Friday Find: Aaron Franklin on the Dave Chang Show

In this conversation, Dave Chang focuses on how Franklin has become a shokunin, or master craftsman, for barbecue. In addition to the usual barbecue talk, Chang also asks Franklin a lot of questions about the hospitality that Franklin shows everyone that comes to Franklin Barbecue and how hard it was for him to step away from being in the restaurant almost 22 hours day.

In 2009, when Aaron Franklin and his wife, Stacy, opened up a barbecue trailer on the side of a highway in Austin, Texas, they had no idea it would snowball into one of the most popular barbecue restaurants in the nation. But Franklin Barbecue wouldn’t have become what it is without Aaron’s unwavering commitment to hard work and dedication. A decade removed from the Austin institution’s humble beginnings, Dave speaks with the world-class pitmaster from the Uber Eats House during SXSW about transfusing love and care into cooking, making an intentional effort to maintain work-life balance, and growing the restaurant through failure.

Linkdown: 11/14/18

– Bill Addison’s fifth annual list for Eater is now out and includes 2 barbecue restaurants: 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio and Franklin Barbecue in Austin; Franklin is one of only five restaurants (barbecue or otherwise) that have made his list all five years

– Whole hog barbecue is making its way to Texas

Carolina-style whole-hog barbecue is also making inroads in the self-proclaimed capital of Texas barbecue, Austin. Chef Evan LeRoy of LeRoy & Lewis Barbecue uses a trailer-mounted, whole-hog pit to offer pulled pork on his regular menu.

In perhaps the most ambitious implementation of Carolina-style whole-hog barbecue in Texas, chef Ted Prater of Banger’s Sausage House & Beer Garden in Austin is building a self-contained smokehouse with custom-built pits dedicated to cooking whole hogs. It’ll be ready in December.

– The owners behind Sauceman’s in Charlotte have sold the lot their restaurant sits on and are looking to relocate in Southend

– A short photo post on B’s Barbecue in Greenville

– From this month’s Garden and Gun, former Charlotte Magazine editor Michael Graff recalls the ribs he grew up on in Charles County, Maryland

– Dr. Howard Conyers spoke at his undergrad alma mater, NC A&T, yesterday on how science influenced his love of barbecue

– The more you know

– Damon Stainbrook, a former French Laundry sous chef, has opened his second Pig in a Pickle barbecue restaurant location in the SF area and is smoking onsite over California white oak

– I continue to love how Dave Grohl’s fallback profession is seemingly “Carolina pitmaster”

– Update: no longer a fallback profession:

Linkdown: 9/19/18

– Operation BBQ Relief has made its way to Wilmington and Fayetteville in the aftermath of Florence

– Sounds alright to me!

– The Takeout stumbles upon the fabled “short, fast-moving line at Franklin Barbecue phenomenon

– Midwood Smokehouse is a Charlotte restaurant that has expanded to the ‘burbs

– Chef Ford Fry picks three barbecue restaurants in Atlanta – Fox Bros BBQ, Das BBQ, and Community Q

– Catch replays of the first show of “TrueSouth” from John T. Edge and Wright Thompson all this week on SEC Network

– TrueSouth even brought up Rodney Scott last week to Bristol to treat ESPN to a pig pickin tailgate

 

Friday Find: Eating Through Austin’s Hot Luck Festival

The Hot Luck Festival was started by Aaron Franklin, Mike Thelin (co-founder of Feast Portland), and James Moody (owner of Austin’s Mohawk), and this year’s edition took place in Austin over Memorial Day Weekend. Farideh Sedeghin of America’s Test Kitchen gives you the lowdown in this video.

Join MUNCHIES Test Kitchen Director Farideh Sadeghin as she eats her way through Austin, Texas’ Hotluck music and food festival. This casual event is a hodgepodge of everything locals and visitors alike love about the city—good music, fun people, and the best barbeque known to man.