Barbecue and family seem to go hand in hand in Texas: Some of the best gatherings are often shared standing around a grill or smoker. But what about a barbecue restaurant?
Taking your barbecue from the backyard to a business may not work for everyone, but for Jiménez y Friends Barbecue y Taqueria, it’s been a success.
Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor for Texas Monthly, shared more on the Lubbock spot.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Let’s talk about this place. How did you come across it?
Daniel Vaughn: Well, actually, the first time I tried their barbecue was when they showed up at the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival in Lockhart serving on Saturday as one of our newcomers.
And what did you make of it at the time?
I was hooked. They brought in beef ribs, this jalapeno cheese sausage and their barbacoa. It was amazing.
So you just decided that in the course of your travels you’d stop by one day and check out what they’ve got?
You taste barbecue like that, and you got to go to the source.
What do they have on their menu?
Well, so they have a weekend menu that is very barbecue heavy. The rest of the week is more about their guisados.
Is there something that gives their barbecue a distinctive flavor?
One of the things is all the great tortillas. Maria Flores, who helped found the place with her sons, Mark Jiménez and Michael Flores, she makes all the tortillas. And you start off with a great tortilla and you’re gonna get a good taco.
But then you add in really great barbecue onto it, big thick slices of brisket, barbacoa, and then nearly every one of their tacos has an egg on it, so eggs, cheese, beans. These are some loaded tacos.
And the price of meat certainly has been going up, but the price of eggs is actually hitting them hard. Because people will only pay so much for a taco, and that egg is gold these days.
» WHERE THERE’S SMOKE: The latest barbecue news from across the Lone Star State
You say you discovered these guys at the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival. So how long have they been doing this?
I mean, they’ve really been doing this just for a couple of years now, as far as putting together their tortilleria menu, along with the barbecue menu.
And what do you think the secret of their success is? There are a lot of family barbecue places out there.
There’s a real attention to the detail of the barbecue itself. So often, if you go to a place that really focuses on barbecue tacos, sometimes they’ll rely on all the other stuff, right – not the filling, not the barbecue itself.
But the barbecue here stands on its own. Even the pork spare ribs are fantastic.
We were talking a little bit about what goes well with barbecue, and I was surprised to hear the words come out of your mouth that you weren’t a fan of Big Red.
I’m not a fan Big Red.
And yet is there not some kind of Big Red component in their barbecue?
Yeah, there is. So they serve barbacoa, and barbacoa and Big Red is a is a classic combination. Their Big Red comes in the form of their barbecue sauce. They put quite a bit of Big Red into their barbecue sauce.
And it’s really about the only barbecue sauce that tastes great with barbacoa, right? Usually you get salsa with barbacoa. But here in this particular form. I enjoyed the Big Red flavor.
Well, we’ve got it on tape now. So how’s this family business thing working out for them? Because sometimes there can be tension in the family, you know how that goes.
It’s working out well for them. Like they certainly share the accolades. I think one thing is they’re actually kind of busting at the seams, right? It’s a small place.
The biggest detriment to their business is the fact that you can’t eat it there. There is no dining room. Everything is to-go. No tables outside. And with all the stuff on their tacos, they aren’t really built to travel, certainly not built to be eaten in the front seat.
Top dishes?
So they do this loaded brisket taco, which has pureed beans, cheese, an egg, a slice of brisket and some of that Big Red barbecue sauce.
It’s so interesting to see you recall all these things. I was thinking, you go to like 180 or something, 170 different places, you know, in the course of a year. And yet he glances up sort of in the right-hand corner of the room and he’s able to pull out these ingredients just right off. It must have made an impression.
I can see it in my hand right now. You asked me names and dates, and those things flutter away, right? But you ask me about the food that I ate.
I’m sometimes embarrassed when I look through old photos, and I can’t identify where it came from just on the photo alone, because I think that’s one of my superpowers is to really remember that food, that flavor, and really bank that memory.
Let me ask you one other question about this particular place, because I’m struck by the fact that this is as much about great tacos, as your taco editor noted, as it is about the barbecue. How common is that?
Not very common, really. You know, there’s certainly many more flour tortillas being served at barbecue joints. But as far as like thoughtfully prepared tacos, rather than just tortillas on the side that you can build your own taco with, yeah, it is pretty rare.
Are you hungry too? This story is part of the Texas Standard's recurring monthly barbecue segment. Where There’s Smoke will whet any appetite as it takes you into the pitmaster’s realm. Hear about new joints, secret recipes and why Texas is the king of BBQ.