#Bbq restaurants near me mac#

Brisket (fatty and lean), shoulder clod, dry-rubbed and slightly sweet spare ribs, pork chops, and Kreuz Original sausage are always available. If a wide variety of meat is what you crave, this is your Mecca. Add to the mix an outdoor patio with live music, a curated wine list, and local craft beers, and you have what has become the quintessential Dallas barbecue experience.

Two types of sausage are made on the premises, and the at-least-one-pound beef rib is a carnivore’s dream. The delicate meat is meant to be pinched between three fingers and popped into your mouth. Do not insult it by poking it with a fork. Everything is made on-site.Įating a hunk of the brisket-with its magenta smoke ring and crisp, almost caramelized bark-is a primal experience.

#Bbq restaurants near me mac#

Mac and cheese (made with real cheese) gets some heat from fresh green chiles. Aunt Polly’s banana pudding is by far the finest in Dallas.

Instead of turning out trendy sides, they stick close to the food their grandparents cooked. The Fourtons honor generations of their respective family recipes. Pecan Lodge’s excellence extends beyond the meat. That dedication is what draws reverent meat lovers to wait in lines at the full-service restaurant the Fourtons opened two years ago in Deep Ellum. His four off-set smokers are manned 24/7 to keep temperatures consistent. Pitmaster Justin’s dedication to the low-and-slow method of cooking meat over mesquite is borderline insane. Moist brisket served in several other places fared better, but no other restaurant ticked off as many boxes as Pecan Lodge. We figured this was the place all contenders had to beat for bragging rights. Since owners Diane and Justin Fourton opened their first counter-service stand at the Dallas Farmers Market in 2010, Pecan Lodge has dominated the Dallas barbecue scene. Our search for the best barbecue in Dallas began with a meal at Pecan Lodge. Stacks on Stacks: The Pitmaster sandwich at Pecan Lodge piles fresh-cut jalapeños, coleslaw, and sauce on top of brisket, pulled pork, and sausage. The future is here, people, and it is perfectly smoked. They snap pictures and upload them to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and tag them #DallasBBQ. They happily stand in long lines and treat pitmasters like rock stars. It’s all about the quality of the smoke.īefore they bite, they examine smoke rings, pinch the bark, and claim they can taste the difference between mesquite-, oak-, hickory-, and pecan-smoked meats. They shun the volume-driven shortcut cooking done in gas-fired models and respect the qualities of the labor-intensive offset pit, where a wood-burning fire must be tended with love to maintain a consistent temperature. Before ordering, they glance behind the counter and check out the type of smoker being used. Diners’ knowledge of what it takes to achieve barbecue greatness has deepened. We also learned the Dallas palate has grown more sophisticated. Most embrace the traditional low-and-slow cooking method used by the old-timers. Many of the new barbecue joints and restaurants have added modern touches, such as craft beer and fancy versions of coleslaw, but the focus remains on smoked meats. As we continued to eat, narrowing the list to 20 became a challenge. This time, we discovered more than 16 contenders just in our first week of eating-and they were all in Dallas. Lockhart Smokehouse was a year away from opening its doors in Bishop Arts.Ī couple of months ago, we again set out on an expedition to find the best barbecue in Dallas, to see if the meat discussion we’d started six years ago had generated any smoke. Pecan Lodge was just getting on its feet in Shed 2 at the Dallas Farmers Market, not yet a destination for meat lovers from all over the Southwest. In 2013, Texas Monthly hired him as its barbecue editor. Daniel Vaughn, the guy we hired to compile our barbecue list in 2010, was a humble blogger, a part-time writer who made his living as an architect. Only five of the 16 places we recognized were in Dallas.Īs often happens, we were a little ahead of the curve. The highest-ranked restaurant with a Dallas address? Smokey John’s Bar-B-Que and Home Cooking. (We think.) The second-best spot was in Red Oak. The best Dallas joint was actually in Forest Hill, which is somewhere southeast of Fort Worth. In 2010, in our first-ever ranking of barbecue joints, we discovered that the city was a barbecue desert. D Magazine has fixed one of the few food deficiencies in town.