Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket

By S. D. Engelhardt and John T. Edge

Explore the world of barbecue as food and culture through first-person stories from pit masters, barbecue joint owners, sausage makers, and wood suppliers.

It’s no overstatement to say that the state of Texas is a republic of barbecue. Whether it’s brisket, sausage, ribs, or chicken, barbecue feeds friends while they catch up, soothes tensions at political events, fuels community festivals, sustains workers of all classes, celebrates brides and grooms, and even supports churches. Recognizing just how central barbecue is to Texas’s cultural life, Elizabeth Engelhardt and a team of eleven graduate students from the University of Texas at Austin set out to discover and describe what barbecue has meant to Texans ever since they first smoked a beef brisket.

Republic of Barbecue presents a fascinating, multifaceted portrait of the world of barbecue in Central Texas. The authors look at everything from legendary barbecue joints in places such as Taylor and Lockhart to feedlots, ultra-modern sausage factories, and sustainable forests growing hardwoods for barbecue pits. They talk to pit masters and proprietors, who share the secrets of barbecue in their own words. Like side dishes to the first-person stories, short essays by the authors explore a myriad of barbecue’s themes—food history, manliness and meat, technology, nostalgia, civil rights, small-town Texas identity, barbecue’s connection to music, favorite drinks such as Big Red, Dr. Pepper, Shiner Bock, and Lone Star beer—to mention only a few. An ode to Texas barbecue in films, a celebration of sports and barbecue, and a pie chart of the desserts that accompany brisket all find homes in the sidebars of the book, while photographic portraits of people and places bring readers face-to-face with the culture of barbecue.

“This beautiful collection, colorful enough to display as a coffee-table book, contributes significantly to the oral history tradition and the study of barbecue simultaneously.” —Journal of American Folklore

“Tar Heels probably shouldn’t own up to liking Texas barbecue, but we have no hesitation about saying that we love this book about it. The voices of the folks who make it happen and this book’s wonderful photographs add up to a splendid portrait of Lone Star barbeculture.” —John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed, authors of Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North CarolinaBarbecue

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780292799233

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This book was supported in part by a

University Co-operative Society

Subvention Grant awarded by

The University of Texas at Austin.

Copyright © 2009 by the University of Texas Press

Foreword © 2009 by John T. Edge

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Republic of barbecue : stories beyond the brisket / by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt . . . [et al.] ;

foreword by John T. Edge. — 1st ed.

          p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-292-71998-9 (paper : alk. paper)

1. Barbecue cookery—Southern States. 2. Barbecue cookery—Southern States—Anecdotes. 3. Southern States—Social life and customs. I. Engelhardt, Elizabeth Sanders Delwiche, 1969–

TX849.B3R462 2009

641.7′60975—dc22

2008053303

Design by EmDash, Austin

Cover photograph by Matt Wright-Steel

Institutional E-book ISBN: 978-0-292-79923-3

Individual E-book ISBN: 9780292799233

REPUBLIC

OF

BARBECUE

Bridwell Texas History Series

House Park Bar-B-Que, Austin, Texas

TO OUR FRIENDS WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY:

MAY ARCHIE, JIM MCMURTRY, AND BOBBY MUELLER

Taylor Cafe, Taylor, Texas

Dziuk’s Meat Market, Castroville, Texas

CONTENTS

COVER

COPYRIGHT

FOREWORD

PLOTTING THE BARBECUE REPUBLIC

by John T. Edge

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

WE RAISE OUR GLASSES

SIDEBAR Twenty-four Hours of Barbecue

INTRODUCTION:

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CENTRAL TEXAS BARBECUE

SECTION 1 FOOD AND FOODWAYS

STORIES FROM JOE SULLIVAN

House Park Bar-B-Que, Austin, Texas

THE CENTRAL TEXAS PLATE

SIDEBAR Pie and More Pie!

MILES OF HANGING MEAT

Legacies and Linkages of Sausage

SIDEBAR Ways to Make Your Own Smoker If Your Name Is MacGyver

DRINKING TEXAS HISTORY

SIDEBAR In Homage to Big Red

STORIES FROM THE ARCHIE FAMILY

Church of the Holy Smoke, New Zion Missionary Baptist Church Barbecue, Huntsville, Texas

STORIES FROM MARVIN DZIUK

Dziuk’s Meat Market, Castroville, Texas

SECTION 2 IDEAS OF PLACE

STORIES FROM BEN WASH

Ben’s Long Branch Barbecue, Austin, Texas

STORIES FROM THE INMAN FAMILY

Inman’s Ranch House, Marble Falls, Texas

THE BRIDGE TO BEN’S

Connecting City Politics to Neighborhood Barbecue

SIDEBAR Planes, Trains, and . . . Kayaks?

RED DUST, WHITE BREAD, BLUE COLLAR

at the Edges of Small-Town Texas

SIDEBAR Barbecue on Screen

STORIES FROM THE MEYER FAMILY

Meyer’s Sausage Company and Meyer’s Elgin Smokehouse, Elgin, Texas

STORIES FROM TERRY WOOTAN

Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que, Llano, Texas

SECTION 3 DREAMING OF OLD TEXAS AND ORIGINAL BARBECUE

STORIES FROM VENCIL MARES

Taylor Cafe, Taylor, Texas

STORIES FROM RICK SCHMIDT

Kreuz Market, Lockhart, Texas

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BOLL

SIDEBAR Timeline of Political Barbecues

BARBACOA?

The Curious Case of a Word

AUTHENTICITY

The Search for the Real Thing

STORIES FROM AURELIO TORRES

Mi Madre’s, Austin, Texas

STORIES FROM THE BRACEWELL FAMILY

Southside Market, Elgin, Texas

SECTION 4 WAYS OF LIFE

STORIES FROM NICOLE DUGAS

Barbecuties, Austin, Texas

STORIES FROM RICHARD LOPEZ

Gonzales Food Market, Gonzales, Texas

CAVEMEN AND FIRE BUILDERS

Manliness and Meat

THE FEMININE MESQUITE

SIDEBAR Brides and Brisket

NO SON SANDÍAS

Girlhood on the Ranch

STORIES FROM BOBBY MUELLER

Louie Mueller Barbecue, Taylor, Texas

STORIES FROM JOE CAPELLO

City Market, Luling, Texas

SECTION 5 BRIGHT LIGHTS, BARBECUE CITIES

STORIES FROM PAT MARES

Ruby’s Barbecue, Austin, Texas

STORIES FROM WAUNDA MAYS

Sam’s Barbecue, Austin, Texas

EATING MEAT TO THE BEAT

Music and Texas Barbecue

SIDEBAR Barbecue Melodies: Post Oak Smoke Gets in Their Eyes?

THINKING LOCALLY, BARBECUING . . . GLOBALLY?

PLACELESS BARBECUES

The Strange but True Story of Chains, Stands, and Interstates

SIDEBAR Foreign Barbecue

SIDEBAR Barbecue Haute Cuisine: Brisket Gets Fancy

STORIES FROM DANNY HABERMAN

Pok-e-Jo’s Smokehouse, Inc., Austin, Texas

STORIES FROM ART BLONDIN

Artz Rib House, Austin, Texas

SECTION 6 MODERN BARBECUE, CHANGING BARBECUE

STORIES FROM JIM MCMURTRY

Smokey Denmark Sausage Company, Austin, Texas

STORIES FROM RONNIE VINIKOFF

Forestry Management, Rockdale, Texas

IT AIN’T EASY BEING GREEN WHEN YOU’RE SMOKED

(But Barbecue Is Trying!)

SIDEBAR Fun With Numbers, or How Much in a Year?

TECHNO-CUE?

Barbecue in the Postindustrial Age

STORIES FROM DON WILEY

D. Wiley, Inc., Buda, Texas

STORIES FROM TYLER GRAHAM

Graham Enterprises, Gonzales and Elgin, Texas

PERSONAL BARBECUE HISTORIES: Who We Are and How We Got Here

SIDEBAR DARING TO GO THERE: Sports and Barbecue

SIDEBAR Methodology Appendix: Fancy Words for How We Did What We Did

AS YOU DIGEST: Recommended Reading

SIDEBAR Beginnings, Not Endings

INDEX

PHOTO CREDITS

Kreuz Market, Lockhart, Texas

IN THE YEARS TO COME, THIS BOOK WILL SERVE SCHOLARS AS A ROAD MAP FOR FURT HER INQUIRY. MORE IMPORT ANTLY, PERHAPS, IT WILL SERVE WORKADAY TEXANS AS A BACK-OF-THE-BAR REFERENCE WHEN ARGUMENTS FUELED BY COMESTIBLE COMM UNICATION ARISE.

FOREWORD

Plotting the Barbecue Republic

John T. Edge, Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi

BARBECUE MAY BE our most contested food. Americans, especially those of us who inhabit that broad swath running from Texas through Virginia, obsess over it. We love the good stuff. We loathe the bad stuff. (Bad, by the way, can be defined by both cultural and culinary deficiencies.) And informed by prejudice, provenance, and palate, we argue about which is which.

In The Rhetoric of Barbecue: A Southern Rite and Ritual, originally published in Studies in Popular Culture, Stephen Smith, long of the University of Arkansas, makes a case that, to understand barbecue, you have to make sense of barbecue rhetoric.

Smith, a professor of communication, calls talk of food comestible communication. And, when talk turns to barbecue, Smith says, ample opportunities for disagreement arise, including ones over (1) definition of the South; (2) definition of barbecue; (3) correct spelling of the word; (4) type of meat; (5) type of cut; (6) ingredients for sauce; (7) type of pit; (8) type of wood; (9) wet versus dry cooking; (10) the highest shaman; (11) the preparation ritual; and (12) the design of the temple.

Let’s set aside any promise of consensus on what is and is not the South. By my reckoning, the people and places profiled in the book you hold in your hands are, very generally speaking, borderland southerners. One foot in the South. One foot in the West.

Through their chosen vocations, they proclaim an allegiance that is more specific. They are citizens of the Barbecue Republic. Or, more accurately, they pledge their troth to various barbecue republics, some of which transcend region, while others don’t cross the county line.

Barbecue is a provincial dish. Remember Tip O’Neill, who served our country as Speaker of the House of Representatives for what seemed like forever? O’Neill was fond of saying, All politics is local. And so it is with barbecue. All barbecue is local.

Sociologist John Shelton Reed went O’Neill one better. Reed observed that barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes. And so it is with barbecue in Central Texas. Although oftentimes, the drive is far shorter.

I direct the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. We document and celebrate the diverse food cultures of the American South. (Yes, Central Texas falls within our inclusive purview.)

We’re serious about what we do. Scholarship catalyzes our oral-history and film work. An acknowledgment of a collective debt of pleasure, owed to generations of cooks whose names are lost to the ages, undergirds our efforts. We follow a path blazed by public historians, paying homage to everyday heroes, men and women who have spent their lives in the pit or at the stove.

In Elizabeth Engelhardt and her crew of young scholars, we have found fellow travelers. Herein, they parse the arguments in which barbecue-obsessed Texans engage and identify the humanity within. They revel in the knowledge that a study of regional foodways offers entrée to examining issues of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Yet they acknowledge that while much of import can be gleaned from a close reading of oral-history transcripts, barbecue is also about pleasure, about the smoky punch of brisket cooked over smoldering post oak, about the piquant burst of flavor that gushes from hot-gut sausage, about the sweet soulfulness of buried-for-a-day barbacoa.

This is a signal moment in American foodways. Scholars, and laymen too, are waking up to the import of regional food culture. They’re recognizing that barbecue is one of our great American folk foods, a vernacular cultural creation worthy of intellectual energy and acuity.

Inman’s Ranch House, Marble Falls, Texas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We Raise Our Glasses

FIRST AND FOREMOST, thanks go to the many people who gave their stories, time, and energy to this project. We never imagined so many people would give so much in response to our initial phone calls. Interviews were almost always at least an hour long. Photographs and tours often took even more time. People have shared memories, displayed objects, and helped us reach other people whose stories we now treasure.

Equal gratitude goes to our community partner, the Central Texas Barbecue Association. Led by Luke Zimmermann, and open to anyone interested in barbecue in the region, the members are the ultimate parents of this particular project—though I don’t think they quite imagined where we would take it when they made that first phone call.

John T. Edge, Amy Evans, Mary Beth Lasseter, and the rest of the staff and members of the Southern Foodways Alliance have been there for all of our questions, needed infusions of moral support and enthusiasm, and new ideas all along the way. Having us speak at their 2007 symposium was both an honor and a way to make our project better, since we came back with new contacts and questions. John T.’s graceful participation within these pages is also part of our deep thanks. Another Southern Foodways member, Robb Walsh, has similarly been there for phone calls and brainstorming sessions. We appreciate his willingness to come along for the project.

The Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, including all of its faculty members and staff—Bob Abzug, Janet Davis, Cynthia Frese, Steve Hoelscher, Nhi Lieu, Steve Marshall, Jeff Meikle, Julia Mickenberg, Valeri Nichols-Keller, Ella Schwartz, Mark Smith, Shirley Thompson, and Deborah Vargas—is deeply thanked. Thanks too go to the other graduate students in the department, too many to be named but all sincerely appreciated. All of our American Studies friends have helped us, put up with endless barbecue-themed e-mails and party topics (once you start, it proves very difficult to stop talking about barbecue), and picked up the slack as we went into the intense periods of the project. We are an interdisciplinary group, and support also came to individual team members from the English Department and the Creative Writing Program. Cheers go to Anna K. Martin and Brad Haugen, members of the original class who have gone on to careers in New York, and Jackie Lynch, our undergraduate transcriber extraordinaire.

Allison Faust, Dave Hamrick, Erin Mayes, and the rest of the team at University of Texas Press have been such willing partners and coconspirators on the journey. We couldn’t have done it otherwise. They deserve particular thanks for going above and beyond their normal roles to become teachers of the first-time authors on the team, giving workshops and being available to answer questions. They have made the world of publishing much less mysterious and more transparent. Our readers, especially Sarah Robbins, gave us encouragement and suggestions at key points in the project, and we thank them. We are grateful as well for the University Co-operative Society Subvention Grant awarded by the University of Texas at Austin.

For their help solving research emergencies and their generous sharing of expertise, the following get special toasts: fellow travelers Molly O’Neill and Andrew Warnes, Austin food expert Virginia Wood, chef Stephen Cash, wine guru Jane Nickles, Austin music and culture scholar Jason Mellard, Whole Foods Market’s Animal Compassion Product Sourcing Specialist David Norman, Pig Stand legacy holder Mary Ann Hill, brisket whiz John Lundeen at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and cowboy authority Don Reeves at the National Cowboy Museum (proving there can be collaboration across the Red River).

Finally, each of us wishes to thank our families and friends who have stood by us and supported us, eaten barbecue alongside, and driven us home on those days we had just a bit too much.

DETOURS AND BACKROADS

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF BARBECUE

AS WE LISTENED TO CENTRAL TEXAS BARBECUE FOLKS DESCRIBE their days, we realized that barbecue-related events happen around the clock. Here is one look at a full day in Central Texas, twenty-four hours of barbecue.

1:00 A.M. The McMurtrys can log on to their home computer and check the temperature of sausages in their Smokey Denmark Sausage factory through a wireless probe communicating with a computer server in Dallas.

2:00 A.M. Ronnie Vinikoff begins driving from Rockdale to Austin with crates of wood on the back of his truck. He aims to finish the run by six so as to miss Austin’s traffic.

3:00 A.M. Joe Capello heads into City Market in Luling. By half past the hour, he has put the briskets that have been seasoning overnight onto the pit.

4:00 A.M. Luke Zimmermann and Pat Mares are likely in bed at this hour, but fifteen years ago, they were just closing Ruby’s Barbecue down after a busy night serving patrons from Antone’s and Austin’s other hopping music venues.

5:00 A.M. Briskets that started marinating two days ago at the Taylor Cafe get put onto the pit by Vencil Mares’s helper. They will be ready by eleven, when the restaurant starts lunch service.

6:00 A.M. Don Wiley and his wife hit the road with a newly handcrafted smoker in tow, heading to Colorado to deliver a taste of home to a displaced Texan.

7:00 A.M. Contractors roll into condominiums being built across from East Austin’s Ben’s Long Branch Barbecue. Loud nail guns and concrete trucks overwhelm morning restaurant sounds.

8:00 A.M. Potatoes start getting peeled, beans picked, and white bread wrapped in baggies at the New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville. Horace Archie runs any other errands the Church of the Holy Smoke needs.

9:00 A.M. Another batch of sausage goes in the grinder at Burton Sausage. Dry sausage gets smoked four times before traveling to storefront cases.

10:00 A.M. At Southside in Elgin, cabbage is chopped, jalapeños are readied for pickling, and the sausage production is checked. As has occurred for more than 125 years, The Market gets ready for another day of business.

11:00 A.M. Bobby Mueller puts out the flag at Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor. When the flag is out, the restaurant is open.

NOON As many as 560 people can settle in, without forks or sauce, to a weekend lunch at Kreuz Market in Lockhart. No one misses either.

1:00 P.M. Richard Lopez considers leaving the Gonzales Food Market to take lunch or go fishing, but he stays put because he doesn’t want to miss anything. Taking out a knife, he taste-tests the day’s sausage.

2:00 P.M. Joe Sullivan closes down House Park Bar-B-Que after another busy lunch—no reason to work any more than the seventeen and a half hours a week he already does.

3:00 P.M. Terry Wootan drives the Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que van to the Llano airport. He picks up passengers who have flown from Houston and Dallas to refuel and eat barbecue.

4:00 P.M. Representatives from Meyer’s Sausage Company prepare demonstration tables in local grocery stores. While they used to give out the garlic at such events, now they use the plain.

5:00 P.M. Catering trucks depart from Pok-e-Jo’s facility in Round Rock. Someone’s Aunt Edna and other partygoers soon will get a taste of Texas to reminisce about when they’re home.

6:00 P.M. The new air conditioning is on, stations are ready, and the waitstaff at the Salt Lick in Driftwood starts its busy night of serving customers, some of whom have waited two hours.

7:00 P.M. The audience gathers at Artz Rib House in Austin. Tuesday means old-time Texas fiddlers; later in the week, anything goes.

8:00 P.M. A refrigerated truck with directions in the cab lets hunters heading home drop off wild game after hours around back at Dziuk’s Meat Market in Castroville.

Pok-e-Jo’s, Round Rock, Texas

9:00 P.M. Billy Inman returns to Inman’s Ranch House in Marble Falls to stoke the fire for the night. His briskets cook slowly all night long.

10:00 P.M. You can’t feed half a cow, but you can make sure all the whole cows are settled down for the night, so workers perform one last check at the Gonzales feedlot of Graham Enterprises.

11:00 P.M. Lines form at the Barbecuties kiosk on Sixth Street in Austin. Bustling bars mean hungry people wanting brisket to fuel a long night of partying.

MIDNIGHT Sam’s Barbecue in East Austin is at its busiest now as bars start emptying and people make a last detour for ribs. The party and the barbecue roll on for twenty-four more hours, seven days a week, in our nonstop barbecue culture.

INTRODUCTION

The Life and Times of Central Texas Barbecue

Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

WE ALL NEED to eat. Whatever our age, our skin color, our gender, our nationality, or our class, we have a relationship with food. Shouldn’t food, then, be a window into who we are as humans? Into how we think of ourselves, organize our societies, celebrate, pass our daily lives, include some people and exclude others from our families? For a long time, the implicit answer has been no; perhaps food suffered from being so obvious, so common, that it seemed too mundane to spend time on. Clearly, the answer in the United States has changed to yes, in popular culture at least—we have television channels, sections of bookstores, magazines, movies, and songs dedicated to food. We describe our food lovingly or critically, linger over it, and tell each other where to find it. If we let it, food can do more: it can help us talk about how we negotiate race, class, gender, national character, and all the rest of those powerful aspects of ourselves and our societies. Who has food, who shares food, who prepares food for others, and who makes money off food—all are windows into who we are. But—and this is the best part—even while we’re having those serious conversations, we can be playing with our food. We can be laughing, adventuring, partying, and indulging. Even food fights are usually fun.

Some of the rowdiest food fights in the United States involve barbecue. Claims of territory, boundary drawing, and quasi-religious testifying break out over slow-cooked meats. Texas barbecue inspires official proclamations (from as august a body as our state legislature). Its earnest defenders pick fights with other barbecue. Its devotees (including us) have built involved mythologies around both barbecue in general and Texas barbecue in particular.

Barbecue myths go something like this. Pigs are primary. Sauce recipes are secret and guarded to the grave. Barbecue is wonderfully common, unfussy, and even happily unsophisticated: it doesn’t need a parsley-sprig garnish; you don’t have to wear a dress or a tie. Neither can you rush barbecue; it’s the ultimate slow food, and you won’t ever find real barbecue at a fast-food stand. In fact, barbecue connects you to a simpler time before all that civilizing and rushing around of modern life took hold. You can’t make barbecue in a suburban kitchen, and in fact, the best barbecue is the province of men. Barbecue isn’t health conscious; it doesn’t apologize for polluting the air with hickory smoke. If you find a barbecue parking lot where the pickup trucks are next to sports cars and motorcycles, and if that barbecue is off the beaten path, with no listing in the phone book or—heaven forbid—the Internet, and if the pit master is ancient, possibly wearing overalls, certainly speaking with an accent and without regard for the rules of gram-mar—well, then you’ve found real barbecue.

Texas barbecue myths take pride in being rebels. Sure, the myths say, barbecue in Texas remains gloriously unreconstructed: uncivilized and unapologetic. Men barbecue, the process takes time and secret knowledge, and if you find that parking lot in Texas, you’re a fool if you don’t pull in. But, the myths say, true Texas barbecue is all about beef. It came from German and Czech settlers making sausage and then smoking beef brisket in their meat markets. They learned from cowboys how to get the brisket tender. According to the myths, the real thing in Texas comes on a piece of butcher paper, features brisket and sausage, and must be eaten without the nicety of a fork. Maybe you get a knife, but then again, maybe you just share it with the person next to you and leave it chained to the table where you found it. Sides are getting kind of fancy for true Texas barbecue, but maybe you can grab some crackers or white bread from the store and have them along with. Sauce is something amateurs in other states hide behind. If you need help finding your barbecue, you can just head to the barbecue capital (Lockhart) or the sausage capital (Elgin) of Texas—the legislature has officially designated them for you.

Inman’s Ranch House, Marble Falls, Texas

We couldn’t resist the challenge. Were the myths true? What wasn’t being told? What does barbecue tell us about who we are—as Texans, as Americans, as men and women, and, in the words of May Archie, a barbecuer from Huntsville, Texas, white, black, blue, and green? The twelve of us got in our cars. We headed out to crisscross our part of Texas. We set out to see what we could find—and this book is the result of our adventures.

It turns out that we barbecue in lots of ways here (with sauce and without, over different kinds of wood, at different temperatures). We certainly barbecue beef brisket and serve beef sausages, but we also smoke and grind a lot of other things—ribs, pork, venison, turkey, goat, chicken, and mutton. While those cowboys, Anglo and Latino, bequeathed some ingredients and cooking practices, and while those German (and Czech, Alsatian, and even southern white Appalachian) meat markets loom large, African Americans did a lot of the work and should be celebrated by Texas barbecue. Barbecue restaurants in Texas today seat new money at a table with oil money, no money, and old southern money, and all roll up their sleeves and dive into the meal. But then and now, we found that American racial politics—from segregation to gentrification—means not every table has always been open to every person. From Llano to Lockhart, Austin to San Antonio, Taylor to Gonzales, and Huntsville to Marble Falls, Texas barbecue feeds friends catching up with each other; soothes tensions at political events; fuels long-running and upstart community festivals; sustains workers in suits, dresses, and hardhats; celebrates brides and grooms; and even supports churches. Some Texans guard their recipes through generations; others bottle, package, and sell their products through the mail, across the Internet, and in grocery stores around the world. Swaggering men, tough and sweet women, rebellious musicians, Jewish, African American, Asian American, Tejano, Hispanic, conservative, and liberal families, and everyone in between sit down together over brisket and sausages. Even a few vegetarians and environmentalists join the party.

The party in this particular book is like a big community potluck—both in the makeup of the team behind it and in its overall organization. In December 2006, my phone at the University of Texas rang. Luke Zimmermann, the president of the Central Texas Barbecue Association, was looking for someone to help collect, document, and preserve the stories of barbecue culture around Central Texas. While Luke and I had not met before that day, we both knew John T. Edge over at the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi—another organization dedicated to collecting and celebrating the traditions, history, and culture of food in the South. Together with the eleven other authors you see here—who began as students in my graduate class on American foodways and who have since become so much more—the Central Texas Barbecue Association and Southern Foodways helped create this book. We made wish lists of interview subjects by having literal potlucks. We filled our plates, sat down, opened up some bottles of Lone Star, and talked into the night. Staff members of Southern Foodways flew to Austin, local barbecue practitioners and devotees came along, and we all started to imagine how we might take a picture of the life and times of Central Texas barbecue culture.

The Salt Lick, Driftwood, Texas

When we committed to surrounding the stories of the people we interviewed with photographs, essays, and the flights of fancy we call sidebars, we again took the potluck as our model. You can find more about the twelve of us sitting around the potluck’s writing table at the end of

Reviews for Republic of Barbecue

[bostonian71 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A thought-provoking anthology that has more hits than misses. The editors' potluck (their term) combines interviews with barbecue producers with essays that attempt to take broader views of society, history and culture; as a lifelong Yankee I'm not familiar with central Texas and this book did provide a more complete (and complicated) picture of the barbecue scene than the myths provide. Unfortunately the historical-sociological essays sometimes repeat stories or claims that were found a few pages earlier, as if the editors thought no one would read the book straight through or wouldn't remember quotes from one page to the next. (It's also a shame that one of the personal essays is more about the author's outsider angst than anything else.) The detours into barbecue-related film references, song titles, etc. are silly but entertaining. All one needs is a plate of brisket to go with the book!

[billsearth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I got this book thinking it would be amusing. Instead I find the author has collected hundreds of outstanding stories of a simple way of life in which the vast majority of the barbecue place owners have followed. The stories are full of determination to produce high quality food, with side dishes from scratch while keeping prices low so the average town resident can eat there anytime. The work ethic involves a lot of working with the hands, starting at 4AM every day and in some areas such as Austin, staying open until very late at night. In the accompanying photos which are mostly of the people making the bbq and readying the pits, cutting wood, building the pits and so on, you can readily see the simple rural life. There are no smartphones, no high-tech food processors. There is a lot of attention to preparing the side dishes, potato salad and beans from scratch, just like the meat.This is not a book of recipes, but a travel through rural Texas and its way of life and the work ethic of its people. It belongs with Texas culture books, not with food books. On rural Texas culture and that work ethic, it is one of the best I have read.