In John Ford’s movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a young reporter learns that the central truth of the legend that has earned Jimmy Stewart’s character fame and honor is not quite the way the story really happened. The reporter asks his editor what he should do. Without hesitation the editor replies, “When the [...]

Learned men may differ on the reasons, but one school of opinion holds that the best barbecue comes from joints. Joints have warped, barn plank walls that haven’t been painted since Herbert Hoover was in the White House, or they’re made out of cinder blocks that have turned a greasy mahogany from the pit smoke. The operators [...]

With the hum and whir of a busy U.S. Highway 75 just behind this stand, Smoky G’s in Van Alstyne is no backwoods barbecue joint. It is just a stand, plopped down on a concrete pad in a Shell gas station parking lot, a lone picnic table next to the tire pressure checker. The constant [...]

Back when Cartwright was a Lake Texoma playground for all the area, Nick Williams would play around his grandfather’s business, a little stand that sold barbecued beef sandwiches and cold beer to passersby. Occasionally, he would get to help his grandfather, Nick Nichols, build a fire in the old brick pit and watch the meat [...]

Get in line. For more than two decades, first at Lew’s and now at Randy’s Bar-B-Que, the brisket and legendary stuffed peppers have had people lined up at the little stand at the intersecting corner of Spur 503 and Texoma Parkway in Denison. Have an opinion about Randy’s? Leave a Comment and tell us about [...]

Pay no attention to the dummy in the corner, he’s not in line. The old prospector with the fixed stare is sort of the mascot who “sits” guard out front of the Old Mining Camp barbecue stand on Woodlawn Avenue in Denison. At the Old Mining Camp, the brisket is smoked under a cloud of [...]

That is holy smoke you see rolling over the barbecue stand in Knollwood. Dale Bryant thanks the Lord for leading him to the smoked meat business, and business is booming at Smokey D’s Bar-B-Q in the little suburban community north of Sherman. Bryant’s experience with barbecue started when he was working the line at the [...]

When Texas Monthly came calling and tried the brisket and ribs served by Wayne Ooten and his son and partner, Kevin at the OO Smokehouse (that’s OO as in Oh! Oh!), the magazine was duly impressed, and Texoma had its first entry on the Texas Monthly list of Top 50 barbecue spots in the Lone [...]

In the lands discovered by Lemuel Gulliver, the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians went to war over which end of a soft-boiled egg to crack at breakfast time. Americans haven’t reached that level of passion over food quite yet, but standoffs over barbecue or barbeque or bar-b-q—even the spelling is in question—can produce disputes that fall [...]

Not so long ago, if you had just finished off a bag of Barbara’s Burgers in Bells on a warm summer day, you might have topped things off with a snow cone from Melissa Perkins’ stand across the road. Her snow-cone stand, called Perk’s, became a landmark of its own in the small town. Have [...]