding any butcher who knew what a brisket was.

And then the only smoker he could find was a Weber.

So he had to practice on equipment that maybe wasn't so suited for such a big cut of meat.

Working with meat that was much less fatty than we have here in the States.

You know, it could have been pretty demoralizing.

Like, "This doesn't taste anything like what I remember."

And, you know, that might have been the time to quit, to just fold and go back to finance.

Pretty soon, he realized that his future in barbecue needed to be back here in Texas.

So you got this finance guy in Egypt, and he abandons it all.

I mean, he comes to the U.S.

to live the life of a pauper.

-I left a lot behind in Cairo.

You know, that was a really tough move for me.

My family and my friends, my people, my support system is back home.

I questioned my life decisions a lot in the beginning because I left everything behind, earning nothing.

-He was trying to knock on every pit-room door that he could find in Austin to see if somebody would hire him or just let him come work in the pit room for free.

But the doors really kept closing on him.

Kareem was considering going back home, giving up on the dream.

-Without seeing any outcome, my only fuel and my only light was the belief in myself.

-He'd given himself one more weekend to search, and Bill Kerlin of Kerlin Barbecue finally let him in the pit room and let him work there and gave him the tutelage that he needed to take on Texas barbecue.

Eventually, he starts making money and opened KG Barbecue in 2022.

The greatest decision he could have made for KG Barbecue was to not just replicate the barbecue from all these places he had worked at.

His concept was to take all the things that he knew and loved from cooking with his family in Egypt and pair that with smoked meats.

-This is something that is so close to our hearts, and I think that shows in our food.

-I had never really seen any sort of Egyptian take on barbecue.

I had heard so many great things about it.

And really just blew us away with how great the food was.

The rice bowl has turmeric-infused rice.

It's got barbecue on top.

But the thing is, it's got all these different garnishes that are so unusual when it comes to barbecue.

-Look at these beautiful pommies.

It's the essence of our food, and it works really well.

It's not something that you find in barbecue joints here.

-One of the really rare things that Kareem does -- and it's really a throwback -- is cooking lamb.

Lamb used to be a really big part of Texas barbecue, and that's really gone by the wayside.

Opening up a barbecue operation is a big risk anytime, but he knew that if he wanted to make this happen, it was gonna be him to make it happen.

The fact that he was doing it all in a strange land, away from his family and away from what would have been a comfortable life back in Egypt makes it even more remarkable.

It is a tragic success story, is really what it is.

Family disagreements, tumultuous situations, lots of tragedy along the way in the relatively short history of this restaurant, but continued success throughout all of it.

I'm Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and I've written so many stories about La Barbecue.

La Barbecue had been owned by LeAnn Mueller, but I knew Ali, really, before I knew LeAnn.

Ali worked at the J Mueller barbecue food truck, and it was so good.

-I'm not a real "rule" type of gal around here.

I always say if there's rules in barbecue, I break 'em.

Just get the job done.

Make it consistent.

Make the best brisket you can.

So...we have set the bark on these beautiful briskets.

They look so good right now.

As you can see, there's, like, a really nice flex to it.

So...nice tenderness.

And that's really what we're looking for before we wrap.

Hot and fast is about a six-and-a-half, max seven-hour, brisket.

John Mueller taught me that style, in all his glory.

-There was nobody like John Mueller when it came to barbecue.

And when I say that, that comes with the good and the bad.

Cooked all the barbecue.

Made all the sides.

But he ran the business poorly, usually.

We called him the "dark prince of barbecue" in an article in Texas Monthly, something that he might have taken offense to but he really embraced.

And he kind of liked that persona.

He always wore a black hat and sometimes sunglasses and really sort of stepped into that role.

But he was unfinanceable.

Um, you know, it was -- it was hard to find somebody who was willing to give John Mueller any money in hopes of ever seeing it again.

With J Mueller Barbecue, it was his sister, LeAnn, who was backing him financially.

LeAnn Mueller came from a famous barbecue family, but she wasn't really all that into barbecue.

John and LeAnn's dad was Bobby Mueller.

He ran Louie Mueller Barbecue.

Louie is Bobby's dad who founded the restaurant in Taylor, Texas, which is still operating today.

One of the hallowed grounds of Texas barbecue.

But LeAnn really made her name as a photographer in Texas and California.

With John and LeAnn, the partnership ended pretty spectacularly.

Right around Halloween, John had texted me and said that LeAnn fired him.

She changed the name to La Barbecue, and at the time, Ali Clem was working with John.

So when it became La Barbecue, Ali stayed on as the cook.

LeAnn and Ali met and certainly formed a relationship and eventually got married.

When La Barbecue came to be, it was kind of a surprise that LeAnn, from the storied barbecue family of Louie Mueller Barbecue, was jumping into the business and really being, you know, part of the face of the business, part of the identity of this new La Barbecue business.

And I think La Barbecue has always wanted to be one of the best barbecue joints in Texas.

La Barbecue has always been that mix of old-school barbecue rooted in that Louie Mueller, Taylor, Texas style -- simplicity of seasonings and smoke.

You know, they've been in our top 50 barbecue list since they opened and certainly demands return visits.

[ Chatter ] -It's hard running business with family, you know?

So there was some ups and downs, of course, but in the end, I, you know -- he came to me and said how proud he was.

He said, "I have taught you everything from beginning to end.

You will be my legacy."

And I said, "John, do not curse me like that."

And then he sent this, like, little witch emoji and he was like, "I curse you!"

[ Laughs ] -John died in December of 2021.

John Mueller's death was not such a shock, just because he was in poor health and he was in poor health for many, many months.

And, you know, LeAnn and I had a bit of a contentious relationship.

She would call and yell at me about stories.

But when John died, I got a phone call from LeAnn, who said, "I want to talk to you about it and I want you to write about John passing.

You know, I haven't told anybody yet."

It was surprising that she reached out to me, that she wanted me to tell that story about John's life.

I just never would have imagined that it would be so shortly after that LeAnn herself would pass away, too.

LeAnn passed away suddenly in the summer of 2023.

She was in her 50s.

Really young.

Um, it was a shock to everybody.

Uh, and it was certainly a shock to Ali.

The way Ali tells it, there were really no signs that she was in poor health, so it was sudden and it was shocking.

-Unfortunately, John has passed.

LeAnn, who I was married to, LeAnn Mueller, which is John's sister, has passed.

And now it's just me making barbecue and trying to carry on that family legacy and, you know, make their family lineage proud.

It's important to me to keep doing this for many reasons.

I really do it for not only myself, but my crew.

-The fact that it remains one of Austin's great barbecue joints so many years after opening I think is a credit to LeAnn and to Ali now.

They were one of four barbecue joints in Texas to receive a Michelin Star.

You know, the fact that she went from, you know, basically being just a helper on that truck and in that pit to being the owner of one of the only Michelin Star barbecue joints in Texas... -Show them your Michelin Star tattoo.

-It's a pretty astounding run.

-[ Laughs ] LeAnn probably would have -- I don't know.

I know she would have cried.

She would have been so proud to have this, knowing that we've been recognized for all of our hard work.

-This is a legacy story.

It starts with John Mueller coming from Louie Mueller Barbecue, continuing that legacy on working with his sister, his sister taking over the business and continuing that legacy and her passing on... but her wife picking up the mantle and continuing on.

I mean, that's -- that's barbecue legacy right there.

When I visit a restaurant, I'm always looking for a place with a good story, really good food, or both.

Hallelujah!

Barbecue is one of those places that had both.

They had the great barbecue, of course, and then they had this great story about how it's run.

I'm Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and I wrote a profile on Hallelujah!

Barbecue in El Paso.

I first heard of Hallelujah!

Barbecue from Blake Barrow.

I had met him earlier, and he had told me about this catering operation that he ran in El Paso, and when he opened up the brick-and-mortar, I decided to come visit.

-So, the shelter is right here.

-Blake had said that he runs the rescue mission in El Paso and that most everyone who worked at the catering operation was housed at the mission... and that when he opened up Hallelujah!

Barbecue, the restaurant, that the same situation would be in place, where their employees, their people who are housed at the mission.

-Uh huh.

Yeah.

This is Kenny.

-Hey, Kenny.

-Hallelujah!

BBQ is a vocational rehab program for the rescue mission.

Rescue Mission is a shelter for folks who are homeless.

We've been around since 1952.

I started as the CEO in '97.

And by profession, I'm a trial lawyer, so it was quite a change.

A wonderful change.

I love it.

Ehh.

Beautiful.

The homeless folks that we have, they have lots of abilities, lots of talents.

Good like that.

They just, you know, stumped their toe somewhere and they need a little help.

And if they're gonna make it in life, we've got to be the one to give them the vocational training.

I am gonna put 'em on the stove.

We're gonna grill them.

The idea was, if we're gonna change the perception that the world has of who people are who are homeless, let's create a business.

We'll hire only people who are homeless.

And we'll make an absolutely first-quality product and market it as made by people who are homeless so that when the customer looks at it, they go, "Wow!

You're telling me homeless folks made this?

I must have been wrong about who they are."

-I'd never heard of anything that operated quite that way.

The fact that they draw in all of their employees, uh, you know, not just a small fraction, but truly make it the mission of the restaurant to be an employer for people at the mission.

-The way to teach people how to succeed -- you're gonna make the very best product and provide the best service.

And if anybody ever leaves here and says, "That wasn't bad, it's almost as good as Rudy's," you're a failure.

Why wouldn't they just go to Rudy's?

So it's -- If it's not perfect, we're not gonna serve it.

-Yeah, so, as a journalist, I can go into a place like that and be thankful that there's a good story to tell, but the general public wants to go in and make sure that they have a really great meal.

And so Blake had to make sure that they've got the right equipment and they've got the right recipes to really put out great barbecue and great food that people want to come back for.

You know, there's lots of different options for the barbecue.

Baby back ribs are so good.

A juicy brisket.

The one that stuck with me, though, is the 13 habanero sausage.

And it's called that because they use 13 habanero peppers in every large batch of sausage that they make.

You know, it's not super spicy, but it's got that kick for sure.

And, then, the sides.

Like, if you want, like, pure comfort in the sides, they combine carbohydrates and cheese in, like, beautiful ways.

They've got David's beans, which is a recipe of someone who worked at the mission.

And then there's cheesecakes.

There's a different one every time you come in.

You never know what you're gonna get, but whatever it is, it's gonna be great.

So, yeah, it's gonna remain an important barbecue joint in Texas in my book.

I think running any restaurant with a staff that is gonna be temporary is really tough, right?

It's hard enough to train up staff that you plan to keep on for several years, let alone staff that you know is probably gonna be gone in a year, that the entire goal is to get them out of that restaurant and into a life of independence.

So what he's done using that sort of staff to actually produce great food day in and day out is something to be applauded.

And it wasn't until I talked to Blake later that I learned that there's even more depth to it on the building that the restaurant is actually within.

-So, I come to El Paso in 1988, was hired out of Baylor Law School by a big firm here.

And I'd been here a week.

And I'm coming back up Cotton Street, and I drive right in front of this building, and it was all boarded up.

And I go, "Wow.

What an interesting building.

Just wasting away.

What a shame."

You see from the pictures there were holes in the roof.

There had been at least two fires in the building.

I love taking an eyesore, an old rundown building, and turning it into a work of art.

It's beautiful now.

In fact, the building restoration was done by people who were living at the rescue mission.

-Refurbishing the building would be a strong message to the community that things that maybe they've just driven by and not paid any attention to, maybe it's still got some potential left if you just put in the effort.

As a forgotten part of the city landscape, like, that building is the most, like, "hit you over the head" metaphor for the mission that they have of, you know, really rehabilitating the lives of a forgotten population.

-They gave me a whole chance to start my life again.

You know, they employed me.

Now I have my own car.

I'm working to get my own apartment.

It gives you the tools to actually reintegrate into society so that you can actually start your life again, that you don't end up back on the streets or back on drugs.

-You know, they see a lot of these people that are homeless and, you know, they don't know the story behind all these people.

They are broken.

They're hurt.

They're -- They don't have no one, you know, to look for help.

And, you know, they're lost.

And they need that attention and that love that, you know, they lost somewhere down the line.

Coming here was the best thing in my life.

-So what have we done?

[ Laughs ] So, I have totally altered the view of what not only city government, but all of El Paso society thinks of us, the work that we're doing and the people that just happen to be homeless here in El Paso.

-Traditionally, Texas barbecue has been thought of really as meat-centric -- simple meats on butcher paper on a platter.

But there are some places out there that are shattering that notion, adding in their own flavors to change what Texas barbecue can be.

I'm Daniel Vaughn.

I'm the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and I wrote a feature about Smoke'N Ash Barbecue in Arlington.

I like to go to as many barbecue places as I can, so back in 2018, when I first went to Smoke'N Ash, it was really just another spot on that checklist.

Nothing there overwhelmed me.

It was really a basic barbecue menu.

Didn't even find it really worthy to write about.

Since 2018, things have really changed at Smoke'N Ash.

Run by Patrick and Fasicka Hicks, it's really known for combining Texas barbecue and Ethiopian cooking all in one menu.

There's no other place like it.

Patrick is from Texas.

Fasicka is from Ethiopia.

-We met a few months after I arrived here in the States.

-Fasicka was working at a gas station in Arlington.

And Patrick would come in and buy stuff in the morning.

-She was working behind the counter.

-And he was one of my customers.

-After he saw her, he would come in a little more often.

-We became best friends and then started dating, and it's just grown from there, you know?

It's been wonderful.

-When they first opened the restaurant, it was really just Texas barbecue.

Fasicka kind of got bored with serving Texas barbecue, and she was a good cook in her own right.

Her family were great cooks, as well.

-Growing up, my mother, we always cooked together.

That was her way of teaching me and telling me stories.

-She wanted to introduce Arlington to some of her Ethiopian dishes.

You could order from her Ethiopian menu or you could order from the barbecue menu, and they were really kept separate.

You really had these two separate customer bases that were coming in -- some for barbecue, some for Ethiopian food.

Neither of them were really gaining the traction they needed to be a viable restaurant.

A customer, too, started suggesting that maybe they combine the two, bring them together.

I was not all that keen on going back just because I didn't have a great experience the first time.

But one of their customers urged me to try this new menu.

You wouldn't even be able to guess how different it is.

Every dish, every bite was like this new experience, this new discovery.

We tried just about everything they offered, this massive platter that brought Ethiopian flavors into the barbecue.

It was a cross-cultural meal like I'd never had before.

Chicken doro wat is a staple of Ethiopian cuisine.

"Doro" is Amharic for "chicken."

"Wat" is Amharic for "stew."

And it's really chicken on the bone in a really heavy sauce.

In this case, it's a smoked chicken, so really bringing that barbecue flavor into it.

There are the rib-tip tibs.

Tibs is actually an Ethiopian dish that can be made with different chunks of meat, chunks of vegetables, as well.

In this case, they make tibs with rib tips.

So they take a rack of spare ribs and then keep those tips to make their... smoked-rib tib-- rib-tip tibs.

[ Laughs ] And then the ribs themselves get smoked just like you would at any Texas barbecue joint.

But the sauce, it's unlike any barbecue sauce.

They call it awaze.

Really, it's this clarified butter, and they take a homemade berbere spice that they import from Ethiopia.

If salt and pepper is the spice for Texas barbecue, berbere is the spice for Ethiopian food.

-Berbere is something we still use my mother's recipe on.

-This berbere spice comes from Fasicka's family in Ethiopia.

It's their particular blend.

That spice, then, is bloomed in the butter to really create the sauce, and then the smoked meat is coated in that.

-Just make a whole lot of difference once you apply it to the meat.

-So you not only get the juicy rib meat, but you also get this completely different flavor from the butter... and then not so much a spiciness, but this warmth from the berbere.

Cardamom and caraway.

Garlic.

Ginger.

This is a different spice blend than you're gonna find anywhere else in barbecue.

And it's all gonna come served with this massive round piece of injera, which is like a spongy sourdough.

-In a way, that is our Texas toast in Ethiopia.

-It's meant to be torn off in pieces and eaten really with every bite in place of utensils.

Fasicka's there to show people how to use the injera.

-Traditionally, you have to feed a person you eat with, so... -Ohh!

Do not make an airplane sound.

-[ Laughs ] -Alright.

-He's laughing.

There you go!

See how clean my hand is.

-Mm-hmm.

-My favorite part of it is the people part of it.

Hello.

How are y'all?

You know, you can win anyone with a welcoming personality and also good food.

So my favorite part of it is just offering both and leaving customers with a good experience.

-It tastes like homemade, from-scratch cooking, so this is not restaurant type.

[ Laughs ] This is great.

-Ooh!

It's got a kick, too.

And jalapeos.

-Jalapeos.

-I've eaten at nearly 2,500 barbecue joints.

This is the only one of these that exists.

It's the only Ethiopian Texas smokehouse in existence.

It's sort of reshaped my idea of what barbecue can be.

Rarely do you actually find something that is truly one of a kind.

And I think that is what has helped make Smoke'N Ash successful.

They've been able to move into a larger building.

They've gotten covered by New York Times.

-Our story is the story of American dream.

Foreigner coming from another country, bringing their own culture, and they kind of merge it with the culture that's already existed here.

-I think Texas is a place where tradition is valued, but innovation is also really rewarded.

We're not afraid to change things up.

We're not afraid to ask the question of, what is barbecue?

Push the horizons of what barbecue can be.

These pitmasters and barbecue-joint owners are serving their community.

They're picking up the mantle and continuing on, using barbecue, using smoked meats as a way to tell the story of their cuisines.

Each of these little communities makes up what is Texas barbecue.

I think a story about Texans making Texas barbecue is the most important story I can tell.

I'm always out there eating barbecue and writing different barbecue stories around the state.

But always in the back of my mind is that every four years, there's gonna be a big list coming out that we're gonna compile.

The list is the 50 best barbecue joints that you're gonna eat at right now.

You might think I would add "in Texas," but we're Texans, so we believe they're the 50 greatest barbecue joints you're gonna eat really anywhere in the world.

-Welcome back.

It's barbecue season in Texas.

The same year that we inaugurate a president, we anoint the top 50 barbecue restaurants in Texas.

And it's always the day that everybody waits for.

-The culmination of many, many months and years of work.

-Everyone that cooks Texas barbecue, this is what you strive for.

-I am Daniel Vaughn.

I'm the barbecue editor of Texas Monthly.

And this is...the list.

The list is the 50 best barbecue joints in Texas.

-The list is -- It's the [bleep].

You know what I mean?

Excuse me language.

The list is the list!

One, two, three!

-Brisket!

-It is like the Bible of barbecue Texas, right?

-The culmination of like four years of research.

-This is the State of the Union of Barbecue.

-All of our barbecue issues that we've produced, going back to the third-ever issue of Texas Monthly, which was April 1973.

-Being on the top 10 or on the top 50 in general, it would save us.

-There's a lot of buzz with the new list coming out.

-We pray we make the list.

[ Chuckles ] -I think it's a huge deal to be in the top 50.

If they're the best in Texas, then they're the best anywhere.

We have barbecue from two different places here.

Take some barbecue from each one.

Get a piece of fatty and a piece of lean.

If you need me to point out which is which, you're off the team.

[ Laughter ] We start off with a big team, and that big team comes together here in the office.

And I think this time we had 25 different tasters, plus me, and we really talk about the finer points of barbecue and what we're looking for in a great barbecue bite.

-Using this as an opportunity to talk to everyone, to make sure that we're using, more or less, the same rubrics, the same standards.

-When you bite into the rib, like, especially against the bone.

So you can see, like, this meat is not falling off the bone.

-He's narrowed it down to 300-plus barbecue joints.

-All of those tasters get a different territory to go search through all over the state.

And I get one of those or usually a couple of those territories, as well.

What sets us apart is really the big team that we send out to begin with and to be able to have someone who gets a different sort of experience than I might get at a restaurant.

-Yeah, so, some of your travel plans -- try to aim for two, three max, per day, uh, in part so that you can try to hit that, you know, peak window for all of those joints.

-If we can find that unicorn, if we can find that place that nobody else knows about, that would be incredible.

[ Applause ] They've got about four months to complete their 12 or 15 spots.

Ooh.

Real tough.

I'm going out there trying as much as I can outside of my own territory, as well, so that I have a more recent opinion about all these places.

No place makes the top 50 without me visiting in that six-month period.

-The tasters all have a barbecue score sheet for each place, so the only things that are really ranked by number on a scale of 1 to 5 are the meats -- brisket, pork ribs, sausage, and poultry.

-The meats is really what it comes down to, primarily, for any sort of scoring.

We often get asked, too, like, is brisket the most important?

And brisket is certainly important, but it's not the most important.

We would be silly to think that these barbecue joints don't recognize me.

And seeing how that score compares to my experience is really beneficial and really important.

You know, they're gonna get the average meal that that place can put out, most likely.

And we compile them at the end of December.

Then I can look at all those and see which ones are surprisingly high, surprisingly low... and also those ones that are contenders that I just haven't been to in a long time.

I love barbecue.

I love eating barbecue.

Uh, but then when it all comes down to it, like, I get to talk to all these people about what motivates them, why they're in this business that's really hard, and get their personal stories.

Ernest really started out in competition barbecue, and he got the name, uh, Burnt Bean, and that was the name of his competition barbecue team.

-"Hey.

Do you have a name?

You're gonna probably burn the beans, so you should call yourself the Burnt Bean or Burnt Beans."

We never burned our beans, but everybody thought we would.

-My question when he announced that he was gonna open this place is, "How is he gonna translate his competition barbecue success into restaurant barbecue?"

'Cause they're two very different things.

-But what I did take away from competition was, I love the art of competing against other people, as well as to be number one.

You get that taste of -- I call it the shark and the blood in the water.

-Ernest is a huge personality, a really talented chef.

He's got an incredible palate, and he has this grand level of hospitality.

He's probably gonna be the one who's right there working the line when you show up.

-[ Laughs ] -Do you mind if I get a picture?

-Yeah.

Come on.

-David -- he's a behind-the-scenes guy.

He runs the pits.

So if the barbecue is great, it's because David's back there watching the pits, making sure that everything that comes off of them is at its prime.

-He just retired, too.

I'm like, "Yeah, hey, so, listen.

I know you just retired and you want to live the good life, but do you want to be crazy and open a restaurant during COVID?

And I don't know if we're gonna succeed, but if we do, it'd be really legendary."

And he's like... "All right."

[ Laughs ] -Burnt Bean was number four on our last barbecue list in 2021.

When we put them on the list last time, they were a year old.

That, like, "It's just so good.

We can't leave this place out of our top 10."

-When you get number four, that changed our game plan.

Dave looked at me, and Dave was like, "Oh..." Because he knew what I was gonna go after.

"We got top five.

Let's shoot for one."

[ Indistinct conversations ] -Sunday is the big barbecue event of all.

It's the barbecue brunch.

This is their weekly specialty, is doing this breakfast spread, and they do it every week.

So, they've got brisket, huevos rancheros.

They have the Blue October, a croissant with a big slab of brisket and a fried egg.

And then one of the signature items is the barbacoa.

Like... just stop already.

[ Laughs ] And then they do other specials that day, too, that don't have anything to do with breakfast, like lamb ribs, Korean beef ribs.

But let's talk about that brisket because the fat was like the, um -- I don't know -- almost like the gushing flavor of roast beef.

I mean, the texture was just freaking perfect.

They do such a variety of things so well that often the thing that gets lost in the mix is just how great their straight-up barbecue is.

-They weren't searching around for the right brisket.

-They just -- They didn't cut it into five like -- -No, they did not cut into five briskets looking for it.

"Victoria, don't eat me."

[ Laughter ] He didn't get a Michelin star.

He deserved a Michelin star.

Maybe they'll see that next time around.

Good God, Michelin, what were you thinking?

-I could eat this... -There were a few of these new names, kind of small operations that not a whole lot of people knew about.

-We started as a food truck.

Our food trailer was purple.

-And we thought about what name we could use.

-And he was like, "Well, my grandpa was named Yearby."

I'm like, "Oh, that's a nice name."

You know?

It's real unique.

-Yearby's Barbecue -- from the from the first time I ate there, I knew that it was gonna be special.

-So, once I scrub stuff down in the morning and kind of like get everything loaded up before we open up, me and Sabrina will get together and just say, like, "God, send your people," you know, just hoping that we get a crowd.

Because being out here, you don't know, especially the fact that we chose to come to Pilot Point, Texas, being black Muslims.

We're probably like the only Muslims here, possibly.

-CJ and Sabrina Henley -- they are the couple who run Yearby's Barbecue.

-Cooking is my passion, something I love to do.

Did I think it was gonna be a halal barbecue restaurant in the state of Texas?

No.

No.

-Well, the biggest thing that makes Yearby's unique is that it's an all-halal barbecue menu.

-So, halal is a -- it's a blessing the meat, raising it humanely.

-The thing about a halal menu is you're missing pork.

But this is the beef state.

So if you're serving beef ribs and beef brisket and a beef sausage and smoked meatloaf, smoked chicken, there's a lot of people who are probably gonna forget that you might be missing pork ribs.

-I like to always find something and put it as a chip on my shoulder.

And I think that being in the halal barbecue space, we're trying to make it good for anybody that comes through the door, right?

[ Indistinct conversations, laughter ] -Beef sausage is central to Texas barbecue, right?

But most of that beef sausage is in a pork casing.

So that would not be halal.

So they developed their own link in a lamb casing.

Really great flavor and really good snap, as well.

Smoked brisket at Yearby's is really good.

It is certainly one of their strong suits.

They certainly have their big, expensive beef ribs on the weekends, and those are the things that I love.

But they also have really inexpensive chicken.

They have smoked a meatloaf sandwich, which that meatloaf is using their beef trimmings to make it.

You've only got so many people to draw from in Pilot Point to be your regular customers.

DFW is, like, maybe an hour away if you're trying to get into Dallas.

And so they've got to be quite the draw with their barbecue.

So, this top 50, for a lot of these new spots and a lot of these small-town spots, this can be their sort of grand introduction to the Texas barbecue community.

[ Birds chirping ] I go to these barbecue joints a lot.

All of them that are in the top 50, not in the top 50, you know, I have a bank of memories from each one of these barbecue joints, but that's the part that I have to eliminate when we're talking about searching for the most recent top 50.

And that was the case with LaVaca BBQ.

-My dad did barbecue competitions when I was little, so we've always kind of done the barbecue thing.

We never owned a restaurant before, so the owning a restaurant part and day-to-day was a learning curve.

-The first time I visited LaVaca BBQ, it was February 7, 2020.

And they were in our top 50 last time.

When I went back, five years later to the day -- it was February 7, 2025 -- the quality of everything had just really taken not just one step, but a few steps up.

When the LaVaca BBQ first opened, it was the Lupe and Christine Show.

They were a husband and wife team who were running it.

And Lupe was running the pits, and Christine was doing pretty much everything else.

I talked to Kelli quite a bit about her path.

-Before COVID, I taught elementary school, first grade.

-When COVID hit, we asked her, "Do you want to come in with us?"

-And so she decided to jump into the family business and quit her job teaching and, you know, jump into the pit room.

-And I just started running with it.

-When she took over the pit, that allowed Lupe and Christine to focus, really, on everything else and not be distracted by having to cook the barbecue day after day, along with everything else.

-So, uh, it's truly a mom-and-pop place.

-Yeah.

Mom, pop, and daughter.

-Mom, pop, and daughter.

-We knew that barbecue was a boy field, but I did this to help my parents.

We got questioned a lot whether I was the actual pit master, and that threw us off.

We never thought, you know, people would be bothered by it, but they were for some reason.

We're here as a family.

We're not here to prove, you know, anything else, so... We put all of our heart, all of our soul, everything that we have into it, so that way people can enjoy it.

-For Lupe, it was really important to have something on the LaVaca BBQ menu that was unlike anything else that he had had at a barbecue joint and was something that really went back to their heritage.

The tamale is one of those things that sets them apart because it really shows off their -- their identity, right?

Instead of corn husks, they actually wrap the barbecue stuff, masa, in butcher paper, and then that butcher paper goes not into a steamer, but into the smoker.

And so the masa itself takes on the smoke flavor.

It's really unlike anything else that I've ever seen in Texas barbecue.

The last time I went, he had this pork steak.

It's smoked and then finished over direct heat and then garnished really heavily.

Had that bark, great smoke flavor.

The smoked brisket, I would say, was their weak point the first time I went.

I had real skepticism when I saw the really high score from our initial round of tasting.

But as far as, like, some of the best of the best, I didn't really have them that way in my own mind.

I saw that great score, went back again, and just, like, knocked it out of the park.

And that was one of my last stops for the search for the 2025 top 50 list.

You know, it does highlight the way that we do this list.

It's not what you were doing in 2023 or 2021 or 1997.

It's, "How is the barbecue right now compared to everybody else in the state?"

[ Indistinct conversations ] Yeah, that's looking promising.

There was a sense of relief of getting the tasting over with -- right?

-- of getting through it all.

The following day, I had to narrow it all down to 50 and rank the top 10.

So there was a lot of work yet to be done.

I'm not a standard food critic who goes out and anonymously eats at a bunch of different restaurants.

I mean, Texas Monthly asked me to do a whole lot in the barbecue community.

Because of that, I know a lot of these people.

There is a personal aspect there.

And, you know, that's the part that I just have to, like, block out.

People come up with all kinds of reasons of why they're not in the top 50 or an honorable mention or why they're not in the top 10, and none of the reasons in their mind ever end up being the barbecue, but that's really all that it is.

-Are you thinking, like, end of day?

-I'm not thinking that.

[ Both laugh ] There is no choice.

-Because of the deadline.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

-I've never felt a lack of confidence about the amount of work we put into it.

We did all the visits that we could, and we gave everybody their fair shot.

-Late yesterday afternoon, right before 5:00 p.m., Daniel sent us his final top 50 Excel spreadsheet.

And we're in, like, serious crunch mode for top 50 production.

So things are going to move really, really quickly after this.

-Now that we have the list, we're really gonna start planning out our photography plan.

-We are doing 10 shoots for each of the top 10 joints.

-And we're gonna be drizzling the peach glaze on top of it.

-Nice.

-And I definitely want a bite afterwards.

-That makes two of us.

-They might have a suspicion, but we won't confirm or deny it.

-My name is Doyin Oyeniyi.

and I'm a senior fact checker at Texas Monthly.

So, fact-checking is essentially going back over the reporting of the writers and double-checking to make sure that every single detail is right.

-One thing I was just gonna double-check to make sure we were getting right -- because this seemed outrageous to me -- you visited 100 joints, like, just in January and February?

-Yeah, I was a little unhappy that you just didn't say that I had been to 194 barbecue joints in the whole search.

-The whole feature is macro photography.

-Yeah.

-And I love the minimalist cover line.

-Options there.

How unconventional is [laughing] no lines?

-People go to these joints and take overhead photos of their trays nonstop, so we wanted to give them that experience in print.

And it's super simple.

-It's accessible.

-It's so simple.

-Yeah.

Almost every shoot we went to, people would come over and be like, "When's the list come out?"

-See?

And they say -- -In a casual -- -And they say the list.

-Yeah, exactly.

-And they say the list.

-So, when the issue goes to press, that's definitely a weight off your shoulders.

That's a big celebratory moment.

Pit masters are smart enough in this day and age.

They know exactly when our issue is coming out, so they know something's up.

They're definitely on high alert.

-I'm pretty nervous with the list coming out because I feel like we've been putting our best foot forward.

Let's come in here and let's keep on jamming out the best product we can because we want to hit the list.

-Right now, we're seeing a lot of people that are guessing who's gonna be top 10, and nobody's mentioned us.

-You know, some people are like, "Well, are you cooking to cook for yourself, or are you cooking for the list?"

I would be lying if you're not cooking to be number one.

But, you know, I don't sleep right now at night.

That's all I think about.

-You know, the day that it comes out, I'm gonna have a whole lot of people who are really disappointed.

And there's gonna be a lot of people who are elated.

I know their stories.

I know their struggles.

Even some who didn't make the list, I know how hard they tried to make the list.

It's the barbecue on the plate that's gonna speak.

In the end, it's certainly a ranking, and it's our judgment of all these barbecue joints, but it's a celebration of barbecue.

It's a celebration of how good we have it today.

And every time we produce one of these lists, it's a reminder to us that how it is today is even better than it was four years before and four years before that and four years before that.

I wish there wasn't a top 50.

Like, if I could hold the title as barbecue editor without a top 50, I think I would prefer it that way.

Um...yeah.

-Here we go guys -- brand-new top 50, 2025, just released.

So happy for all of these barbecue joints.

We had 23 new barbecue spots on this list, and it's spread out all across the state.

-And there's a lot of new spots on the top... -Yes.

Yeah, let's go through 'cause, again, we are super... -So, we knew it was gonna come out at 8:00, and we were together.

So, we were here, and we were making sausage anyways.

And we were just waiting and refreshing and refreshing.

And then his daughter texted us, and she's like, "Congratulations."

We're like, "What are you talking about?"

And we just -- We went bonkers.

And it just makes all the hard work worthwhile.

And we get the title for four years, so... [ Laughs ] -That was our goal the whole time.

That was, you know, what we strived for.

And after four or five years of, you know, "Could we do it?"

you know, we were finally validated.

-Before I actually got to seeing our name, I got a text message from someone saying, "Hey, you guys made it."

Like, "Oh, wow, this is crazy, man," you know?

Like, so much excitement 'cause it was like, "Wow, we put this work in, and then, like, we actually made it."

Yearby's is my grandfather's name.

The opportunities, even just for African-Americans, are a lot different than they were back then.

And if he could see me today and see what we've done with that name, I could just see him smiling and being very proud of us.

-We've always hoped to make the list because of, you know, what we do on a daily basis.

-I was hoping for top 10.

You know, when we opened, I just wanted to make top 50.

And then once we once I saw it, I was just in shock.

-You know, I'm fully committed to showing people what a small-town barbecue spot can do.

-Yeah, it feels really good, obviously, you know?

Obviously, we were going for number one.

We want to be the best at everything.

But, you know, to still be considered, you know, in such a close race, then that means a lot.

-Of course, the excitement, all that stuff like that.

Then that led to a conversation about, like, "Okay, we need to go higher.

Now that we're just top 50, it is something we aspire to, to land top 10."

[ Indistinct conversations ] [ Mid-tempo music playing ] -We're just getting started, brother.

We just got -- That Texas Monthly award was just to get our foot in the door.

-Onto phase two.

I want to be a household name.

I want to be one of the greatest of all time in barbecue.

And that's the legacy I want to leave because, at the end of the day, people will remember you as a person and not what you have accomplished.

-The top 50 list is, like, constantly in our most viewed stories.

In a way, it feels like it never ends until you start the next one.

-I get that question after the list comes out, like, "Oh, you get to take a break now."

It's like, "Are you kidding me?"

I'm traveling the state, always looking for new stories to tell and really just always looking for barbecue joints that I can send people.

Like, my whole goal is -- my mission statement, really -- is to connect people with great barbecue.

And so that means I've got to go out there and find it and then tell the story behind it and tell people where to find it.

So it's right back out to the barbecue trail.