Ep. 010: Diving into the Delicious World of Ethical BBQ with Pitmaster Evan LeRoy

Join us on a culinary journey as we sit down with the brilliant Evan LeRoy, pitmaster and co-owner of the renowned LeRoy and Lewis BBQ Truck in Austin, Texas! A force to be reckoned with in the BBQ world, Evan has a fascinating food-fueled story to share, tracing from his days in college to culinary school in Austin and his first barbecue stint in the heart of New York City. And that's just the start - brace yourself for a delicious conversation that touches everything from sustainable BBQ practices to deepening your food experience through hunting.

Imagine transforming a simple food truck into a thriving, sustainable business that serves mouth-watering BBQ and adheres to ethical practices. That's exactly what Evan has achieved with LeRoy and Lewis BBQ. He takes us through the "nose to tail" concept, discussing the use of whole pigs and his plans for an upcoming brick-and-mortar restaurant. We also delve into Evan's unique experiences during 2020, including his quest to learn hunting and the extra steps of wild game butchery vs. the traditional butchering he was familiar with, further deepening his understanding and appreciation for food.

Evan shares insights into his plans, including a new restaurant in South Austin that promises to serve some great food! If you're as passionate about food as we are, you will want to listen to this podcast episode!

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Presented by:
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

But that was my first barbecue job. I started working the line there and then I started working in the pit room and then the the master like left during health inspection. He just like he was like this place is going down in flames Step right into that role and we made pretty good barbecue there, you know, for new york at the time. And then it was time to come back here. Welcome to the bunkhouse podcast broadcasting from the confluence of outdoor recreation and nature connectivity. I'm your host, josh Crumpton, founder of Spokalo Outdoors and the Los O'Vallee food truck. My life as a rancher, guide, foodie and conservationist has provided the opportunity to meet some really great people and the bunkhouse is where we get to introduce them to you.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Episode number 10. It's been 10 weeks since we launched the bunkhouse podcast. Man, time sure does fly by. This episode is absolutely delicious. You want to know why? Because in this episode I'm joined by my friend, evan Leroy, pit master extraordinaire and one of the owners of Leroy and Lewis barbecue truck, located in Austin, texas. If it sounds familiar, that's because the food truck is kind of a big deal Rank number five in the Texas monthly top 100 barbecue joints list, featured in season six of Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil. And most recently, you can find my amigo Evan's shining face in a New York Times article titled Texas barbecue is the best it's ever been. Here's why the point is the food truck, the man and the food are all beautiful and amazing. I'm proud to call Evan my friend and super excited to share some of his stories with you guys, listeners of the bunkhouse podcast. Anyway, with all that said, you know the deal. Let's get this thing started, evan. Hey man, it's good to have you here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 2:18

We've been trying to do this for Too long. Yeah, a few months at least. Yeah, we're busy people. Yeah, yeah, since we went fishing with Chris Cantrell, yeah, and you caught that gas per goo I did. That was beautiful fish. Yeah, it was right after I hooked into that like dead animal, I cast and I heard it like hit something hollow. He's like that's not what you want. I don't even think we could identify what that was. Yeah, that was disgusting. It was bloated and floating. Yep, the Colorado River, the animals die right after that. Nice fish, nice gas per goo, yeah. Yeah, we definitely have to. Didn't keep it because there's a dead animal floating next to it. You were like. I don't think so, not that one. Yeah, I don't know about eating out of the Colorado River until you get a little, maybe a little further down away from Austin, but we definitely need to go bass fishing and keep and cook some bass. That would be good when it's not a freaking thousand degrees outside. We did white bass last year. I saw that that looked like a good time. It was right around this time because it was a heat week.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Yeah, you were with Alvin and Graham. Yeah, graham's so cool. He's awesome. I really like it. He has like so much knowledge he does.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Are you going to the conservation conversation? I was going to, but I went last year. I don't know how different it will be. Yeah, yeah, you've got to kind of be selective with the things you do. I did not go last year, so I might try to go. It was cool this year. You got a free yeti Not free, it's with the. You paid for it With your ticket, with your experience.

Speaker 1: 4:13

Food is good too. Yeah, I mean, I always wish that we were asked to be a part of those things. Yeah, because I would happily go if I was working. Yeah, if you're working. Yeah, for sure, you know we got a lot of good stuff coming up this fall. Yeah, we should definitely get into that. Like, we'll touch on it now like September 1. Yeah, you're going to be out here. Boom, yeah, opening day, dove season. Can't wait. Not getting skunked this year. No, this year Mason Lively is going to play. It's going to be great. Yeah, I think that's going to be awesome.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Bring some food out. Yeah, do you have an idea of what you're going to do? Am I putting you on the spot? Not necessarily. I mean, we do certain things, we do like certain dishes. We just kind of have them in the pocket for events like that. So we can always do something like a barbeco taco. We can always do something like Frito Pie. It's something people like a lot Usually. Bring the kale slaw. Oh, I love that stuff. Yeah, maybe we'll just do. Maybe we'll get crazy and throw down some briskets. Well, I mean, we'll have a mill scale rolling. Yeah, exactly so maybe some of those doves will make their way on. I would hope so. Yeah, like you know, can we do like a like what is it like you cook thing for Dove? Like people can. Like we save them a little spot where they can just throw their dove on. I mean it's not my pit. Well, I'm looking forward to that.

Speaker 1: 5:42

It's going to be fun September 1st, hopefully. Maybe you can make it down to the valley when we're down there for the. I mean, that's just insane, that'd be great. South Texas is so much fun, so maybe afterwards we visit about that and convince you to come down there and make an appearance. Yeah, and I love any excuse to go down there and food people.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Yeah, what's that restaurant we were talking about? I would forget the name, but I know exactly how to get to it. Which one? They make barbacoa down there, veras. Yeah, dude, that place is good. Yeah, they cook the whole head in the ground.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Yeah, what's the deal? Are they like the? They're like one of the only people who do that. It's an old place, so it is kind of grandfathered into. Like you can't, you can't do that now legally is cook in the ground, but they've been doing it for so long that they existed before it was made law. Yeah, and so their grandfathered in. Yeah, that's really cool. And so that's like just basically like digging a hole. Well, it is. They have a pit room and there's a concrete slab and there's like a square hole in the very center of that room and it is like fire bricked out, and I only know this because I like peeked in there one time I finished eating and I was like, let me go in there and see what's going on. Yeah, but yeah, they Usually wrap the whole head in like foil or banana leaves or one than the other, and then put a bunch of coals on top of it. Yeah, it's delicious, however, but I like your guys tacos. Yeah, we do.

Speaker 1: 7:22

And when we came and visited you guys, the cheek that you guys do that might be the best piece of meat on the planet. It's so good, it's so good Smoked and beef at confit cheek. Yeah, man, like I want to keep that in my refrigerator all the time, I know, and then, like, just when it runs out, just put another one there. I would weigh 500 pounds. I guarantee you it's easy, because I would just eat that all the time To devour them. Have you had that so many times now that you're kind of like, oh man, I can't eat it anymore? Not necessarily, and you know, we do get that a little bit.

Speaker 1: 8:00

And people ask us all the time like, are you like, do you eat barbecue. Are you tired of eating barbecue? Yeah, and the answer is always no, because we cook such different style of barbecue, right? We're not cooking pork ribs all the time, so I like going out and eating pork ribs. We're not cooking brisket all the time, so I enjoy it when we do have it on the menu.

Speaker 1: 8:16

Yeah, beef cheek, though it's so rich and it was just like really beefy, like you can tell you're eating the head. Yeah, and it is. Sometimes it's a little too rich, like I almost never like just a straight up piece of barbecue. I like to balance it out. I'm like a little bit of sauce, a little bit of pickle, a little bit of something on there. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:38

So we've known each other. It's been a couple of years now. Two, two and a half years. I've met something like this. I think this will be the third dove season and we were talking earlier. We met during a dove season, yeah, but I don't know the story of how Lorraine Lewis came to be and I don't have ever told you this.

Speaker 1: 8:58

But, alana, did you guys? Graphics? Yes, and before we took Spokalo and opened it to the public and we were looking at designs and stuff. That's how I first found you guys Really, yeah, nice, and that's how I first became aware of the truck, and so that's like five years ago maybe yeah, I don't know when you guys started, but so we started a little bit before that 2017. Alana worked with Helms at the point Helms Workshop and they have done all of our design and all of our branding and they have been integral in how people see the brand and like the food truck is like. So it's not iconic, but it's just like. It's very like notable and unique and it looks different than every other food truck. You know, every other food truck is like black and has flames on the side and it's like pig butts or something. You know this one is like. We want it to look a little classy, yeah, and they did an amazing job. But conceptually, even beyond like what you see visually at the food truck, conceptually, you guys took a different approach from the beginning. Yeah, completely.

Speaker 1: 10:18

So I grew up in Austin eating barbecue kind of around Austin. You know, we went to the Salt Lake a lot, we went to Christ Market in Lockhart not really a lot of stuff in town and then when I left for college, I went to Florida State. I started cooking Tex-Mex for my roommates and started grilling, cooking chicken and ribs and stuff on the grill for game days. And then when I graduated, it was 2008. There weren't really any jobs to be had anywhere in the field that I wanted, which was like editorial writing. I didn't know that, yeah, so I decided that I wanted to like be good at something in order to have perspective, in order to write about it, and I like food.

Speaker 1: 11:02

So I went to culinary school here in Austin at the court on blue. It was a short program six months which is, I think, how people should do culinary school, not like a two, three, four year thing. You should just be like short education, pack it in and then get out there into the workforce so you feel like you learn a lot more working in the space than in the culinary school. Yeah, but having that foundation, that skills set, that knowledge base, was really helpful for me and I was eager to soak it up because that was what I wanted to do. I was like, and I was a better culinary student than I was like a regular student. I was straight B's until I got culinary school. Then I got A's and everything. Let go down, blit, crushing it there. Give me some perspective. How long ago was this that was in? So I graduated college in 2008. Okay, and then I went to culinary school in the kind of second half of that year. Okay, I moved to New York City in early part of 2009. I lived there till 2012. New York City Yep, get a rope. Yeah, that's actually where I had my first barbecue.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Job Was in New York, new York, at a place called Hill Country Barbecue, and I got, I applied there because I was like home sick and I liked going there anyway and I started cooking barbecue there. That's still there, isn't it? Are they still there? Yeah, I thought, were you recently there? Did you go and visit or something? So we cooked with Aaron Franklin at the James Beard House A little humble brag there. Yeah, but we kind of set up home base at Hill Country and a lot of some of the people are still there that I knew from back then and obviously the owner is still there and he likes you know I, he's from the area, he's from Lockhart, His family's from Lockhart, so it's good to catch up with him and just kind of share stories about the industry and everything like that. Yeah, but that was my first barbecue job. I started working the line there and then I started working in the pit room and then the pit master like left during health inspection. He just like he was like displays is going down in flames. I just like stepped right into that role and we made pretty good barbecue there, you know, for New York at the time.

Speaker 1: 13:16

And then it was time to come back here. Yeah, it's too cold. Yeah, it's cold up there and crowded, it's really cold. Yeah, and things were happening here in barbecue. Franklin was happening, john Miller was kind of making waves. So what year are we at now? That was 2012.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Okay, so you were up there for a while, yeah, about three years. Yeah, okay, it was fun, but and I'm glad I did it and I still really love going back I didn't want to leave at that moment, but my wife was like done with her fashion industry job. She didn't. That's that's what I was going to ask Were you, were you guys married already at that time? No, we weren't together, but we were not married. Okay, we got engaged shortly after we moved back here.

Speaker 1: 14:00

Okay, and I've got a job at a place and often called Freedmen's, and that was open from 2012 to about 2018. I worked there until 2016. Okay, and we hired a ton of great people Brad Robinson, judd's barbecue, christopher McGee from briskets, which is a radio they just got a shout out today in the top 25 new barbecue joints in Texas monthly, oh nice. Joel Garcia from Teddy's barbecue in the Valley Lane and Jalen from Goldies, which is the number one spot. So we have all those people working. Everybody was there kind of the same time. Yeah, dude, that's awesome. It was kind of like a renaissance. Yeah, it was. It was awesome. It was a really good team. We took really good barbecue there, but I was not the owner and the ultimate decision maker and I wanted to do that.

Speaker 1: 14:49

So at the same time, you know, while I was working at Freedman's, reconnecting with old friends here in town, bringing barbecue to parties and stuff, and then realizing that there are some industry people in that kind of group of friends, and then we became friends and realized that we have similar goals and ethics and those people are Nathan and Sory Lewis, my business partners in the Royan Lewis. So we decided to open a food truck to kind of get people used to this different style of barbecue before we went full brick and mortar and then it was just kind of one issue after another trying to get a place open. That was like Nathan's a brewer by trade, so we needed a space for brewing, we need to see brewing it. So he worked at a bunch of different places. He initially started at, like left hand in Colorado when they lived there. That was like that's the beer of my youth. Yeah, milkstown, milkstown Like, seriously, that's a beer of my youth. He went to brewing school in Chicago and then in Germany and then he worked at Carbock before they sold and then he built the Lab at Awesome Beer Works, which is huge. Yeah, he's got a very good pedigree, very good resume. He's like a brewing scientist and he knows his shit. But we so we tried to open the brewery at a few different places and for one reason or another it just didn't work out. But it's a big, big project and so when we found the space that we're currently working on opening, it did not have enough room for a brewery but the space was just too good to pass up and we kind of like pushed, we kicked that can down the road. We still want to do a brewery eventually, but we're focused on opening up LaRoy and Lewis Brick and Mortar in South Austin early part of 2024. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 16:49

So how long had you had the truck? So taking back some Freedmen's to getting on your own and having the truck? When was that move and how? What did that look like? So I left Freedmen's in 2016 and I immediately started. I finished building the pit that we use now called Rusty, did some classes, I worked at Salt and Time a little bit, which is where we found relationships with Loncito Cartwright, who's our pig farmer, and then also started working with Heartbrand Beef and just started like doing a lot of butchering, doing some charcuterie, some sausage making. I mean, we made sausage and Freedmen's, but like different styles of sausage making and also working with whole animals and really, just really excellent quality meat.

Speaker 1: 17:39

And that was the idea behind LaRoy and Lewis is that you know you work at all these places. You work at barbecue joints. You just open up box after box after box after box of ribs, right, and you're just like this has a brand on it and it says, like what it is, but I don't know where it came from. I don't know how these you know animals are treated. Every now and then, you'll open a box of ribs and it's like, what is this? Like weird growth on this rack of ribs. Yeah, what is happening down there and you know that doesn't happen now, because we only get whole pigs from piece of pork yeah, you start to ask these kind of questions of like, where does this stuff come from? When you're using the whole pig. I mean, that's the.

Speaker 1: 18:23

That's another concept that was very different. Rather than just getting a box and getting a part, exactly, you guys are incorporating the whole pig into your process. Yeah, I mean, we kind of wanted to take some cues from farm, a table movement, from you know, kind of nose to tail ideals, and then also kind of where barbecue started, right In Texas, of, like meat markets, the idea that you would smoke the stuff that was not good enough to sell raw or was not, like you know, appealing enough to sell raw. So we kind of wanted to use every single piece and, just being a good, you know, just being good at restaurant economics, you, and if you're buying something expensive, you have to use every single gram of it and make sure you don't throw anything away. Yeah, well, that's just kind of even responsible citizen, like, just like I'm not just going to eat all ribs or all loin or all you know.

Speaker 1: 19:24

And that extends to the field too, because if you take an animal's life and you bring it back into your home, you want to make sure that you use every single part of it. Yeah, and it's interesting because in the hunting space you run into so many people who are like, yeah, I just like the back straps. I just pulled the back straps and left the left, the left, the left side, hog there, you know whatever it is, you know. Or like even ducks, like not keeping the legs, and you know what I mean it's using the whole animal. Legs are so good, oh, they're like, they're the best, they're so delicious. Yeah, so you've got this At that time.

Speaker 1: 20:02

I mean, you definitely are talking about how it's historic, it's old, like the approach of barbecuing, starting with the pieces that you couldn't sell on market raw. Is it funny how, like, so many of the best foods are that way, like potafoo, like a lot of the French style foods, it's all like the stuff that, yeah, all the awful and all that. And now people are coming around and going, wow, this stuff's amazing, it's very fancy, yeah, yeah, like you know what, go ahead, and why don't you just send to the king, send him the back straps. You know we'll keep the hearts and the livers and all the good stuff you know. So that was 2016. Yes, well, we opened the truck in 2017 and, like March 2017, but gearing up for it, yeah, was in 2016.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Was it a hit from the beginning? No, no, no, we were. It's hard to open up a barbecue place in Austin and not serve brisket every day. Just that has been the biggest challenge. Yeah, other than the weather really, it's hot right now. We were open for an entire summer with no air conditioning, nothing at Cosmic. Cosmic wasn't open, it was just an empty lot. Oh, wow, that had. That was dirty. Wow, no trees there, nowhere to sit. So that built up around you, yeah, that's cool. It was cool just to see, like, piece by piece, figuring out the hillside over there, putting in the Koi pond. Yeah, how long did they build that up? Was it over multiple years, I would imagine? Yeah, well, they. It took about a year to kind of like get everything into place and they still, after that, for like a year or two, they made kind of different changes, brought in trees for shade and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 21:53

I love that slow, organic growth model where, cause I would imagine that they thought about it for a while before they even started. Oh, yeah, you know, paul would just be like walking around like the lot, just like just looking at stuff, just like kicking around a rock and stuff and like you can see the gears kind of working in his head. Yeah, did they know they were going to do that when you guys went in? Was that that was the plan? Yeah, that was the idea. Like was like a perm, they have like a permaculture certification and everything. So it's a coffee shop, right? So all the coffee grounds and all of the like scraps you know from cilantro pickings that we use go into the compost. Compost goes into, you know, back into the site and the land and the raised beds and there's chickens there and some of the feeds of chickens.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Yeah, I mean this is just an extension of your ethos of food. Like you're, it's a community of like minded people, I would assume. Yeah, absolutely so you had to work your butt off. I mean, this is what I'm hearing. It started slow.

Speaker 1: 22:56

Was there any point in time where you're like man, I don't know if this is going to work, or did you know all the time? If you asked me and Sawyer, you'll get two different answers. I always kind of knew it was going to work, because there was like the food was too good to deny and like I could just like see it happening in the future. I don't know how to describe it, but she is our, you know, she's the person who makes the business run. So, yeah, she's the one who worries the most when that kind of stuff is not lining up like it should be.

Speaker 1: 23:28

And there was a lot of times in the very beginning, in that first year, and it's, you know, even all the way up through the pandemic and after that that it's just like is this going to? Are we going to make it? Are we going to be okay? And we work? Yeah, restaurants are tough. Yeah, I mean, food trucks are hard to. Food trucks are hard too, yeah, and so I would imagine that 2019, you know, you're a couple of years in you're starting to hit your stride. You're like this is all. We were rocking and rolling and trying not to. Yeah, this is all.

Speaker 1: 24:04

And then we were gearing up for a big spring in 2020. Yeah, I think we all were yeah, yeah. And so that happened. Yeah, that happened, and I would imagine the pandemic really made you have to change what you were doing. Yeah, it was hard because we were, like I said, we were geared up to have the biggest spring ever. Yeah, we were going to do huge South by Southwest numbers where you're doing luck reunion. We had weddings out to Yazu, like everything, yeah, and then all of it just canceled within you know a week and we didn't close at all. Okay, you guys were able to stay open.

Speaker 1: 24:47

So we turned the food truck into a drive-through. We like set up cones in the parking lot. Okay, we had a car in the gym at the crux is across the street and people would just drive through and we could take it. See the sign. They would like shout through a mask and they wanted a window. That's like cracked us just a little bit. Yeah, what they wanted. And then they would go park and pop their trunk and we put food in there. Oh yeah, well, that's how. How are the? Yeah, that's the challenging process. How are the numbers to that? Oh, yeah, Terrible, terrible.

Speaker 1: 25:22

But you guys, you got really creative and that's when you started a lot more digital presence. That's when we started to do a lot more content. We were always on Instagram and trying to take really good photos of the food, because that's what that's really how we kind of built up our community. And then we I mean, I kind of saw that we had to go to people where they were and that was in their house in front of their computer most of the time. Yeah, and I had been thinking you know that I always wanted to do something like that when we got to the brick and mortar, but it was like, okay, everybody's got time on their hands and you know it's time, now's the time. So we just started filming ourselves.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Prepping, went through the menu dish by dish, released a video once a week to Patreon, to the subscription model, yeah, until we had about 100 videos in the bank. That's like two years later, wow. So when the pandemic is winding down, then events you know start to come back. Do on every single event. And then that's when we started posting the older stuff to YouTube. So pandemic and Patreon kind of subsidized the creation of all this content and then now we're kind of getting a second use out of it on YouTube. Yeah, that's cool, the audience from there and expanding our community, exactly.

Speaker 1: 26:47

So in this content creation space, I think you know, one of the early things that I saw you guys do was it from the outside it appeared that we didn't know each other yet at that time. So from the outside it appeared that that's when you started taking it a step further from this. You know, snout to tail sort of program to actually going, and, you know, killing your own animals and harvesting your own meat. Yeah, I mean, I was also. I was always interested in getting into the outdoors but never really had a way or a friend or a you know a place to go and do that with. So started hanging out with Davis a little bit. We, you know he's like, oh yeah, dude, we gotta go out and hunt up it's beginning of the season or go out and fishing and getting for flounder with him and his dad and Port O'Connor, just like just getting out there.

Speaker 1: 27:48

And I knew like it's I know it's a hard like barrier of entry because you pretty many, you got to know somebody. That's kind of just how it is. Yeah, because it's, I mean, you're never just going to go out there just like by yourself, like on a public kind of knowing nothing, right, like you should walk around with a gun, like, no, it never happened to you before and there's, you know, all these kinds of safety involved. It was all in service of like, like, deep diving on the food right and it's not. I need to know exactly where it comes from. I want to be able to confidently pull that trigger and then, like, break everything down and use 100% of it, and I've done it once, like this multi-year kind of like build up and I'm loving it. I wish I had more time for it.

Speaker 1: 28:40

Well, and you shot birds. You shot birds here, you? I think the first thing was it when you slaughtered the turkey, I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the first thing. I think that was the first one. Yeah, I remember watching that video and that was sort of the, which I think is such a good.

Speaker 1: 28:57

You know, when I learned to hunt as an adult similar, and I had space, we had this ranch here but I was intimidated by skills. I mean, it's just like you know, especially if you take it seriously, I'm going to go out there and kill something, and so I better know what to do with it after, you know, because the killing part's not really the hard part. The hard part is turning that into food and not wasting it. And so I did that with a hog, a hog butchering class, and it seems like kind of the turkey was a similar experience for you, where you got to kind of go through animal breakdown in a controlled environment, yeah, and it's like the breakdown of the carcass is one thing, like it's up, you know, everything fits like a full turkey, right Defeathered and everything, like I know exactly what to do with that. But everything before that is just what I didn't know and know how to, or just like I knew nothing. Yeah, yeah, but now you know and it's, you know, it's surprising, it's not as complicated as we make it out to be in the beginning. Like it seems intimidating, seems scary, but like it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. You appreciate each bite, oh for sure, considerably more.

Speaker 1: 30:24

And so you shot, and did you shoot both the axis and the white tail? No, I shot a white tail, shot a white tail, and my friend shot the axis. Okay, yeah, and I broke those down. I broke mine down and I broke theirs down and kind of like, so they didn't have to take it to whatever. Yeah, and I gave them, you know, here's a bunch of the pole shoulder meat. Here's the racks and the straps, and then here's a bunch of sausage and ground. This could be like. This could be a question that triggers people which one do you think tasted better? So the axis tasted really, really good, but I mixed some of them too, so like the ground was like a mix and like the sausages were a mix, but you could eat the strap you know the different straps until like the difference between the meat. Yeah, yeah, I like them both. Personally, they were both great, but axis is much prettier.

Speaker 1: 31:24

That's the one, that's the hide we kept and like I tried to tan that and everything too. Yeah, did it work out? Yeah, I mean it dried out. I just never got it to like a soft supple. Yeah, yeah, I love both of those animals a lot. Did you eat the hearts on them? Oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, how'd you make it? I did a like a ceviche, like a tartar, like a tartar. It was actually like a more of a perissa. Yeah, because it had like cheese and jalapeno in it on crackers. Oh nice, yeah, it was great. We need to do that this year. Yeah, I'm all in for that.

Speaker 1: 32:03

Do you find that now that you have hunted, killed, harvested your own meat that you're? Has it changed your relationship with cooking at all in any way? For sure, I mean. Well, I was always kind of asking the questions about where the meat came from. I just feel like I just have a little bit more experience with it now, like I know just a little bit more about it. Certainly, when you're eating that meat, you're like thinking about the animal and its life and what it ate and the steps that it took, and just like you can taste it. It's of a specific time and place and you can taste the void of that too, when it is not there and just like you know a burger from wherever. And it's like there's like a lack of depth here.

Speaker 1: 32:58

Yeah, it's pretty, I find, because I came from the culinary world and that's what led me to hunting and I tried gardening first because I was kind of anti-guns. I found out I was a terrible gardener, so then I had to hunt things. If I wanted to participate, I had to hunt things. I mean, that's hard Cultivating gardening, kind of looking after stuff, but not too much attention. Yeah, put it in the right spot. Yeah, I can't find the balance. Protecting it from critters, I was either neglecting or smothering my plants. Yeah, I mean since then decided I'm going to circle back to it and try to learn that balance, because it is actually more of a challenge than hunting even, I think. And so that's kind of my next nature connection is like to really see if I can find that balance of caretaking of cultivated plants.

Speaker 1: 33:58

That'll also get you real in tune with the weather and changing patterns. And you're just like I know exactly the last day it rained. I don't know the last day it rained because I think it was a decade ago. That's just what it feels like right now. So you touched on it a little bit. You're now going brick and mortar. Yep, finally got a great spot South Austin, off of Stasney, between South First and Manchak kind of the neighborhood right where I grew up. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great.

Speaker 1: 34:35

South Austin really doesn't have a lot of good food. It's like a good sit down place for dinner, for lunch A lot of it is kind of it's fine, but it's not like I don't ever really want to go out to any place for a pretty good dinner in South Austin. Yeah, what? So you've taken a unique approach at everything you've done. Is there anything in the works that'll be different and sort of unique? Yeah, I mean everything To compound. Yeah, I mean every single thing is going to be different.

Speaker 1: 35:07

You know people thought I don't know like we were talking about. There was like a week where everybody had the exact same comment to me. They were just like so what are you going to do over there? What kind of food? And it's like okay, yeah, obviously barbecue type stuff, but there's going to be a lot more than that Other kind of appetizer stuff. And then I had that exact same conversation with multiple people in a week and everybody was just like are you just going to do a bunch of wings? You didn't do a bunch of chicken wings.

Speaker 1: 35:38

No, we're not going to do wings all the time. We have a truck that does that already and that is, you know, through no immediate fault of that person's own. They're just like thinking about the food on the menu as a thing and as like a commodity there. They're not thinking about like, how does everything work in conjunction? We're not going to be buying whole chickens and then like splitting the wings off because we're only buying chickens from this one ranch in Dripping Springs, from the, from Ty, from the guy that we know by the first name, yeah, so, no, we're not going to be cooking just a bunch of wings. We're not going to be like serving a huge party. 300 wings, yeah, that's. Yeah, that is opposite. Yeah, Of, there's a place to go get that place exists, mama fried. Yeah, do that there. Yeah, yeah, so so what are you going to do?

Speaker 1: 36:32

So it's not going to be wings, no, but like there will be plenty of really good kind of chippy, dippy type stuff. Like really want to do, you know, a smoked case of Fendito with really good house made soft flour tortillas. Nice, yes, we're going to have a few more burgers on the menu. The we're going to have like different specials every day, but it's the same every week. So it's like this day will always be the brisket day. This day will always be the cheek day. Oh, nice, we're not just going to cook a bunch more cheeks either. Like that has gotten us into excuse me, into trouble economically and like with pre, not with, with, like not waste, but with extra food that we make from there. Right, yeah, if we cut down a case of beef cheeks, 70% of it is barbacoa and like only 30% of it is like usable beef cheek. So then we have to like find a place to put all that other barbacoa.

Speaker 1: 37:32

So we're going to try to approach the menu from from a place of like being able to use everything, from a place of having everything like fit Mm. Hmm, yeah, I mean controlling. Controlling food waste is a big deal. It's a restaurant being integrated and then just responsibility. Exactly, I love how you take it a step deeper. That would be on the waste control. It's like the responsibility to the resource. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 37:57

So when people come in and they're like, can I get some wings? And you get like a hundred of them in a day, you'll know it's because I ran a paid ad. Okay, I mean, the answer is no. I heard you guys have great wings. I don't know. The smoke hollow had some ad about the wings. If you want a chicken wing, you got to buy a half chicken. Then you only get one wing. One wing you can buy the other half and you can have two wings.

Speaker 1: 38:31

Oh man, what else is coming up this fall for you? So much, we have a really big packed November. We've got like Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival, then Festival in Charleston, then La Ceto's wedding, which we're doing with Jesse how cool, that'll be really fun. Yeah, it'll be fun. Where are you doing that? Is it down there? That is ranch. Yeah, nice, and I just love Jesse so much I will take any opportunity to hang out with him, to cook with him. We're going to go hunt. We're staying the next day, oh nice, so we're going to go hunt together down there. That'll be awesome. He's such a great guy and he's so busy all the time. Yeah, like, I hardly even see him because he's busy all the time, as we all are, kind of you know. But you're really going to enjoy Hunting and being with him out there. We're going to go hunting.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Oh, yeah, I mean, when we get off or schedule duck hunting, deer hunting, maybe some mule deer in West Texas, like some big old, you know spot and stalk scenario, always quail here, and then I really want to get you out and do some blue quail out in West Texas too, like the whole thing. Maybe we need to turn that into a hosted experience and have people be able to come out to it and sweet, yeah, yeah, I mean, like you said, you like to do the things if you're working there. Yeah, exactly, well, it just a careful one. It's just a lot easier to put that thing on the calendar. You know, maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's like a January hosted blue quail hunt and mule deer hunt for people Sounds fun. Yeah, with maybe some like breakdown and butchery. And yeah, let's do that, man, this has been a long time coming.

Speaker 1: 40:35

Yeah, hanging out being able to hear the story, I feel like there's going to be like several follow up. I'm going to listen to this and I'll be. Hey, man, you need to come back. So we need to talk about this thing specifically. Yeah, exactly, thanks for being here, man. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. Till next time.