The menu is still being worked out. But expect "Texas-style beef sausage...Memphis-style (albeit cut St. Louis-style) dry ribs; North Carolina-style pulled pork; and, from time to time, Kansas City-style brisket and 'burnt ends,' the juicy, crusty nuggets cut from a beef brisket’s perimeter. Chicken, the back-bench meat of barbecue everywhere, also will be offered," according to WaPo.

Photo by Chris Shott

It was the sign that hooked me. There it was, a simple hand-painted sandwich board straddling the median on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda. Its message was direct: PIT BBQ. An arrow pointed right.

I turned right.

I eventually ran right into Hardy's, a big white truck parked just outside the Montgomery Farm Women's Cooperative. The truck is where you meet Roxie. She takes your order, serves up sides, and shouts to her husband what meats you want. Her husband, Corries Hardy, is just a few feet away, tending his large portable smoker crammed with three tiers of juicy meats, including sausage, ribs, brisket, turkey, and pork.

I immediately start asking him the usual barbecue-geek questions: What kind of wood does he use? How long does he smoke his various meats? Does he use a rub?

His answers are brief and friendly (though his tone understandably suspicious of a stranger asking waaaay too many questions): He uses apple wood only. He likes its sweet scent. (Don't get him started on hickory.) Hardy has created his own special brown sugar-based rub, which is adapted from his grandfather's recipe. He smokes his brisket for about seven hours and his ribs for about three.

His style of barbecue, like his rub, is inspired by his grandfather's work at the smoker in Florida. It's the  kind of slow-smoked 'cue that doesn't play up the smoke. Which explains why he keeps his pit constantly open.

I politely tell Hardy that I've spent a lot of time in Texas and have grown accustomed to its style of barbecue. I'm speaking in code, of course. I'm signaling my bias and giving myself an easy out, should I not prefer Hardy's 'cue. After all, this former Army man towers above me like a skyscraper. His arms look like the thighs of an Olympic sprinter. He wears a straw hat. He reminds me of Alex Karras in Blazing Saddles, and I wasn't interested in being the horse that takes his punch, particularly after the pitmaster offered me a free sample of his brisket (not that smokey but tender and sweet).

I then bought some ribs; I would have bought more, but I had just eaten lunch. Hardy gave me an extra rib. (Man, if I didn't like his 'cue now, I figured I was destined to be dog food.)

Hardy's ribs are indeed sweet. But they also have an excellent chew. They require some jaw work to remove the meat from the bone, just the way I like 'em. But the surprise came from Hardy's sauce, which starts with a sweet hit of what tastes like cider vinegar, but resolves into this welcome blast of heat.

It might not be my preferred style of barbecue, but I could appreciate its craft. This is a pitmaster who has dedicated himself to his own personalized style of barbecue, down to the custom-made rub and the home-made sauce. There is a meticulousness and singularity of purpose here that I can fully embrace. These are the traits of the finest pitmasters, from North Carolina to Central Texas. The fact that my heart and palate will forever belong to Lone Star State 'cue is not Corries Hardy's fault.

Hardy's barbecue is available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sundays near the Montgomery Farm Women's Cooperative at Willow and Wisconsin streets in Bethesda.

More than four years ago at their Rockville location, Urban Bar-B-Que owners David Calkins and Lee Howard were turning out barbecue with an overtaxed metal smoker approximately the size of a dorm-room refrigerator. It was as much a convection oven as a smoker, a contraption that required employees to fill (and refill and refill) a tiny wood-box with enough chips and chunks to generate the plumes of black perfume vital for any real barbecue. It worked, but only if your experience with ’cue was limited to the city-slicker stuff. More than a year ago, though, the guys installed a giant Southern Pride unit that burns split seasoned logs. The smoker reflected their need for more capacity as well as their desire to hang their hat on the Texas branch of American barbecue. These days, despite their East Coast roots, Calkins and Howard have the souls of true Texas pitmasters. They keep refining and simplifying, looking for that mysterious combination of time, smoke, and seasoning that defines Lone Star State barbecue. If they keep moving in this direction, they might be able to retire their house-made sauces in a year or so. Their smoked meats just won’t need ’em.

2007 Chapman Ave., Rockville (240) 290-4827

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

You experience sort of a reverse Wizard of Oz moment when you enter Capital Q BBQ. Rather than waltzing into a surreal, Technicolor world, you leave behind D.C.'s pictogram-heavy equivalent of Oz and strut into a smoky, two-fisted, virtually black-and-white version of central Texas at this Chinatown haunt. No Munchkin could ever hope to survive in this wannabe roadhouse that promotes a Texas barbecue experience.

Maybe no real Texan, either, if you judge Capital Q by its brisket, arguably the defining cut of Lone Star State barbecue. The pitmasters here smoke the brisket in an Ole Hickory unit for 12 hours, but you'd barely know it from the ribbons of freshly sliced beef served up at the counter. The slices are undeniably moist, particularly those cut from the fatty end, but they have barely a whiff of smoky perfume or seasoning.  When Texans complain of "barbecue" that tastes like roast beef, this is the stuff they're thinking about.

The nicely pink and chewy spare ribs, served dry like the brisket, are also a smoke-free zone. Their dominant flavor is the rub, which has a sweet, almost-cinnamon-like flavor to it. You can, of course, slather any of Capital Q's meats with one of the joint's vinegar-based sauces, but then that's not exactly Texas-style barbecue, is it?

Capital Q may be one of the few barbecue joints where I prefer the sides over smoky main attractions, particularly the subtly piquant collard greens, which are not cooked down to mush. I think that says plenty about Capital Q.

Mea culpa!

I should say that I did try first to contact Hill Country owner and Bethesda native, Marc Glosserman, before posting the information, but didn't hear back in time. That's no excuse and, in fact, just makes me seem like yet another blogger putting urgency before facts. Mea culpa 2!

Anyway, enough groveling, here are the facts as I know them now on Hill Country: Crews just started construction this week on the Penn Quarter space at 410 Seventh St. NW, which used to be a Lifestyles USA clothing store.

"If it's [done] before the end of 2010, that will be the best case scenario," says
Sarah Abell, who's handling publicity for Hill Country.

This weekend, I stopped by Branded '72 at the urging of co-owner Mark Johnson, the son-in-law of  founder, Ken O'Brien Sr., whose Rockville smokehouse bore his name for decades until the newcomers rebranded it last year. More on my meal in just a second.

But before I ordered a thing at Branded '72, I noticed the 'cue joint was selling a single "Chris Rock" rib for $2.50. (See the bottom of the middle column on the menu.) I asked the meat carver behind the counter what the story was. He looked as perplexed as I was. Only when I got home did Carrie turn up this video:

Looks like inflation has bumped the price of that lone rib from 50 cents to $2.50.

Personally, I'd skip the rib(s) altogether, at least if you're looking for Texas-style spare ribs. Branded's third-rack is fall-off-the-bone moist, which might play in some circles, but not in Texas where you want a little chew left on those bones. The ribs also rely too heavily on sauce instead of smoke, time, and a thick coating of seasonings.

But I think Johnson and his team are headed in the right direction with their brisket, which they now smoke with the deckle on. This rich, fatty section of the brisket helps keep the flesh moist during its long stay in the smoker.  Even better, the Branded team is wrapping its briskets warm, deckle still attached, before throwing them in the holding unit. The fatty sections are then trimmed to order. This technique prevents the brisket from drying out in the holding unit.

Branded's brisket is certainly moister than the first time I tried it. It also has a deeper level of smoke. But the brisket doesn't boast a ton of bark, the result, I presume, of smoking with the deckle on, and without a good crusty coating of seasonings, the meat is rather one dimensional. I'm also not a fan of Branded's chopped-up approach to serving brisket. I prefer those thin strips of perfumed beef, which I can leisurely drop into my mouth like long strands of pasta. Meat pasta, that is.

My friend and smoke master Jim Shahin had been planning this taste-off  since last fall when he smuggled four briskets back from Texas following a business trip. Not just any briskets, either, but slabs from four of the five top-performing smokehouses in Texas Monthly's most recent survey. (Registration required.)

His cache of meats included deckle cuts from Louie Mueller in Taylor, Kreuz Market in Lockhart,  Smitty's Market in Lockhart, and the surprise winner of the magazine's ranking, Snow's in Lexington, which then got the Trillin treatment a few months later in the New Yorker. For those who don't dab liquid smoke behind their ears before going on dates, the deckle (or point) is the fattier section of the brisket, the stuff usually tossed in the trash (or chili) here in the fat-fearing East.

Jim had been storing these briskets until he could gather the Shitheads — and a few non-Shitheads, including Texas native Joe Yonan, perhaps better known as the food editor at the Post — for a taste-off. That day turned out to be Saturday.

If you want to know how obsessive Jim was about the contest, consider this: He had no intention of putting these previously smoked briskets on his own smoker. That would ruin each Texas pitmaster's finely tuned approach to his slabs. No, instead, Jim planned to reheat them in the oven for an hour, at 250 degrees, so that the flavors would remain essentially the same from each brisket's tour in a Texas smokehouse.

Well, that was the plan anyway. Until Jim's oven broke.

Plan B: Jim wrapped those four briskets in heavy-duty aluminum foil and put them on his smoker, hoping and trusting (praying?) that the silver wrap would keep his own wood smoke off those precious briskets. He strategically placed each wrapped brisket on the grates of his Brinkmann and rotated them during the reheating to make sure none received more smoke than the other.

The problem with the approach, as Jim explained with Shiner Bock in his hand (or was it a homemade margarita?), is that the wrapped briskets will steam in on themselves, softening what could otherwise be a firm and textured bark. Which is why he unwrapped the briskets for the final 15 minutes: to tighten that bark back up.

Which, of course, exposed them to Jim's wood smoke. It was an imperfect solution to an unfortunate problem, made more acceptable with each passing margarita. We were feeling good, even if Jim wasn't.

Jim recused himself as judge so he could administer this blind tasting to the judges' table, one plate of sliced brisket at a time. My first bite and I knew this was going to be a difficult, if not impossible, assignment.

I hadn't tasted brisket this good since the last time Jim smuggled Texas meat back to D.C. I felt like a starving mongrel given a platter of random scraps: It was all A+ stuff!

But soon my (and the table's) professional demeanor took over and we got serious about judging these slabs. One was too dry and reminded us of roast beef without jus. Another was smoky and moist, but the bark was off. The third was coated with pepper (I knew this Mueller brisket in my sleep!), which some judges couldn't taste, and the final slab tasted, believe it or not, of rich, smoky olive oil.

Jim tallied our scores and announced our own surprise winner: Smitty's! That was the smoky olive oil brisket.

Here were the final ratings:  1) Smitty's 4.5, 2) Snow's 3.6, 3) Mueller's 3.59, and 4)  Kreuz's 3.4 (or 3.5; it's a figure lost to smoke and alcohol).

Jim almost felt betrayed by his gathered troops. I'll let him explain why:

Yes, I was surprised. I ate at all the places I got the briskets from on the day that I bought the briskets. (I should add that I have eaten at Mueller's and Kreuz's scores of times each, probably at least 100 times each; at Smitty's about 20 times, it having opened relatively late in the bbq game; and Snow's twice.)

Here is why I was surprised: The day I was at Smitty's, the brisket I had was downright bad. It had an odd flavor, a kind of sweetness, almost as if it had been glazed. When I bought the deckel cut to take home, I naturally assumed it would taste the same as the one I had. But it didn't. Somehow, it tasted more like an actual smoked brisket. No odd flavor. I can't explain it.

Setting that very weird experience aside, I also didn't agree with the results because, to me, Smitty's had a relatively uninteresting overall character. I think there is something of a terroir aspect to smoked Texas brisket. That isn't to say that it tastes of the earth in which the cows were raised. It is to say that there is a characteristic flavor and sense, embedded somewhere deep inside, an essence, that when you eat it, it says central Texas smoked brisket. Kreuz's has that quality, brawny, if you will, a little chewy, never falling apart like roast beef, and yet moist. Even though I have taken my shots at Kreuz's over the years, I kinda felt that it wasn't getting a fair shake or maybe that, because it was by far the most physically large brisket, maybe it didn't get the same warmth through and through that the others did. I also felt a little bad for Mueller's. Yes, I have a sentimental attachment to it, what with Jessica [Jim's wife] being from Taylor and all. But it isn't that. It's that I was stunned that some folks couldn't taste the black pepperiness. It is its very pepperiness that helps propel you to like or dislike it.

Some folks, like me, are drawn to the pepper. Others can't stand it. But to not taste it is, to me, to not taste the brisket itself. You mentioned that you felt the last brisket, Smitty's, had a sort of olive oilness to it. I thought that was good description of a certain flavor characteristic of some very good briskets. I thought that Mueller's had that flavor characteristic, too, and I couldn't help but wonder if it had come last if the palates would have been groomed to recognize that flavor. (Kreuz's lacks that characteristic, but I don't think it matters – that quality, which is spectacular, one to which I myself am drawn when I make my own briskets, is not, I don't think, in and of itself a requirement in great briskets; in other words, a brisket can be great – as I think Kreuz's is – for reasons all its own.

As for Snow's, I have had it twice at its place in Lexington and loved it both times, but this time I thought it was over-cooked (strands of meat fell like thin sticks) and bland. It was the only one of the four that was purchased frozen – which Snow's does for mailing – and I couldn't help if that made a difference. But it received by far the highest group grade. So, there ya go.

In the end, we were talking about the best of the best. Me, I'd be happy to eat any one of 'em anytime – which is good, since I had some for lunch Sunday, dinner Sunday, and plan to have some for lunch today.

The bad news here is that you can't exactly replicate this taste-testing yourself, not without smuggling briskets on your own. Of the four Texas smokehouses, only Kreuz Market and Snow's does shipping.

The wrapped briskets, with some spare ribs to boot.

The unwrapped briskets getting a little bark tightening

The judges' table, with butcher paper "plates," just like in Central Texas

Jim announces the scores, trying to conceal his disgust.

Once the judging was over it was  really time to eat, courtesy of the best pit man in D.C., Jim Shahin.

Perhaps not honky tonkin' in the Hank Williams sense, but the Sandy Spring location of the mini-Urban Bar-B-Que chain is planning to add live music late this summer, after owners David Calkins and Lee Howard expand their smokehouse.

When I spoke to Calkins on the phone this morning, he talked about not only adding live music but also showing movies in the parking lot, opening a full bar, expanding the barbecue menu, and including full service at the Sandy Spring spot.

What gives?

Calkins and Howard are close to signing a deal that will greatly expand the Urban outlet up north. The partners plan to take over the other two retail spaces in their small strip center on Olney Sandy Spring Road, which will give them 5,800 square feet to play with.

That's a ton of space, and as Calkins says, "I don't think that places [like that] will survive on barbecue alone."

So the build-out will include a stage, but not a large one. Calkins imagines three-piece bands strumming away on it. (There goes my fantasy of a Stubb's Bar-B-Que knock-off in Sandy Spring!) He also imagines a "small expansion" of the smokehouse concept that has been the cornerstone of Urban.

As we talk, Calkins starts daydreaming about what he might add to the menu: catfish fingers, crab cakes, smoked rib-eye and prime rib, more salads, perhaps even a weekend brunch menu.

Calkins is quick to caution, however: "I'm not trying to be something we're not."

Which is, increasingly, a serious-minded barbecue house dedicated to the long, difficult Texas approach to smoking meats. Urban's owners have become such devotees of Lone Star 'cue that Calkins said, 10 years from now, he could imagine never serving sauce with his barbecue. He considers that a sign of his growing confidence with the Texas style.

Then he paused and realized his folly. The East Coast market has to have its sauce.

Sauce or not, the expanded Urban Bar-B-Que should be operational by late summer.

As promised, a group of meat eaters gathered last weekend at Urban Bar-B-Que to test drive the brisket, ribs, pork, and chicken that co-owner David Calkins was pulling from his new Southern Pride smoker. I can't speak for the rest of the crew, but from the moment I walked in the joint, I knew things were different. The entire space was perfumed with the smoke from oak logs. Frankly, I don't know why Glade doesn't create a Texas Pit Barbecue air freshener; personally, I'd rather live inside a place that smells like a smokehouse than an old lady's boudoir.

But I stray. Back to the 'cue: The chicken was more about seasoning than smoke, and the ribs were wonderfully smoky, charred, tender, pink, and tasty (but still slathered in a sticky sweet sauce). The revelation, however, was Calkins' brisket. I'm not about to call it Kreuz quality, but in the three years since I first sampled Urban's wares, the brisket has improved to the point where I can claim, without hesitation, that it's the best among the metro area's 'cue joints.

I know what you're thinking: I'm just damning with faint praise. You're absolutely wrong.

Calkins has been on a ruthless campaign to turn out quality brisket, and with his new smoker, I think he's there. The bark is among the best I've seen from a commercial smoker, dark and smoky and well-seasoned. There's a nice ribbon of fat, still soft and rich, lounging on both ends of the brisket, evidence that Calkins hasn't aggressively trimmed the meat in the name of health trends (and at the sacrifice of flavor). When I first bit into the brisket, I had a moment not unlike Anton Ego's in Ratatouille: I felt like I was transported back to Texas for a flash. The smoke flavor was there, the salt-and-pepper rub was simple and pure, and the meat was moist all the way through.

There were some naysayers in our group: Two eaters, Mike Bober from Capital Spice and Mike Riggs from City Paper, felt that the brisket wasn't seasoned aggressively enough; they wanted more pepper. I wouldn't disagree with them, but to me, that's a matter of preference, not evidence of any serious flaw. These men are clearly in the Louie Mueller School of Brisket, even if they didn't know it.

But would Texans recognize this brisket as one of their own? Without a doubt. Would they find flaws? Of course they would. But that's the Texas way: No two people ever seem to agree on the best way to do brisket.

Oh, yes, here's a snapshot of the meat lovers who made the trip to Rockville on a cold Friday. Many thanks, everyone!