Nick Solares tries adobo and sisig. The video refers to the dishes as “Filipino barbecue” but even though its focused on pig it’s not quite the same as wood-smoked american barbecue. No sight of lechon, though.
Host and professional carnivore Nick Solares heads to the Cobble Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn to sample the Filipino barbecue at F.O.B. (Fresh Off the Boat).
– Robert Moss on “The Tyranny of Texas Barbecue”
@mossr lifts a fist against the tyranny of Texas barbecue. Fight the power, Moss. Kick ’em in the briskets. https://t.co/NJ4tD5S5cS
— Kathleen Purvis (@kathleenpurvis) April 6, 2017
– …and TMBBQ with the retort; claims that Moss is “jealous of neighbor’s popularity”
Texas brisket is so good it makes @mossr seeth with jealousy. https://t.co/jMSeEJllTS pic.twitter.com/kXBYAmBuvd
— TMBBQ (@tmbbq) April 7, 2017
– The 15 pitmasters for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party have been announced; Sam Jones and Rodney Scott represent the Carolinas
– Cuegrass ’17 takes over Davie Street in front of the Pit this Saturday for a day of barbecue, beer, and bluegrass
– Henry’s Smokehouse and the Greenville BBQ Trail Tour are in this Charlotte Five article on what to do in the SC town about 1hr 40 minutes away from Charlotte
– BBQ Hub also has a Charleston barbecue tour for the burgeoning barbecue capital
– Marie, Let’s Eat! is pleasantly surprised by some barbecue in Pigeon Forge from Bennett’s Pit Bar-B-Que
– The Smoking Ho went to the Houston BBQ Festival last weekend and took some great photos
Sights and bites from 2017 #HouBBQ Festival. We had a wonderful time – https://t.co/UC8aBlYuKS @BloodBrosBBQ @LouieMuellerBBQ pic.twitter.com/MBta2RwByN
— Jimmy Ho (@TheSmokingHo) April 11, 2017
– Wayne Mueller BBQ is eyeing a Houston-area location for expansion
– Don’t forget about the fried chicken
If you’re seeking great fried chicken, it pays to look for a restaurant with a picture of a pig in its window. https://t.co/DurHkvrFx5
— Our State Magazine (@ourstatemag) April 10, 2017
Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.
A collection of profiles on whole hog pitmasters throughout the southeast, “The One True Barbecue” by Rien Fertel is an enjoyable if not somewhat controversial read. In particular, Fertel ruffled feathers with his chapters on Wilber Shirley and Ed Mitchell. He portrayed the former’s restaurant as a joint with a racial division of labor between the front of the house and the back and the latter as a marketing gimmick in overalls that cooks hogs in a non-traditional manner (hot and fast rather than the traditional low and slow). However fair Fertel’s representation may or may not be (and he is but one man with his opinion), the fact that he spoke with neither for the purposes of this book only added more embers to the burn barrel.
Fertel ties the profiles together through narrative, following his path from New Orleans to the Carolinas and back, with even a stop in Bushwick to visit Arrogant Swine. Each chapter not only explores the pitmaster(s) themselves but in some cases the history of an entire town with Ayden, NC and its two joints Skylight Inn and Bum’s. He particularly favors Scott’s-Parker’s Barbecue in Lexington, TN, visiting with pitmaster Ricky Parker in the first chapter and then his sons after his death in the last chapter. In between, Fertel visits 12 other whole hog joints in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, and the aforementioned Arrogant Swine in NY.
I enjoyed Fertel’s writing and found this to be a quick read that I devoured over just a few sittings. Fertel cut his teeth writing oral histories for The Southern Foodways Alliance, and his experience writing on southern food showed. A small complaint would be that the only color photographs are confined to a section at the center of the book – I would have loved to see them throughout as opposed to the smaller black and white ones within the chapters. In any case, I can’t recommend “The One True Barbecue” enough.
–Monk
Name: Hometown Bar-B-Que
Date: 12/2/16
Address: 454 Van Brunt St, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Order: ½ pound pulled pork. ½ pound brisket, ½ pound lamb belly, beef rib, medium queso mac and cheese, medium collards (link to menu)
Price: ~$90 (for 3)
Speedy: NO SLEEP TIL BROOKLYN. That’s right, Monk and I took a trip to the big city to play hipster for the weekend, so what’s the first thing on our agenda? Barbecue, of course!
Monk: And not just any barbecue, but artisanal wood smoked barbecue in Red Hook! Friend of the blog Johnny Fugitt actually ranked Hometown Bar-B-Que #2 in his book, The 100 Best Barbecue Restaurants in America. I wanted to check it out last fall when we spent 8 nights in New York but it just didn’t pan out. Mostly because we realized that Red Hook is just not so convenient to get to whether by Uber (much less on fixies, another approved transportation method), whether you are in Manhattan or even in a different part of Brooklyn (as we hipsters found out staying in Williamsburg that weekend).
Speedy: So we rolled up to Hometown, a standalone building near the Upper Bay. The atmosphere is supercool for a couple hipsters like us. It definitely reminded me of a Texas joint, with a cafeteria-style line, a separate bar, and a second dining room complete with a band setup (so hipster!). Monk and I immediately went to work and ordered a little bit of most things on the menu. The meat was cut and weighed right in front of us and we were good to go.
Monk: Well, good to go in the sense that they charged us a buttload of money just to get a decent amount of barbecue. But I guess that’s kind of touristy of us to complain about high prices in New York, so nevermind, back to hipster mode…
Speedy: The first thing to discuss is definitely the beef rib. It was definitely quite the piece of meat. It was seasoned well, providing some bark on the outside, and was cooked to perfection – tender but not overly so. Overall, this was a great start!
Monk: This was my first real beef rib and I agree that it was pretty great, though of course I don’t have the frame of reference that Rudy or even Speedy have. As for the pulled pork, it was fine minus the small pool of grease it was sitting in. This got more and more unappetizing as our lunch went on. I would rank it last of the meats we tried but it was still above average.
Speedy: The brisket definitely exceeded expectations. Monk and I got a cut off a fresh brisket, complete with extra outside.
Monk: Real recognize real…
Speedy: …It was oh-so-peppery and delicious. Not overly seasoned at all – just a really good brisket. The only drawback is that it was a little on the fatty side (we weren’t asked fatty or lean), but I’m nitpicking. This is one thing I’ll be ordering again if I ever find myself in Red Hook again.
Monk: Why would you find yourself in Red Hook again? Pre-gaming for a Bon Iver show or something?
The most interesting meat we ordered was the lamb belly, which was served pulled similar to the pork. In fact, if you weren’t paying attention it was hard to tell the difference between the two just by looking – just a slight variation in brown. It was very, very good albeit again I had nothing to compare it to. The texture varied slightly from the pulled pork and it was more succulent maybe? This being my first time, I’m not doing a good job describing it but I would order it again even if it did have the same pool of grease issue as the pork.
Speedy: I thought the lamb belly was excellent. I was expecting it to look/taste more like pork belly (the only belly with which I’m familiar), but it ended up being quite different. There was definitely a lot of flavor, some vinegar tang, and a little sweetness. I think it tied the brisket for me for my favorite meat of the day (something I try to pick out at the end of every day).
Monk: For a couple of wannabe hipsters like us, Hometown Bar-B-Que was worth the trip from Williamsburg and is now my favorite barbecue joint in New York over Arrogant Swine, Mighty Quinn’s, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que (still so mad about The Smoke Joint, which came up again during this trip).
Speedy: Totally agree, Monk. Overall, I haven’t been uber impressed with NYC ‘cue, but you could drop Hometown in the middle of Lockhart and it would pass just fine.
Ratings:
Atmosphere – 3.5 hogs
Pork – 3.5 hogs
Brisket – 4.5 hogs
Beef Rib – 4 hogs
Lamb belly – 4.5 hogs
Sides – 3 hogs
Overall – 4.5 hogs
