Rix Pit BBQ & Discount Warehouse

FT. STOCKTON: Rix Pit BBQ & Discount Warehouse
1712 N Front St
Fort Stockton, TX 79735
432-336-7637
Open M-F 11-8

Guest Contributor: Cousin Ryan was lawyering over in west Texas, and offered up this review of a joint in Ft. Stockton.

As you walk up to Rix Pit BBQ & Discount Warehouse, something won't seem right. On the one hand, the smell of the bar-b-que smoker draws you in, whetting your appetite and making you anticipate the succulent meat inside. Yet the outside entrance made of brick and manufactured walls give the impression you're about to walk into a small-town hardware store.

If you had either thought, you'd be right, which is why this is not just a BBQ restaurant but also a "Discount Warehouse." Inside the front door you are surrounded by the trappings of a small town general store, with hardware and tools on your right and souvenirs and medical scrubs on your left (sadly, the hardware section was closed during our visit). As you pass through the "Discount Warehouse" the glow of neon beer signs lights your way toward the barbeque line where, on this day, the lunch special was chicken fried steak that looked incredible, and could be had with two sides for about $7.

Instead, so as to provide a consistent review with other barbeque joints, I had the brisket, sausage, and ribs, with bread, potatoes and gravy, and corn (aprox $13 for the three meat plate with two sides).



The restaurant offers two types of sauce - sweet and tangy. The brisket was lean and disappointingly lacked the smoky flavor I would have expected given the aroma outside. However, the taste was good although I would have preferred a slightly juicier sampling. The sausage was succulent - not too spicy, not too fatty. It was just about perfect. What the brisket lacked in smoke was made up for by the ribs. With a little tugging the ribs fell nicely off the bone while eating, and had a great smoky flavor that was complemented nicely by the tangy sauce. The corn and potatoes were as expected, neither remarkable nor distracting. Everything was freshly made. The cobbler comes in peach, cherry, or apple, and is worth saving room for. The crust is sweet and the apples in our sample tasted fresh.



Although the restaurant has limited hours and closes at 8PM, it was probably the best restaurant I have visited in my 5 trips to Ft. Stockton, and is worth the visit if you need a place to stop for lunch or dinner as you travel across I-10.

Rating ***

BBQ Book Review - Savage Barbecue

Title: Savage Barbecue
Author: Andrew Warnes
Published: 2008 by University of Georgia Press

Most books about barbecue either take the form of a recipe book, a compilation of reviews, or profiles about barbecue personalities. In Andrew Warnes book Savage Barbecue, there is a much deeper investigation of not only the term "barbecue", but its historical and cultural significance as the so-called national food of the good ole USA. The task is daunting, and on most points, the author provides great encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, while using that knowledge to back up sometimes down right outlandish arguments about how racial relationships molded the history of this great food.

The book begins as an enlightening account of ancient bbq history including written accounts of the first barbecue ever mentioned in print "Three Pigs of Peckham" by Edward Ward, as well as an explantion of the origination of the word "barbecue" from the original "barbacoa". Soon the reader realizes that each of these points will soon become ammunition for racial accusations concerning all things barbecue

Through the rest of the book, the author's explanations are at once compelling and ridiculous. Many of his arguments begin with poignant observations about barbecue in a cultural and culinary sense, and then come to a crashing conclusion whose only purpose is fit all historical mentions of barbecue into his big bucket of racism. One section begins promisingly with the observation that the culinary elite because "the great time and effort demanded by this food seem to them betrayed by its unforgiveable appearance among ketchup and soda, plastic cutlery and tabletops, and other paraphernalia alien to their idea of culinary excellence." He then points to the irony that although barbecue is not considered "cuisine" by the gastronomic elite, urban chain bbq joints who use gas fired smokers will place a pile of wood outside of their restaurant merely to fake their authenticity. This fact lends credibility to the argument that barbecue is a true cuisine whose fans have discerning tastes and expectations of proper cooking technique. Well said, but this astute observation soon turns to the almost laughable argument that "these woodpiles spirit attention away from the kitchen, away from the underpaid and overworked descendants of slaves so often to be found therein." So we are to believe that fake stacks of wood are conciously or unconciously placed alongside some cityfied bbq joint because that will somehow camouflage the color of the employees? That's a road I'm not willing to follow the author down.

Another similar observation is that Thomas Jefferson liked to consider himself a common man, but when it came to partaking in activities associated with the actual common population (like barbecues), he was more likely to be found at a grand dinner. He then uses the fact that Jefferson neither attended or wrote about barbecues to argue that "Jefferson's silence on barbecue suggests he finds its barbarity, its stark racial alterity, hard to stomach." Hold on here, is the negative proving the positive here? I thought we threw that out in ninth grade English class.

The most enjoyable part about the book is the sheer amount of intriguing references and quotations compiled. One of my favoriters is from John Shelton in an essay for Cornbread Nation 2. He says, "Barbecue is the closest thing we have in the United States to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes." I couldn't agree more. If you can stay awake during the diatribes, and use your own critical thinking to assess the quality of Mr. Warnes' arguments, then this book can be enjoyed. Just don't take it's weak lines of reasoning too seriously.

- BBQ Snob

Duke's Smokehouse

GEORGETOWN: Duke’s Smokehouse
408 W. Morrow
Georgetown, TX 78626
512- 930-2877
Open Sun-Thur 7-8 (drive-thru ‘til 9), F-Sat 7-9
www.dukesbbq.com/

We arrived at Duke's at 9:05 with what we thought was plenty of time considering their website says they're open until 10:00 on Fridays, but the sign on the door displayed their new hours which end at 9:00. The drive-thru was the only option, and they only had brisket and sausage left, so we got a bit of each. Back at a friend's house we opened the containers to find some good looking brisket, and some grocery store grade sausage. The brisket was a bit tough, but the crust and smokeline were prominent. The meat was smoky all the way through each slice, and the overall flavor was good. The fatty sausage had a fine grind with little flavor at all. Based on the brisket, I'd like to get back here to try a full offering of meats in their prime.

Rating **