The Calbi Korean BBQ truck

These eerie, elegant, silent videos on Los Angeles’ food trucks speak volumes about the richness of the city’s street snacks — and the dearth of decent offerings we still have in the District. Take a look at the vids after the jump and try not to drool with resentment.
Read More “Mobilecraving’s Vids on L.A. Food Trucks: Try Not to Drool with Resentment” »

I love how Mike Judge concluded his King of the Hill series, one of Y&H’s all-time favorite sitcoms. It didn’t end with a death in the family, a herd of cattle stampeding down Arlen, or a Yankee invasion of Texas. It ends with Hank and Bobby Hill working together over grills, the smell of smoked meats enticing the cast for a final taste of Texas beef. Understated. Perfect.

The funny thing is, Judge didn’t even intend for the finale to be the finale.

The owners of Urban Bar-B-Que plan to open a third location of their small smokehouse chain in the former Willoughby’s Market in Sandy Spring, pitmaster David Calkins told Y&H over the weekend.

The lease has been signed, and since the space won’t require a massive build-out for the restaurant, Calkins expects to open the latest Urban within a month, if not sooner. Even better, Urban will install a Southern Pride XLR-600 smoker in the Sandy Spring spot; the giant machine, able to smoke hundreds of pounds of meat for 12 hours with split logs, was in large part responsible for Y&H’s recent re-evaluationof the barbecue joint in Rockville. (The lack of an XLR-600 at the Urban location in Silver Spring also explains its inferior meats.)

Read More “Urban Bar-B-Que to Open Third Store in Sandy Spring” »

I was trying to find a good video clip on carne ahumada, the smoked meats of Mexico, when I tripped upon this gem from what looks like the History Channel. It goes a long way toward explaining why Texans are so crazy about their style of barbecue.

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

Laugh if you will, but the WFM Smokehouse inside the Fair Lakes Whole Foods store is no joke. The woman in charge is Maria Mercado, a Salvadoran native who used to cook almost exclusively with wood back in her home country. She now smokes hundreds of pounds of beef, chicken, and pork in a massive Southern Pride unit on the premises, employing a combination of cherry, maple, and hickory wood. She and her team pull out meats at all hours of the day, whether for takeout orders or those souls who want to dine right there at the counter, just a stone’s throw from the Emeril Green set. The “Kitchen Sink” platter, which comes with four meats and three sides, is enough to feed two hungry people and a stray dog. The simple spice-rubbed brisket is the star; it’s carved into these thick, intense, sweetly smoked slices that bulge with fatty deposits. Best of all, you can chase your Kitchen Sink of smoked meats with a bottle of suds available at the nearby craft-beer refrigeration case.

Addendum: Read Y&H’s full report on the WFM Smokehouse.

WFM Smokehouse, 4501 Market Commons Drive, Fairfax, Va. 22033, (703) 222-2058

Photo by Tim Carman

No amount of reading or talking to friends can prepare you for your first turn at the barbecue smoker. On Sunday, I smoked my first rack of spare ribs. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but it was a pain in the ass. Here’s the tale told in pictures (with my new digital camera!)

Here’s the new baby: a Brinkmann Smoke N Grill, with a separate wood box.  If you ever decide to buy one of these beasts, do what my barbecue mentor, Jim Shahin, suggested: Have Home Depot put it together for you.

Read More “Playing With Fire: My First Attempt to Smoke Spare Ribs” »

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

Three different vehicles have taken up residence at the back end of a massive parking lot that serves the Safeway grocery store at 514 Rhode Island Ave. NE. One is a converted 1995 school bus now outfitted with deep-fryers, prep tables, and coolers. The second is a square white panel truck that hauls around a giant generator, and the final is a beat-up red Chevy 1500 pickup with an equally well-used Southern Pride smoker propped up on cinder blocks in the bed.

This sprawling mobile barbecue empire belongs to Fate Pittman, a 73-year-old pitmaster who has been smoking pork, beef, and chicken for more than 30 years. Except no one calls Pittman by his family name. Everyone knows him by the handle painted onto his vehicles: Mr. P.

Read More “Young & Hungry Dining Guide by the Day: Mr. P’s Ribs and Fish” »

I just have one question: Who the hell ate the 26,400 pounds of beef after Uruguayan cooks set up a nearly mile-long grill to steal the title of “World’s Largest Barbecue” from Mexico?

Let’s assume for a moment that you don’t want to grill and that you don’t have any friends kind enough to invite you to their barbecue drunk-a-thon on the Fourth. Where do you turn? Well, Y&H has some options, including a couple with smoked meats for those who just can’t celebrated America’s birthday without an animal sacrifice.

Mmmm, animal sacrifice.

• Jamie Stachowski will be grilling his artisan sausages at Red, White & Bleu in Falls Church from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The charcuterie master will be tending the charcoal grill at the wine and gourmet food shop, cooking up veal bratwurst, kielbasa, merguez, and linguiça for customers to sample. Stachowski will also have some rabbit terrine, country pate, and other “meat surprises” to try. All samples will be free, but the shop is hoping, of course, that you’ll be enticed into buying some of Stachowski’s meats to take home — and maybe a bottle or two of wine to go with it.
• Mr. P, one of the top 50 performers on Y&H’s 2009 Dining Guide, will be working the Fourth at his usual spot: the Safeway parking lot at Rhode Island Ave. NE. Aside from his amazing spare ribs, which are smoked to a charred, crispy, and succulent state, Mr. P will also trot out a new item: barbecued short ribs. He tells me they will be a permanent part of his menu.

Read More “Some July 4th Eats Good Enough to Keep Your Grill in Storage” »

This is what passes for photography when your camera’s broke.

I was aimlessly roaming around Beltsville, looking for an interesting place to eat, when I spotted a vision by the side of the road: a portable barbecue stand with a black-metal pit expelling smoke into the air, a smell as irresistible as I imagine the sounds from the Isle of Sirens to be. Only two words came to mind when I discovered this accidental treasure: “Fuck ya!”

I immediately turned the vehicle around and pulled up behind Griffin’s Barbecue and Catering. (I still curse my broken digital camera, which I haven’t yet replaced; apologies for no pics. But call Griffin’s at either 301-785-4550 or 301-785-5026 for details.)

Griffin’s is a two-person operation, run by Shaquana Hamilton and Jeffrey Griffin, who pulled up stakes in Fort Wayne, Ind., to start life anew in the D.C. area. Back in Fort Wayne, Hamilton and Griffin had a restaurant; here, they just have their mobile vending trailer and their smoker, which date back 11 years when the pair first started in the barbecue business.  They pulled their portable equipment out of the mothballs for their fresh start on the East Coast.

Griffin’s specializes in pork and beef ribs, but Griffin, the pitmaster, smokes his meats in a style he describes as Midwestern. Which to him means no hardwoods like hickory or oak. Instead, Griffin applies a secret rub to his ribs and smokes them over charcoal briquets. Once the ribs are pulled from the pit, he slathers them in a homemade vinegar-based sauce. Like K.C. barbecue, the sauce is not an option; it’s an essential part of the experience.

Read More “More on the Local Barbecue Trail: Griffin’s and Hill Country” »