when smoking is good…
No, I’m not talking cigarettes or even the hipper cigars. I’m talking smoked meat.
There’s this guy in a truck I stumbled upon a few years ago. He starts up the smoker in the morning, fills it full of ribs, drives to a parking lot and sits there. When the ribs are properly smoked, he’s open for business. When they’re gone, he’s done for the day. Incredible food and I was happy to find him parked along the road. Extra nice in this day of chain restaurants churning out mass amounts of cookie-cutter food.
Today I was equally as lucky. I stumbled upon a new BBQ place literally in a hole in the wall. The Round Up Texas Texas BBQ is on Rt. 9 in Cold Spring (Putnam County, NY) and is stuck in a parking lot behind Old Post Hardware. If there wasn’t a sign along the road (and smoke billowing out of the smoker) we would have never seen it.
The atmosphere is wooden picnic tables with rolls of paper towels on them, longhorns and indian blankets on the walls, and one huge flatscreen TV tuned to golf, but you are not there for the atmosphere, believe me. You are there for the brisket smoked 18 hours and the fall-off-the-bone ribs. An hour later I can still taste the smokey flavor in the back of my throat. It’s rare to have food that sticks with you–in a good way. The chicken was good (the skin was the best part). The spicy sausage was also good. But the stars were the brisket and ribs in my opinion, along with some wonderful and surprisingly spicy mac and cheese.
Places like that are few and far between in a world populated with Outback Steakhouses and Applebees. I’m making it my personal mission to make sure the little guys stick around.
Do they smoke tofu there?
Though it sounds like I wouldn’t have been able to eat, it does sound like a wonderful experience!
Pretty sure the BBQ isn’t Vegan friendly, JL, but there were also excellent sides–Cole Slaw, Potato Salad, Corn Bread, Beer… If you ever come back over to the dark side, the ribs were worth falling off the Vegan wagon for.