Gavin Cleaver

Long-time readers of this blog will remember the irrepressible mischief of my wife, Richard (not her real name). Well, one of the greatest regrets of our marriage is that I took her to Pecan Lodge one time on an off-day. It was good, but not great. She was unimpressed. I had been one time before that, and it was unbelievable, like a choir of brisket sirens singing me on to the rocks of heart disease. Forever after her visit, when I had spoken with someone about Pecan Lodge in her presence, she offered the rejoinder that, actually, it wasn't that good.

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An Englishman in BBQ Sauce

This has been a constant thorn in my side. The yin to my yang, the Bonnie to my Clyde, our marriage could not be complete until she had seen Pecan Lodge for what it is, the best barbecue place in Dallas, and a review that I foolishly threw away on page three of a three-page article about having barbecue for lunch. Well, Mother's Day was the day I chose to right all of these wrongs. Driving down with her and the stepson, she mentioned that this was the "last chance" she would give Pecan Lodge. The stakes had been raised. She does not tolerate fools gladly, nor does she tolerate average brisket. She also still enjoys sides more than barbecue, which will at some stage require marriage counseling, but we're not there yet.

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Gavin Cleaver

Here's something -- I am a very big fan of baseball. I can't explain why. I guess it's like really fast cricket. Anyway, I used to watch it late at night on TV back in the U.K. quite obsessively. It's the only American sport I've ever managed to get on board with, American football being poorly named and like rugby only with pads and a lot more stopping, and basketball having a meaningless amount of points-scoring to a man brought up on 0-0 soccer matches in the biting winter cold.

Here's something else -- I'm a Rays fan. I know, I know. Theirs was the first baseball stadium I visited, on a holiday to Florida, and the idea of a baseball stadium being entirely indoors amused me no end. "What happens if the ball hits the roof?" I asked the guy next to me. "It happens sometimes," he shrugged, indifferent to the chaos that architects can wreak on sports. "Hey, are you Australian?"

As such, being 15 minutes' drive from a major league stadium, I find myself at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington a lot. Luckily, as with many major public attractions in Texas (especially the delights one can find at the State Fair), the cartoonish aspect of Texan stereotypes is played up to the nth degree. This is because Texas is fun, and doesn't take itself too seriously. No one in Britain would go to an over the top British-themed anything. I saw the version of Britain at Epcot and I vomited out my spleen in fury.

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Frisco is an odd place for anything that isn't a strip mall. All those strange brick buildings are meant to give it character, I suppose, but end up making the whole place look like the efforts of a pioneering architect who desires a standardized building, and has had southern European buildings described to them over the phone and just run with it.

"What bricks do we need, Jim?"

"Oh, I dunno, everything else around here is constructed out of a strange mixture of plywood and concrete, as if to taunt the regular tornadoes. Let's just go with whatever brick you can turn up."

"I've found this brick, but the colour of it burns with the intensity of a thousand suns."

"Perfect, Steve, perfect."

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Kiernan Maletsky

The photographer only put a knife here for composition. We didn't really use one. Stop emailing me.

Our Englishman in BBQ Sauce finally made it down to Lockhart, the Vatican City of Texas barbecue, where he and his posse gorged on smoked meat from Black's Barbecue, Smitty's and, as you'll see below, Kreuz Market. He went. He ate. He was conquered by a deep, some say oddly disturbing, love of smoked beef.

I had to sit down twice on the trip from Smitty's to Kreuz Market. It's not a long walk. We actually agreed, in an Equal Opportunities BBQ Posse Team Decision (EOBBQPTD), that we should walk back to the car, still parked outside Black's, and pathetically drive the remaining half a mile to Kreuz Market. We felt bad about it. We felt bad about eating so much meat. There was open rebellion in the EOBBQP. None of them wanted more meat. Despite these "problems," we pushed on. The trilogy of Lockhart BBQ is something to aim for, a life achievement you can tell everyone you've done. Not everyone outside Texas will know what you're talking about of course, but that's their loss.

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Kiernan Maletsky

Crikey.

Our Englishman in BBQ Sauce finally made it down to Lockhart, the Vatican City of Texas barbecue, where he and his posse gorged on smoked meat from Black's Barbecue (see yesterday's post), Smitty's and, coming tomorrow, Kreuz Market. As soon as the Border Patrol rounds him up, he'll be back in Dallas eating North Texas barbecue, no doubt washed in tears of longing and disappointment.

The short walk across Lockhart, past the picturesque square and the old-timey buildings, was uncomfortable. We had all eaten too much at the first venue of three. As much as I can blame the Equal Opportunities BBQ Posse (EOBBQP) for their incredible desire to come to the capital of Texas barbecue and eat green beans and pasta, we were all the guilty parties. I will now introduce a scale of how afraid we are of more barbecued meat (and the current severity of the meat sweats) at this time. I would say that, on a scale of excited at the prospect to about to vomit in a trashcan, we were probably, as a group, at a level in the upper reaches, nervously considering the cost of heart bypass surgery.

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Kiernan Maletsky

I hope it's not lunchtime where you are.

No doubt you've heard of Lockhart. It's a small, attractive town out somewhere south of Austin. It has an antiques shop that contains items from a more questionable period in America's history, a large building in the town square reminiscent of Denton and a gigantic metal fish that, while an attractive shade of orange, serves no purpose whatsoever. Lockhart is, understandably, not famous for any of these things. It is, for reasons I cannot fully understand (and that fall outside of my job description of "guy that does no research and waffles on interminably"), famous for its high concentration of some of the finest barbecue restaurants in Texas.

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Kiernan Maletsky

Odom's BBQ is an interesting site. I really like it. You pull up outside, having driven past the vastly inferior Babb Bros. just a mile down the road (over the bridge of many names), and realize you have gone from the Babbs end of Singleton (nicely landscaped, trees with lights and shit) to just a mile down the same road, arriving at an area with, it's safe to say, significantly less investment. Back in the UK, these kinds of changes are more clearly signposted. They happen over a distance, gradually. You know what you're getting into. "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING BRIXTON. REPENT THY SINS." It doesn't really say that, but there's no need. The first time I ever went to Brixton, a bustling part of South London, I came out the underground station to be greeted by a car on fire, in the middle of a busy high street, with everyone just going about their business.

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Jaime-Paul Falcon

Somewhere, illicit and delicious meat is being sold in a parking lot.

When I say to you "pop-up restaurant," you might envision such things as an experienced chef temporarily occupying an artful and attractive space in a prime location somewhere to try out a new concept or two. Perhaps you think of a fun new approach to dining testing out the commercial possibilities of such a venture. Definitely, there would at least be nice table linen, you know, and the establishment would have a roof and a door.

None of these particulars apply to the "pop-up restaurant" I discovered yesterday in a parking lot in North Carrollton. In fact, given the smoker attached to a truck full of wood, the awkward ordering of barbecue from a non-existent menu, and the word of mouth way I discovered this place, I would term it more "guerrilla barbecue" than anything else. Insurgent barbecue, entrenched in parking lots in North Texas, but way more delicious than civil wars or religious extremism.

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Sara Blankenship

Triple fusion. That's one more fusion than you've ever SEEN. MORE FUSION. THUS BETTER.

Now, let's say you want to combine the heavy, meat-based joys of barbecue with the relatively light, raw fish-based delights of sushi. You're clearly having a boring day. Nothing's gone right for you so far. You tried combining Vietnamese and Mexican food. That fell down at the pho burrito. Korean and Italian was a no-go -- the bulgogi pasta bake came out like some sort of nightmare dimension shepherd's pie. This whole day you took off your real job to become a famed unlikely fusion chef has been a letdown so far.

Stand fast, though, for what is this on the horizon? It's a picture of a sushi roll.

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Gavin Cleaver

Let's hope the restaurant don't issue a rib-uttal. OH, MY SIDES.

Beer is a lovely word. We can all agree on that. Beer. There it is. If you had to add an adjective in front of such a glorious noun with the aim of improving it further, what would it be? Delicious? Cheap? Gold-plated? What about free?! FREE BEER. That is the maximum possible improvement of the word "beer." That is also the no-brainer this barbecue place is offering. It's not just Miller Lite or whatever urine is normally given away free, either. It's real, honest-to-Texan-God Shiner Bock. I haven't pushed the limits of this offer yet, but I will report back over whether I can purchase one small side and sit there for five hours, getting increasingly drunk and shouting at my mac and cheese. "HEY MAC AND CHEESE! WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE! IS THAT BACON? YOU ARE SO AWESOME."

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