West Texas Style Bar-B-Q

SILSBEE: West Texas Style Bar-B-Q

3078 Us Highway 96

Silsbee, TX 77656

409-385-0957

Open M-Sat 10-8

It was getting late on a not so fruitful day of barbecue hunting. The sun was already down at 7:00 and the parking lot outside of West Texas Style Bar-B-Q was dark. The porch lights were on, so we walked on in to find a few customers. A couple of employees behind the counter didn't seem too pleased to have to serve another customer. They pulled a cold brisket from the fridge and unwrapped the plastic before hacking chunks of it into a bowl ready to be nuked. I quickly realized this was not going to make for a happy ending to an already long day.

Photo by Nicholas McWhirter

As you can imagine, the chunks of beef were horrendously bad. The microwave had seared the brisket to lip-burning levels. At this point I’d encountered microwaved barbecue about three or four times EVER. In the previous three days in East Texas, I’d seen it a total of five times. It was starting to feel personal, and here especially the dismissive service and awful food seemed like a big middle finger from the staff.

I’ve had pork cracklin’s with less crunch than the edges of the ribs that looked like they’d been sliced hours earlier. The cross section looked more like unsanded lumber instead of the desirable rosy hue of a well smoked rib. The smoke was non-existent and the flavor was more akin to rancid pork fat than smoked meat. Dessert couldn't even lift this experience from the barbecue basement. Banana pudding was a gritty warm mess of sickening sweetness, worse than even the many poor renditions of the dish made with banana-flavored pudding. Of the many items in our order, only the cabbage was worth eating.  Even the owner’s family had chosen takeout from Whataburger which they ate at the table next to us. I wish they'd have clued us in before we ordered, because a #1 combo with cheese and grilled onions would have been a much better way to finish off the day.

Rating: No Stars