Barbecue has become one of Texas’s most popular exports, but an important aspect of meat market–style barbecue is too often lost in translation. I support the brisket evangelists who choose to set up shop from San Diego to Portland, Maine. Most of them understand the value of sausage-making, cooking with all wood, and serving barbecue sauce on the side. Those who take their cues from Central Texas sell smoked meats by the pound like the meat markets of Luling, Lockhart, and Taylor. Some of them, though, need to familiarize themselves with the power of their scales.
When eating barbecue alone, which is often when I’m on the road, I ask for a couple ribs, a single slice of smoked turkey, and maybe a slice each of fatty and lean brisket. “Sorry, a half pound is the minimum order,” is a response that really gets my hackles up. I rarely hear it in Texas, but as I travel the country looking for Texas-style barbecue it has become too common. The half-pound minimum needs to stop. It’s wasteful, poor customer service, and flies on the face of the tradition pitmasters outside the state are trying to emulate.
Presumably, many of these far-flung pitmasters have visited the hallowed grounds of Smitty’s or Kreuz Market in Lockhart. At these historic meat market–style barbecue joints, customers can order just one of anything, be it a rib bone, a pork chop, a sausage link, or a brisket slice. Bringle’s Smoking Oasis in Nashville makes it just that easy. When I visited last month, the cutter weighed up what I asked for, and charged based on the per pound price. It cost $6.71 for 0.24 pounds of brisket, which is $28 per pound (all prices mentioned are before tax and tip). It wasn’t any more difficult a calculation than if I’d wanted a whole pound.
Requiring customers to order half a pound of every meat discourages them from experiencing the variety you have to offer. At Joe’s Barbecue, a food truck in Kent, Ohio, getting a taste of both brisket and brisket pastrami meant I was already a full pound of meat in before I got to the ribs or chicken. Thankfully I can expense the barbecue I order (thank you, Texas Monthly), and I had my kids with me to help eat. Through the food truck’s window, I asked the owner if he’d ever considered offering a sampler tray. “I wish we had one,” he said as I stared at the butcher paper menu that required only a stroke of his Sharpie to make it happen.
In downtown Oakland, California, recently I stopped at Smokin’ Woods BBQ. A three-meat combination plate was $25, and included a slice of brisket, pork ribs, and a link of house-made beef sausage, in addition to sides of mac and cheese and greens. Just a few blocks away in the new location of Horn Barbecue, the same meal is $46 ($17.50 brisket, $14.50 spare ribs, $8 link, two $6 sides). It’s not that Horn’s barbecue is that much more expensive, but the restaurant makes you order by the half pound, which meant three slices of brisket and three spare ribs. It doesn’t offer combination plates, which I understand can be less profitable if built by a careless cutter. But if a barbecue joint only lists a price per pound, it must have a scale, and I bet that scale measures quantities smaller than a half pound. So why make your customers buy more barbecue than they want?
Half-pound minimums are bad enough, but I’ve got a bigger bone to pick with those who make their customers buy six ribs just to get a taste. I hadn’t seen the half-rack minimum at a Texas-style barbecue joint until I visited DAS BBQ in Atlanta last year and spent $16 on a half rack of ribs when I only wanted one bone. Thankfully, they’ve since revised their menu to add combination plates. Northeast of Atlanta, Moonie’s Texas Barbecue in Flowery Branch offers combination plates, but there’s an $8 upcharge for adding ribs because the joint insists on putting a half rack on the platter.
At Wood Shop BBQ in Seattle, you’ll spend $36 just to get its smallest portion of brisket and ribs, which is a half pound and a half rack, respectively, without any sides. For the same price at Jack’s BBQ, also in Seattle, I got the Texas Trinity Plate with brisket, ribs, two links of sausage, and two sides. Shotgun Willie’s BBQ in Nashville only offers ribs by the half rack for $21, and if you want the three signature meats of brisket, oxtails, and pork ribs from Destination Smokehouse in Hemet, California, it’ll run $61 before you get to the sides.
Over in Orange County, at the new Smoke Queen BBQ, I looked forward to sampling this new and exciting barbecue joint’s pork belly two ways, brisket, pulled pork, and pork ribs. By now you can probably guess how much I had to order. When the tray arrived, it had six slices of pork belly char siu and twelve chunks of pork belly siu yuk with crispy skin. Smaller portions, it seemed, were more than possible. The ribs, too, had been separated into six individual portions, each containing a singular bone. It was as if nature had provided obvious guidelines for separating a rack of pork ribs into thirteen individual servings. But, seriously, a rack of ribs is so easy to separate, it’s basically perforated. There’s no need to make people buy six of them when you’re selling barbecue by the pound. It would be like a grocery store demanding you buy the entire bunch of bananas rather than peeling a single one off if you prefer.
I should point out that I’ve found plenty of Texas-style joints outside the state selling barbecue in whatever weight increments the customer desires. Combination plates, also abound, are a good way to try three meats and a couple sides. The best deal I’ve seen for solo diners was at Old Colony Smokehouse in Edenton, North Carolina, where owner Adam Hughes added a solo sampler to the menu. For just $35, it includes small portions of five different smoked meats and two sides. That’s my kind of sampling, but I know it doesn’t work for every barbecue joint. All I ask is that if you are selling barbecue by the pound, use the power of your scales to let customers order smaller portions and enjoy more of your menu. It’s the Texas way.
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