Patillo's Bar-B-Q

BEAUMONT: Patillo's Bar-B-Q

2775 Washington Blvd.

Beaumont, TX 77705

409-833-3156

Open M 10-4, Tues-Sat 10-8

Frank Patillo IV was tending the brick lined pit back in the kitchen when I arrived with a few friends to Patillo's on the south side of Beaumont. The pit was installed when this version of the restaurant was opened in the fifties marking just one of the iterations that this business has endured in its one hundred year history. As a first time visitor who had quite honestly just happened to drive by this historic joint that hadn't even created a blip on my radar before, I was oblivious to the history. Not knowing what to expect, we confirmed that the sausage was homemade and ordered a little of everything.

The first thing to hit the table was the sausage link. As I struggled to cut into it with a butter knife, the fat ran freely from the casing into a deep red pool onto the plate. This was by no means an attempt at lean sausage, and wasn't familiar at all. Beaumont native Chris Reid explained that this was the old way to do links in southeast Texas (he just wrote another great article on the soul of barbecue with a highlight on Patillo's here). Called 'juicy links', these all beef sausages in a beef casing had all but been phased out of modern barbecue menus. Even when they remained, as they had at Broussard's down the street, they had been transformed into a leaner version of the original. At Patillo's they had stuck with tradition. Fat wasn't to be feared but savored as a second course using slices of white bread as a sponge to clean the plates of the flavorful drippings. Even after a good smoke, those beef casings were too chewy to eat, so the filling laced with paprika and garlic spilled onto the plate. After just a bite, the members of this round table eyed each other to determine the best way to secure another bite or two.

The links here are still hand made. Back through an open door into a side kitchen, Frank's brother Robert took us back to see how the sausage was made. The mix is proprietary, but the procedure was open for viewing. A medieval looking collection of rods and gears looked to outdate the building, but this was the old sausage stuffer still cranking away.

Back at the table, there was still plenty of other meats to sample. Brisket was sliced thin and curled together on a plate before being topped with a 'barbecue sauce' that is more like a thin gravy. The plate actually looked closer to Chinese food than barbecue, but this was the embodiment of an older tradition before the ubiquity of tomatoes and sugar in barbecue sauce. Silky tenderness was not a goal for this brisket hence the thin slicing. A good crust and thin pink ring surrounded the slices, but barely a hint of smoke could be detected. Even now I'm not really sure if I liked it. Something this true to history may be an acquired taste.

Meaty ribs with a black crust held more of the smoky essence of the pits. Again, the meat was tough and took some effort to get off the bone. The gravy sauce seemed to compliment the pork better than the beef.

Ribs weren't the only pork available. A plate of sliced pork topped with the same sauce was the smokiest of the lot and the most tender. The earthiness of the dried chiles in the oily gravy were most evident on this plate, and would easily be my order for the next visit, along with some of the juicy links.

We were getting stuffed, but the tray of personal sized homemade pies was too tempting to resist. Lemon pie with toasted coconut was hard to pass around the table. I made sure its round ended with my fork. Sweet potato pie had a subtle sweetness that allowed the naturally sweet tuber to shine through. The crust on both was buttery and impeccably crisp.

While the brisket and ribs aren't done in a method I prefer, it's obvious they weren't hurried and sloppy. Given the fact that East Texas is so desolate when it comes to finding good barbecue, and knowing how unique and memorable the juicy links (and most everything else about this place) were, there's no doubt that this joint is worth traveling to.

Rating ****

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

Merle's Bar-B-Q

VICTORIA: Merle's Bar-B-Q
611 South Moody 
Victoria, TX 77901
361-0576-9289
Open M-Sat 11-8

www.merlesbarbq.com

Update: This joint is CLOSED.

2012: This joint's been open for a little over a year, and they already have awards decorating the wall. I was hoping the engraved silver platter from a local competition would translate into well smoked meat. It was three in the afternoon so things were a bit slow inside. We chatted with the owners while they prepared a three meat combo plate, and learned that they had moved up to Victoria from Port Lavaca. On the way out, the owner said “I’ve cooked 10,000 pounds of brisket, so they say now that I’m a pitmaster.” I’m not sure who ‘they’ are, and quantity alone doesn’t get you that title. I know the meat we got on this day didn’t come from a master.

Indirect smoking with mesquite can be tricky business. It is by far the strongest of the Texas hardwoods used for smoking, and using any sticks that aren't properly seasoned can create poor quality smoke full of creosote. I've had enough over smoked mesquite BBQ to know the symptoms pretty quickly. Your tongue starts to go numb just after the the first bite of what tastes like a telephone pole. The first bite of the eminently dry rib had this issue. The bone was plenty meaty, but the jet black surface didn't provide a pleasant bite. The chewy meat wasn't coming off the bone easily, and what did succumb was dry with a layer of tough unrendered fat.

Sausage had a decent flavor and may have been from Pollack's, but it suffered from not enough time on the smoker and still had a flaccid casing. Soggy brisket had most likely come from the day (or two days) prior. The meat was just as over smoked as the ribs, but suffered from being overcooked (and streamed from wrapping) to the point of sponginess. Sides of beans with little flavor and potato salad from a bucket didn't help. With Mumphord's just up the street, there's no need to stop here.

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