Don't Panic! It's Just August

A late-summer barbecue update

Must be August (Courtesy Ken Hawkins via CC2.0)

We’re now fully in the throes of August, long deemed by poets to be the cruelest month. It’s hot. It’s humid. Every day around 2 p.m., a thunderstorm rolls through, washing out whatever plans we were foolish enough to make for the afternoon.

I’m sure most of you have been pulling your collective hair out wondering why you haven’t seen a Cue Sheet dispatch since the 4th of July. Is something wrong? Has it gone on another summer vacation that will turn out to be a permanent hiatus?

No such luck. The Cue Sheet — that is, my semi-regular newsletter dispatches devoted to barbecue — isn’t going anywhere. I just have a lot going on right now, including being hard at work on not one but two book projects. (I can’t spill the beans on those quite yet, but watch this space.) Plus, I’ve been traveling a bunch for a little R&R with my family, research trips for the aforementioned book projects, and a few eating tours for my forthcoming Best New Barbecue Joints list for Southern Living, which will come out sometime in September.

Along the way, I’ve been keeping a pulse on the barbecue news, and I figure it’s time for a late summer status check as we look ahead to Labor Day and returning to a more regular routine.

So, here we go.

PSA: Take a Deep Breath, People

Quick public service announcement to all the barbecue pilgrims out there: each summer, once the rush of July has subsided, a lot of barbecue joints close their doors for a week or two to let the staff recharge. When you’re hitting the road to check-off that long-awaited bucket list spot, be sure to call ahead and verify the restaurant is actually open, especially in the month of August.

And a special note for all the journalists out there who are new to the barbecue beat: this is a very normal thing and not at all a cause for concern.

Two weeks ago, Franklin Barbecue announced on Instagram that this year it would be taking its ten-day summer break between August 10th and 20th:

Catastrophe-minded reporters immediately pounced on the “news” and churned out a flood of click-baiting headlines. KXAN announced, simply if somewhat misleadingly, “Franklin Barbecue to temporarily close next week,” while the Austin-American Statesmen tacked on a little teaser: “Franklin Barbecue is temporarily closing. Here’s why.” Not to be out-clicked, Austin 360 indulged in a little mystery: “One of Austin’s biggest barbecue destinations is temporarily closing.”

Franklin felt it necessary to issue a bemused clarification, declaring “reports of our temporary demise have been greatly exaggerated”:

Yes, this ten-day break is something Franklin does every year. It is not a further sign of the much-hyped impending collapse of Texas barbecue.

Texas isn’t the only place where the summers are no joke, and it’s not the only place where people don’t always get the memo. Old Colony Smokehouse in Edenton, North Carolina, announced on its web site (via a big pop-up banner), on all its social media channels, and on old-fashioned physical signs that between July 4th and July 11, the restaurant would be closed for what owner Adam Hughes dubs their “Summer Smoke Break.” They even updated the hours of operation posted on their Google listing.

None of this prevented aggrieved customers from posting online reviews whining about how they showed up at noon and the restaurant was already sold out of food. Hughes felt compelled to interrupt his vacation to post a heartfelt video on Instagram imploring, “Please do not come to Old Colony Smokehouse today. We are still closed.”

Give ‘em a break, people. They deserve it after such a long, hot summer.

Shark Jump Watch 2026

Long-time Cue Sheet readers (and BBQ Central Show podcast listeners) know that every January for the past several years I’ve predicted that this year — surely, this year — is finally going to be the one when brisket jumps the shark. So far, my recurring prognostication has yet to pan out, and America has remained stubbornly infected with Brisket Fever.

Perhaps this summer, though, the fever is finally starting to break. I’ve been reluctant to make any further predictions myself, but this time around it’s not me saying it. One of the voices is a guy who has been known to be something of a brisket evangelist, the Typhoid Mary of Brisket Fever, if you will.

“My plea here,” Daniel Vaughn of Texas Monthly pleaded in an interview with the Texas Standard, “is that if these Texas barbecue pitmasters want the price of brisket to go down, we’ve got to cut into the demand of it, right? We’ve got to cut into the demand by looking at different cuts of beef.”

Last Month Ryan Cooper and Sean Ludwig of the Smoke Sheet newsletter took things even further, penning “A Eulogy for Brisket”:

A Eulogy for Brisket

That might be a bit over the top. For the record, I only said that brisket was going to jump the shark. I didn’t say it would be killed in the process.

On the Air, on the Interwebs, and on the Ground

Taking It Low & Slow

On July 23rd I was Chigger Willard’s guest on the Low & Slow BBQ Show, where we talked about my recent Southern Living feature on the South’s Next Barbecue Legends as well as a special event coming up in September where all five of the legends will be cooking for guests (see below.) We covered a range of other topics, too, including the process behind my biennial Top 50 BBQ list and the state of barbecue journalism and the restaurant industry at large. Give it a listen online or on your favorite podcast player.

Lunch With the Legends

In the April print issue of Southern Living, I profiled five contemporary pitmasters and restaurateurs who just might be the next generation of barbecue legends. One of those legends, Lewis Donald of Sweet Lew’s BBQ in Charlotte, had the brilliant idea of getting all five of the featured pitmasters together for a celebratory event. (There’s a reason I dubbed Lewis “the Promoter” in the feature.)

The result? Southern Living’s Luncheon With Legends, which is taking place Sunday, September 20th at Hunter Farm, just south of Charlotte in Weddington, North Carolina.

It’s going to be a legendary line-up, for sure: Evan LeRoy (Leroy & Lewis, Austin, TX), Hector Garate (Palmira Barbecue, Charleston, SC), Zach Parker (B.E. Scott’s BBQ, Lexington, TN), Elliott Moss (Elliott’s BBQ Lounge, Florence, SC), and, of course, Sweet Lew himself. Each will be cooking up something special for guests, and there will be a full slate of oysters, appetizers, desserts, and cold beverages, too.

I’ll be there myself, mostly to eat, but also to talk a little about each of the legends and what makes them special. Tickets are on sale now at the Luncheon With Legends web site. Come out and see us.

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Quick Bites

• Alabama Loses a Barbecue Icon: Lula Hatcher, the longtime owner of Lannie’s Bar-B-Q in Selma, Alabama, passed away on July 3 at the age of 93.

• One Brick at a Time: Jill Wendholt Silva wrote a great feature for Kansas City magazine on brickmason Bill Chaney, who constructed the custom brick pits for many of Kansas City’s most beloved barbecue restaurants, including Fiorella’s Jack Stack, LC’s Bar-B-Q, and Smokehouse Barbecue.

• Ah, Baloney: J. C. Reid of the Houston Chronicle crosses state lines to explore how smoked bologna became an Oklahoma barbecue staple.

Burnt Ends

That Escalated Quickly

We’re back with another edition of my favorite game, “Watch the Headline Evolve,” which we last played in the June 29th Cue Sheet dispatch. This time up it’s the Houston Chronicle, for which John-Henry Perera filed a quite solid piece chronicling how USDA Select, the leaner (and cheaper) grade of beef that was common in Texas barbecue a few decades ago, got squeezed out by the fattier and pricier Choice and Prime grades.

Here’s the slug from the URL, which usually captures the placeholder title created when the story was added to the site’s content management system:

https://www.chron.com/food/article/texas-barbecue-beef-brisket-prices-22337623.php.

Pretty unassuming, right? A story about Texas barbecue beef brisket prices.

Here’s the title from the meta tags on the web page, which gets picked up by search engines like Google:

A little punchier, right? The word “cheap” always grabs attention, and the headline sort of teases readers with the “why” but doesn’t give away the actual answer unless they click through.

Now, after all the A-B testing was finished and the most click-teasing version determined, here’s the final headline, enshrined for perpetuity:

Pretty aggressive there, Chronicle, and, honestly, I’m a little offended. You can accuse me of many things, but being responsible for brisket’s enduring popularity certainly isn’t one of them.

Brisket’s Future is Truly Up in the Air

It’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to the future of brisket. Back in February I reported that American Airlines was adding smoked brisket sandwiches and barbecue platters from Pecan Lodge to its first class meal options on outbound flights between Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and New York’s LaGuardia and JFK airports.

The debut proved to be a success, and this week American announced that it will be serving Pecan Lodge barbecue as a first-class meal option on all outbound flights from DFW.

Now if we could just get Delta to offer chopped pork and Brunswick stew on all first class flights out of Atlanta. I might actually pay for that upgrade.

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