My most recent newsletter, which dropped just before Christmas, generated a flurry of emails responding to my discussion of barbecue restaurant closures as well as my having a little fun with winemakers’ long-running quest to make wine and barbecue pairings happen. (Don’t poke fun at the oenophiles—they’re an ornery lot.)
With so much good material, I thought I’d round out the year with a couple of items from the mailbag as well as tie up a few loose ends.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Quick note for subscribers: this is the Cue Sheet section of the Robert F. Moss newsletter, which focuses on the latest news from the world of barbecue. The Charleston Notebook and Miscellany sections post later in the week, except when I’m busy eating Christmas goose or ringing in the New Year. If you’re interested only in the barbecue material or would prefer to read only dispatches on the Charleston dining scene, you can change your notification preferences on the Manage Subscription page of your Substack account.
Winter is Coming
Several restaurateurs reached out with responses to my commentary on the spate of notable barbecue restaurants closures, and their insights did little to relieve my concern.
Blake Stoker of Blake’s at Southern Milling talked to me back in November about the high price of beef and how he’s handling it at his restaurant in Martin, Tennessee. He recently shared with me some text threads he’s had with other folks in the industry, which highlight “it has been a particularly tough year for all types of restaurants.” High prices across the board (and not just for beef) is a key factor, but “at the end of the day,” the thread observes, “I think it is boiling down to a lack of extra disposable income for consumers to come and spend by eating out.”
Another restaurateur echoed Stoker’s sentiments in an email exchange. “In talking with restaurant friends (and not just barbecue) from all over the country,” she writes, “this has been an especially difficult fall/winter. Most of us noticed the slow down in early November and it continues. People are also not dining very late. We’ve shaved an hour off our closing time each day as business screeches to a halt much earlier now that it’s dark and cold.”
I receive a daily Google Alert on barbecue topics, and on Christmas Eve the first fifteen items (15!) were stories about a barbecue restaurant closing — admittedly, it was only a total of four restaurants that had closed, for there were multiple stories about each, but it certainly made for a pretty gloomy news day.
Among the list was R.O.’s Barbecue in Gastonia, North Carolina, which had been in business almost 80 years and had its last day of service on Saturday. The owners explained in Facebook post that the decision “was necessitated by a combination of current and sustained economic factors that have made continued operation challenging.”
Also last week we learned a little more about the reasons behind the closure of Sabar BBQ in Fort Worth. Daniel Vaughn of Texas Monthly got the scoop that former owner Zain Shafi has purchased an ownership stake in Goldee’s Barbecue, where he learned the ropes tending the pits before stepping out to open Sabar in 2023. Perhaps on the bright side, Shafi told Vaughn that economic considerations like beef prices and customer volumes didn’t factor into the decision. Instead, he got an unexpected opportunity to buy out Jonny White’s share in Goldee’s and decided to take it.
Also on the bright side, MySA.com reports that after two years, the Original Roy Hutchins Barbeque is expanding from its original home and opening a second location in Arlington, close by the Dallas Cowboys’ home of AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field, home of the Texas Rangers.
The Original Roy Hutchins Barbeque, we should note, is not to be confused with rival Hutchins BBQ, which Roy Hutchins opened back in 1991 and now has locations in McKinney and Frisco. That operation is run today by Hutchins’s sons Tim and Trey, while the father and another son, Wes, split off and opened the Original Roy Hutchins Barbeque just outside Fort Worth in Trophy Club in 2023. (And, yes, there were lawsuits over the name.)
Barbecue family feuds, at least, show no signs of cooling in 2026.
Meathead Weighs In On BBQ + Wine
The inimitable Meathead of AmazingRibs.com (and author of The Meathead Method, which was published earlier this year) took umbrage with my curt dismissal of pairing wine with barbecue in last week’s Burnt Ends section.
You say no wine with BBQ? All BBQ? Is that because you think all BBQ tastes the same? Brisket, ribs, pulled pork, chicken, mutton, turkey, smoked salmon, and pastrami all taste the same? No wine with any of them? Well maybe you’re right if they’re all smothered in KC-style sauce…
But brisket, well it really is very different isn’t it? I assume you rub brisket with a healthy dose of black pepper and serve it sans sauce? And there’s lotsa fat. I know it is trite to recommend red wine with beef, but by golly that would be my call here. Perhaps a big Cali Zin, a bit spicy and sharp enough to cut the fat. Smoked salmon, and don’t tell me that isn’t BBQ? How about a good Pinot Noir? I want the wine to hose down my mouth so each bite is like the first. I have written more about matching wine, beer, and spirits with BBQ here.
So here’s the trick. You match the wine to the dominant flavor. If it is Sweet Baby Ray’s, that’s one wine. If it is a hot spicy sauce, that’s another thing altogether. Then again, beer is the all purpose drink with BBQ. Now which beer? Lager? Stout? IPA?
Oy.
Now, don’t tell Meathead this, but I actually have been known to enjoy a glass of wine with barbecue every now and then. In fact, when I visited Austin back in July, I enjoyed this fine platter of smoked tri-tip and whole hog at Leroy & Lewis.
That’s a splendid grain salad and beef tallow-fried chips on the side, by the way. And what did I pair with it? No, not Lone Star . . .
That’s an excellent Mourvèdre red from William Chris Vineyards in Hye, Texas, and it was a spot-on pairing for the smoky beef. Leroy & Lewis, in fact, has a quite impressive list of wines, all from Texas vineyards.
So, I do drink wine with barbecue. But only at restaurants with at least one Michelin star.
It’s a Moot Point
I’m kind of fascinated with the new Meat Moot restaurant that just opened in Houston, which claims modestly to be the “World’s Finest Smoked Meat Restaurant.” It’s a franchise of an international halal restaurant chain based in Istanbul, Turkey, with more than 50 restaurants worldwide, most of which are in the Middle East. Of its seven U.S. locations, this is its first in the South. (There are four in the Midwest, one in Seattle, and one in Patterson, New Jersey.)
What really caught my attention were the flamethrowers.
I have no idea whether that fire bath does anything to improve the quality of the meat, but boy does it make for an impressive show.
I had already spent way to much time perusing the restaurant’s web site and Instagram account when I noticed that J. C. Reid of the Houston Chronicle had paid Meat Moot a visit and devoted his latest barbecue column to it. Reid was struck less by the roaring flames than by the cross-cultural exchange he saw at play at the restaurant:
In effect, the well-documented influence of Texas barbecue around the world has come full circle. Texas exports indirect-heat smoking techniques internationally, which are then assimilated into other regional cuisines like in the Middle East, and then re-introduced back to Texas as a unique, international expression of barbecue.
Being halal, the menu offers no pork and no wine to pair with the beef (sorry, Meathead), but it does have an impressive array of smoked lamb options, including shank, neck, shoulder and ribs.
Which is the most expensive? The question is moot. On the Houston menu, all the cuts of lamb as well as the beef—ribs, chuck, and brisket—have the same price: $47.95 per pound. That would be by far the highest price I’ve seen for smoked brisket yet, but it is for a full course meal with an array of sauces, a salad, and sides.
Quick Bites
In case you were worried that barbecue might lose its cachet in 2025, I noted that in the inevitable flood year-end round-ups of best new restaurants of the year, barbecue joints showed up in lists for Austin, Texas; Syracuse, New York; Lexington, Kentucky; Salt Lake City, Utah; Brockton, Massachusetts; Phoenix, Arizona; and Houston, Texas. And that’s just the stories that posted on December 29th.
Burnt Ends
A Minority Opinion
Not everyone agrees that wine and barbecue are the perfect match. On its online menu, Hard Eight Pit BBQ, which has five locations in the greater Fort Worth area, has a different suggestion.
Jumping the Shark Into a Vegetable Garden
Think a Texan can never get tired of eating smoked brisket? Witness Brian Reinhart, the restaurant critic for Dallas’s D magazine. After visiting more than 45 barbecue restaurants for the magazine’s April feature on the best joints in North Texas, Reinhart cried “uncle.” The result was a follow-up feature entitled, “My Six Weeks as a Dallas Vegetarian” and a guide to the best vegetarian and vegan dining in North Texas, which published back in November.
“Having endured dozens of impromptu comedy routines about the impossibility of being vegetarian in our city,” Reinhart writes, “I spent six weeks eating well.”
Also, it turns out you don’t have to line up for three hours in a sweltering parking lot to eat a salad, and that’s a real plus.
