"Texas!?" they both hollered in chorus. "We don't speak Texas barbecue!"
Most folks 'round these parts don't. And amid the many regional styles that color our barbecue nation, the beef-centric art of true Texas 'cue may be the hardest to master. It doesn't rely on jazzy sauces or rubs to make its case. It's all about drawing deep meaning from the slow, simple union of brisket and smoke. Plus a little salt and pepper to spice things up.
Talk about a minimalist challenge. One mistake building your red-oak fire in the morning can mess with an entire evening's worth of meats, says Erin O'Shea, Percy's chef and co-owner.
But when it works, as it did with her crusty "burnt ends," the results can be transcendent. Those irregular slices of beef, trimmed from both the fat-ribboned "moist" and "lean" ends of the brisket, arrive poking out of a white paper package like meaty treasures unearthed from a fire pit. Somehow still juicy and tender on the inside, their char-edged exteriors caramelize beef, fat, and smoke to their most intense expression. With Lyle Lovett crooning from Live in Texas on the jukebox, a tart pickle, and, yes, even a splash of Percy's zippy sauce keeping those burnt ends moist, my taste buds shimmied with happiness.
O'Shea has struggled to consistently nail that kind of confident snap in some of the other offerings - the center-cut brisket was good enough, but lacked real swagger.
But finally, a few months after opening, that depth of flavor is finding its way into other corners of the menu - in the deeply smoked pork belly whose layers of fat and meat just melt away; in the superbly moist chicken that comes wrapped in a tawny parchment of snappy skin.
But, of course, barbecue people will nitpick any details that smack of false airs.
