Downtown BBQ Makes the Grade in KC

Winslow’s BBQ
20 E. 5th St.
Kansas City, MO





Sometimes I feel like a Kansas City barbeque failure.

I pride myself on my barbeque tasting expertise. You name the smoke shack or pig joint and chances are I’ve been there, tasted the ‘que, lived to tell you all about it and bought the shirt (or cleaned my grill with it).

I feel like I have a good handle on a wide cross section of the meat served in all the barbeque Meccas like Memphis, Columbia, Lexington and Lockhart.

But I’ve never really eaten my way through Kansas City, one of America’s great ‘que towns.

Oh sure, I’ve done the obligatory stops at Gates and Arthur Bryant’s.

Who hasn’t?

But to really get a sense of the barbeque culture of a city, you have to do more than just check off the list of places that make regular appearances on cable TV.

And that’s where I feel like I can improve my performance in Kansas City.

I need to hit up L.C.’s, Rosedale and Danny Edwards -- the lesser known pit houses where the locals go to get real KC ‘que.

Unfortunately, all those venerable authentic smoke shacks tend to congregate on the south side of Kansas City -- a place where Suit757 rarely travels.

In general, local dive barbeque shacks tend to be in the parts of town Suit757 doesn’t have much business. (I’ll let you speculate about why that might be.)

Of course geographic inconvenience has never stopped me before. But with a tight schedule, I knew venturing out to wilds of South KC wasn’t going to be in the cards on this trip either.

There’s got to be some place in this barbeque crazed city to get some ribs and burnt ends near downtown.

Sure enough, I found Winslow’s BBQ.

It’s been around for over four decades. That’s a good sign.

Won lots of awards. Another good sign.

But when I walked up to Winslow’s I quickly realized that it is located in one of those fake touristy taxpayer subsidized “festival marketplaces” downtown along with stores selling souvenir KCMO coffee cups and key chains -- and t-shirts that read “Who farted?”

Not a good sign.

And during prime dinner hour I was the only customer in the place.

Definitely NOT a good sign.

There’s no way I’m going to get any sense of authentic KC barbeque at this joint.

But you know what?

The smoked meat served at Winslow’s was downright exquisite.

Too bad I was the only one in Kanas City getting to experience it.

Fortunately, the one lady who did double duty as the lone waitress and bar tender had the TV turned to the MLB Network with the sound turned up loud.

I happily sat there alone positioned directly in front of the TV drinking a big Boulevard Pale Ale out of a plastic cup watching baseball -- just like at the bar in my home.

Only I haven’t figured out how to make barbeque this good at home.

I ordered the three meat platter for $15. It was enough food to feed a family of four.

Five big meaty ribs with pork soft and tender like butter.

The pulled pork was soft and smoky like the best you’d find in North Carolina or Tennessee.

The brisket was best of all.

Usually when you order brisket, you can choose between sliced or chopped. This was like both in one.

The beef was sliced, but it was so tender it fell apart into delicious morsels of chopped brisket with the slightest touch of my fork.

All three meats were smoked to perfection, with telltale red smoke rings.

Most extraordinary was how tender and moist all three meats were.

Dave Winslow, the original founder, hired an engineer to invent a steam pit that evaporates 50 gallons of water per day.

At Winslow’s, the meat isn’t just smoked. It’s enveloped in steam for hours, yielding fall apart moist barbeque that needs no sauce.

Of course being Suit757, I had to try it anyway.

East Coast barbeque purists love to disparage Kansas City style barbeque for the thick glops of ketchupy sauce Midwesterners supposedly like to slather onto their meat.

Here at Winslow’s, that sauce discretion is left to the barbeque eater.

Winslow’s sauce was not as thick or sweet as some Kansas City sauces.

The sauce was good -- but unnecessary.

Some purists would claim it would be a crime to cover up such perfect barbeque with sauce.

For me, the real crime was that I was the only customer in the place.

Where the heck is everybody? There should be a line out the door for barbeque this good.

I think it is the location.

Nobody goes downtown anymore.

This has been a known phenomenon in virtually every American city since the advent of the shopping mall forty years ago.

This is the type of problem politicians like to solve with our tax money.

Of course they don’t bother to consider the REASON nobody goes downtown any more.

Business owners don’t open businesses downtown because…

…wait for it…

…nobody goes downtown any more.

So here’s the solution: pay business owners to locate downtown with taxpayer financed “festival marketplaces” like KC’s River Market.

But no matter how many tax subsidized businesses locate downtown, the politicians can’t create customers out of thin air.

Because nobody goes downtown any more.

No matter how good the barbeque happens to be.

And that’s too bad.

Winslow’s deserves a wider audience than just from suits who don’t have time to venture to the south side of town.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

BBQ Corruption in Texas?

 

Bartley's BBQ
413 E. Northwest Hwy.
Grapevine, TX



Texas is no stranger to scandal, corruption and bribery.

Lyndon Johnson’s national political career was launched thanks to the infamous “Box 13 Scandal” in 1948.

Six days after seemingly losing his bid for the U.S. Senate by just a handful of votes, a ballot box from the 13th precinct in what is now Jim Wells County was “discovered.”

Miraculously, all the newly discovered ballots were written in the same ink and all the voters somehow managed to cast their ballots in alphabetical order.

How’s that for Texas creativity?

The vote total from Box 13?

200 for LBJ. 2 for his opponent.

LBJ was declared the new United States Senator from Texas by 87 votes.

Thus began LBJ’s path to the White House where he created the modern American welfare state that has set America on a steady glide-path to economic and social ruin.

Rigged elections have consequences.

But it’s one thing to rig a political election in Texas.

Apparently, that, Texans will tolerate.

Just don’t go messing with their barbeque.

So what I am about to allege will rock the Lone Star State to its core.

Texas Monthly’s revered “The List” of “Top 50 BBQ Joints” is rigged.

How else to explain the inclusion of Bartley’s BBQ in Grapevine?

The twice per decade list just came out to much fanfare a few months ago. And I’ve already been to eight of them.

That’s a pretty good sample size considering I live 1000 miles away from here and Texas is only one out of 50 states Suit757 travels to.

So far, the barbeque I’ve sampled at these now world-renowned smoke shacks has ranged from exquisite to mediocre.

But the inclusion of Bartley’s, a small joint in a run-down strip mall just north of DFW Airport, throws the integrity of the entire “List” into question.

Now, I know what you are thinking.

You’re thinking, “Suit757, isn’t judging Texas barbeque somewhat subjective?”

Somewhat, yes.

But no barbeque eater worth his rub would conclude that the food served by Bartley’s is good barbeque. Certainly not a blue ribbon panel of supposed barbeque experts assembled by Texas Monthly.

Corruption is the only explanation.

That was my conclusion as soon as I picked up my first piece of brisket.

It was so hard and stiff, I thought this cow might be suffering from rigamortis.

I took a picture and planned to submit it to one of those on-line “planking” contests.

Folks, Texas barbeque brisket is supposed to be slow smoked for hours, yielding a fall-apart tender texture that you can just pick up piece by piece with your fingers.

It’s not supposed to be hard like a piece of cold salami.

Like a tough slice of cold roast beef, Bartley’s brisket was a room temperature mouthful of chewy, bland tastelessness.

A thin red smoke ring and a pile of hickory logs out back by the chimney prove that this cow has seen at least a bit of smoke, but I couldn’t taste any of it.

Even the dark bark on the edges had no flavor.

The only way I could even choke it down was to douse the brisket in Bartley’s sweet tomatoey sauce.

The sausage was better, but far from inspiring.

It was basically the same processed pre-cooked smoked link sausage you can buy at your grocery store.

The sides were even less inspiring.

The options in the do-it-yourself cafeteria line were so unappetizing, I opted for some boring baked beans and macaroni salad.

Macaroni salad?

At a Texas BBQ joint?

Yeah. Like I said, uninspiring and unappetizing.

So who did Bartley’s bribe to get included on a list of the best BBQ joints on earth?

Is there a “Box 13” of paper ballots with “Bartley’s” written in the same hand writing stashed somewhere in the bowels of Texas Monthly’s headquarters?

I want to know.

When I fly into a state, I usually have time for exactly one meal. That’s it.

It better be good.

I trusted this “List” to make my decision today.

So I wasn’t just disappointed. I was ticked off.

Like I said, corruption has dire consequences.

A stuffed ballot box in Jim Wells County 65 years ago eventually led to the swearing in of the worst President in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

And a stuffed ballot box at Texas Monthly ruined my trip to North Texas.

I’ll let you decide which is worse.

Rating: Clean Grill with Shirt.

Go Ahead and Take the Plunge with these Two Bros

Two Bros. BBQ Market
12656 West Ave.
San Antonio, TX




Smoking brisket is like taking the plunge into marriage.

The choices you make upfront can lead to results that are very good.

Or…

…Very, very bad.

Without the right commitment to quality meat, good rub, ideal hard wood, a top notch smoker and lots and lots of patience and time, you are in for a final product devoid of spice, flavor or tenderness.

It will be nothing but an expensive exercise in wasted effort.

You’ll be looking to sign divorce papers as soon as you bite into a bad brisket that tastes like a dry, tasteless hunk of unchewable roast beef.
Don’t even think about walking down that aisle unless you commit to doing it right.

I’m happy to report that the bros at Two Bros BBQ Market on the north side of San Antonio know exactly how to do brisket right.

Any doubt is dispelled the moment you pull up into the parking lot and notice the smoke billowing up from the smoker out back.

You’ll know you made the right choice as soon as you open the front door and are greeted by the sweet aroma of cow fat being slowly melted by the embers of Texas post oak.

Two Bros is nothing like the scary dilapidated old brisket smoke shacks down around Lockhart like Smitty’s and Black’s.

This place has been around for only four years, an infantile newcomer to the century’s old art of smoking briskets in the Lone Star State.

Rustically located under some old live oak trees -- a few of which grow right up through the middle of the restaurant -- it’s still hard to camouflage the new construction feel of Two Bros BBQ Market.

But what it lacks in old school credentials, Two Bros more than makes up for with its real deal authentic Texas barbeque.

The pit master sliced off a couple thick swaths of brisket and a smoked sausage onto my butcher paper.

Unlike in Lockhart, plastic utensils are available at Two Bros -- but you won’t need them.

The hunks of beef fall apart at the mere touch of your fingers.

The thick dark crunchy bark on the edge of each slice ignites a combustion of salty flavor in every bite.

The soft tender inside of the slice offers a smoky succulent counterbalance to the bark.

Each bite of decadent fatty beef almost melts in your mouth like bovine butter.

Absolutely extraordinary!

It’s like giving a make-over to Kate Upton, but I couldn’t resist the urge to dip a few hunks of brisket into Two Bros warm homemade sauce.

The sauce is completely unnecessary -- yet completely delicious with a nice balance between spicy tang and tomatoey sweetness.

The sausage approached heights of perfection as well.

Taught and smoky, each bite offered a nice snap of greasy meaty flavor.

Well done, bros, well done.

Even the sides were top notch.

The mac and cheese was thick and goopy the way your grandma made it.

The beans were a kaleidoscope of flavor, balancing the savory goodness of bacon with the sweetness of Texas peaches. You won’t find anything like this in the canned goods aisle of your local grocery.

That’s for sure.

Since it was the middle of a Suit757 workday, a Shiner Bock to wash all this Texas barbeque down just wasn’t an option.

So I went with the Texas BBQ Plan B Beverage -- a can of Big Red -- the syrupy sweet red soda that leaves your tongue stained with artificial coloring for 24 hours.

Big Red is so bad it has never managed to spread much beyond the borders of the Lone Star State.

But as Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen explained in his song “Barbeque”, “a cold Big Red” is considered obligatory when dining on Texas brisket and sausage.

Like marriage, picking a place in Texas to eat brisket takes something of a leap of faith.

Sure, I did my homework and read about Two Bros awards as one of the top BBQ shacks in Texas, but until you commit to lifting that first bite of beef off your butcher paper you can never really be totally sure what you are going to get.

That’s where Suit757 comes in.

Consider me to be your brisket marriage counselor.

If you in San Antonio -- heck, if you are ever within 100 miles of San Antonio -- do yourself a favor.

Make the commitment. Tie the knot. Take the plunge at Two Bros BBQ Market.

You’ll live happily ever after.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Spoiled By Fame

Virgie’s BBQ
5535 Gessner Dr.
Houston, TX




Sometimes too much success can be a bad thing.

Really? Did Suit757 really just say that?

Yes.

Now, before you go all Sean Hannity on me for turning into some Obama-loving pinko Commie, hear me out here.

Good barbeque is almost always smoked at small family-run roadside joints like Virgie’s in Houston.

Brisket and ribs slow smoked over mesquite for hours out back, one batch at a time.

That’s how great barbeque is done.

This isn’t McDonalds or Cracker Barrel. These places aren’t equipped for busloads of tourists pulling off the interstate for preheated, ready-to-serve fast food.

That’s why I always get suspicious of any mom and pop restaurant that advertises its catering business, as Virgie’s does on the sign out front.

You can either serve top notch home-cooked food to a small loyal clientele or you can serve the masses.

Few can do both well.

Unfortunately the day I happened to stumble into Virgie’s, this little barbeque joint in a black neighborhood on the northwest side of Houston was facing just such a trial by fire.

Unbeknownst to me, Texas Monthly Magazine just released its twice-per-decade list of the top 50 Lone Star State barbeque places just a couple days before I got there.

And, yes, Virgie’s made this list.

Now, to truly understand the implications of such an accomplishment, you have to understand that the publication of this list is anticipated in Texas about as much as Sports Illustrated’s Swim Suit Issue.

Maybe more so.

Understand, to a Texan, a list of the top 50 barbeque joints in Texas might as well be titled The Top 50 Barbeque Joints on Planet Earth.

It’s the same thing.

Texas Monthly takes its responsibility seriously, utilizing 16 barbeque-palette refined experts to spread out across the Lone Star State’s 268,000 square miles to sample the smoked meats at over 650 restaurants.

I mean, this is serious as a sausage-induced heart attack.

The freshly laminated article touting Virgie’s best-in-Texas brisket was proudly displayed on the front door.

Turns out I had plenty of time to read it because the line at 11am on a Friday was already out the door.

The gravel parking lot was packed, requiring me to illegally park my Ford Focus rental car.

The family running Virgie’s seemed to be a bit overwhelmed by their newfound fame -- and the hordes of white people piling into their suddenly famous little joint.

The line moved fairly quickly but there was a general sense of disorganization once I got to the friendly, but frenzied ladies taking down all the rapid-fire lunch orders.

The next challenge was finding a place to sit in this cozy little lunch room.

Fortunately, I spied one lonely dirty table in the back next to a ten top of suit-wearing office dwellers all commenting and critiquing Virgie’s suddenly on-the-spot smoked meat.

I could picture them 45 minutes earlier all sitting around their high rise cube farm excitedly perusing the new Texas Monthly issue like a pack of Cub Scouts who discovered a clandestine stash of Play Boys.

“Ohh, wow! There’s a place here in Houston that made the list! We have to check this place out -- right now.”

Then they all piled into their SUVs, plugged the address into their GPSs and ventured out to a part of town most of them never knew existed.

Clearly, Virgie’s wasn’t prepared for the fame.

After wiping down my table, I waited for my order.

And waited.

And waited.

After a half an hour, I started to worry that I was going to miss my flight home out of Houston Intercontinental.

Finally, some guy came out of the kitchen, cut through the chaos in the lunch room and delivered a Styrofoam box to my table.

He mumbled something about sauce and then disappeared. Assuming he would reappear momentarily with the aforementioned sauce, I waited.

And waited.

After another five minutes, I got up, worked my way through the crowd back to the ladies at the order counter and managed to retrieve some sauce.

Unfortunately, the meat needed that sauce, which is considered something of a badge of dishonor in the Lone Star State.

The best brisket in Texas needs no sauce.

Virgie’s brisket had as much fat as meat, yet still managed to be dry and lacking in flavor. Hence the necessity of that good tomato-based sauce.

The sausage was better but not spectacular.

My sides of baked beans and green beans were as uninspiring as any you’d get out of a can.

As I wolfed down my lunch in five minutes, I couldn’t help but feel a bit let down.

Maybe success has spoiled the mojo that made Virgie’s famous.

Maybe my expectations were just too high after learning about Virgie’s Texas Monthly accolades.

Maybe I should just come back another day when the glow from barbeque fame has faded a bit.

So, can too much success really be a bad thing?

All I know is they say success has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.

Too bad all those hungry fathers had to show up on the same day.

Rating: Would Wear a Free Shirt.

Lone Star Let Down at the Branding Iron

Branding Iron
104 East Scott Ave.
Wichita Falls, TX




Someone once told me Wichita Falls, Texas is the only place in the world where you can be knee deep in muck and still be pelted in the face with sand.

Driving through this gritty industrial/ranching/oil town, all I can do is pity whoever is in charge of the local Tourism and Convention Bureau.

That boy has his work cut out for him.

Where the muddy Red River cuts through the dusty West Texas Plains, Wichita Falls doesn’t offer much in the way of excitement.

But that’s okay. Desolate little dots on the Texas map like Lockhart, Luling and Driftwood draw tourists to their tumbleweed-strewn farm-to-market roads seeking something more important than ruins of Spanish missions and Six Flags roller coasters.

Texas Barbeque!

Specifically, brisket.

Unfortunately, Wichita Fall’s most popular barbeque joint isn’t going to do much to boost Wichita Fall’s tourism industry.

The Branding Iron looks promising at first glance. The place is a dump.

A decades old cinder block building on the outskirts of downtown, it looks like the Branding Iron has been expanded a time or two.

I chose to sit in the back of the restaurant with a metal shed roof with insulation falling out just above the animal heads mounted on the wall.

The cinder blocks were charred black in some spots, like this section had been the barbeque pit in another life.

Cowboy paraphernalia and dead flies set the dark mood as the late lunch crowd began to file out into the blinding Texas sunshine.

A classic Frederic Remington sculpture covered in an inch of decade-old dust sat haphazardly on an antique desk, like some barbeque pit decorative afterthought.

It occurred to me that that single piece of art is probably worth more than the appraised value of the entire building.

No doubt about it, the Branding Iron comes by its divey credentials honestly.
That can be a good thing when searching for good ‘que.

But not always.

Like most Texas barbeque joints, you stand in line, grab a plastic tray and tell the guy with the knife what kind of meat you want.

With great precision, he diced up a pile of brisket and Texas hot links, dumped them on a pre-formed metal plate and slid it to me with a smile.

That should have been my first warning sign.

At legendary Texas barbeque pits like Angelo’s and Smitty’s, the cleaver-wielding pit masters scowl at you like they want to serrate your lung when they hand you your food.

In another unusual twist, here at the Branding Iron, the sides are self serve.

Maybe that’s why I uncharacteristically chose the pea salad over the bland-looking ranch-style pinto beans.

When you can scoop up your own glops of side dishes, you get a pretty good look at ‘em.

For some reason, the pea salad looked intriguing to me.

Of course Suit757 has never voluntarily eaten a salad in his life.

This isn’t that kind of salad.

Think potato salad, macaroni salad, ham salad.

Branding Iron’s pea salad was a cool, refreshing mishmash of cheese, eggs, peas and something red – maybe pimento.

Different. And interesting.

Unfortunately, that was the beginning and end of the positive part of this review.

The fried okra were overcooked into shriveled little bites of petrified veggie crunch. Even a generous application of jalapeño hot sauce couldn’t make them edible.

Likewise, the tableside squeeze bottle of sweet BBQ sauce couldn’t salvage the meat.

The brisket just didn’t have the firmness or flavor of good mesquite-smoked Texas brisket. Dry and tasteless, with a limp mushy texture, this brisket isn’t going to win over any true Texas barbeque connoisseurs.

The fact that it was served at room temperature didn’t help the flavor either.

Ditto for the sausage. Despite a noticeable spice kick, the hot links just didn’t have that dense smoky Texas flavor you expect when dining in the Lone Star state.

My chocolate meringue pie wasn’t bad. (Is it possible for pie to be bad?) But by the time I finished my meal, I had lost my enthusiasm for dessert.

I just wanted to shake the dust off this dusty town and get back on the road.

I left Wichita Falls with a sense of disappointment.

I wanted to find a reason to like the place.

Uncovering hidden roadside gems within homely working class towns in the forgotten middle of America is what this website is all about.

With apologies to that hapless Wichita Falls tourism guy, the Branding Iron just isn’t one of them.

Rating: Wouldn’t Wear Shirt if They Paid Me.