News
 
Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Stuff Texans Love: Bun B & QueenieRap legend Bun B and his wife, Queenie, the Houston supercouple whose Trill Burgers won Good Morning America’s award for best burger spot in America, have been married for more than twenty years. That means two decades of Valentine’s Day celebrations and gifts—some extravagant, some sweet, and some, as Bun says, “that can’t be talked about.”There was that time he filled her room with hundreds of roses. “It was a grand gesture, and she appreciated it,” says Bun, whose conversation regularly veers back to the many things he loves about Queenie. “But then she was sad they were all going to die. So she took the leftover roses to the nursing home and gave them to elderly people. . . . She’s a deeply thoughtful person.”“And now he’s not…

The post Bun B and Queenie, the First Couple of Houston, Share Their Valentine’s Day Shopping List appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Texas-style BBQ in North Carolina“One can’t help but notice the recent intrusion of Texas barbecue into places where it doesn’t belong—like North Carolina,” John Shelton Reed wrote in Gravy magazine in August 2021. In “A Curmudgeon Looks at Barbecue,” Reed, a noted barbecue scholar, shared his lament about the waning regional distinctions in barbecue culture. It was published a few months after I heralded the smoked brisket at North Carolina barbecue joints Jon G’s, in Peachland, and Prime Barbecue in Knightdale. I recently returned to the state to check in on a few old favorites and try some promising new spots. I can report that Reed’s beef was only a preview of North Carolina’s current brisket bounty. Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and the surrounding suburbs make up the Research…

The post Brisket Is Now Getting Top Billing at Some of North Carolina’s Best BBQ Joints appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

This Election Season, Texas Isn’t Sending Its Best Slate of CandidatesThe late Texan writer Molly Ivins famously quipped, “Good thing we’ve still got politics in Texas—finest form of free entertainment ever invented.” In these grim and angry days, “entertainment” is perhaps not the first word to come to mind. Insurrection, violence, Ted Cruz’s podcast—none of these brings the warm fuzzies. Current events have assumed a surreal, almost hallucinatory nature: Did Greg Abbott really seem to lament that shooting unarmed immigrants was off-limits? Did a state representative really propose a duel to big-hatted agriculture commissioner Sid Miller? Did actual neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes really meet with some of the most powerful Republican operatives in Texas?Still, we must muster the courage to stare into the abyss, to find levity in the madness. Even if We the People aren’t…

The post This Election Season, Texas Isn’t Sending Its Best Slate of Candidates appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

The Tutu Live Krewe Brings the Good Vibes (and Sequins) to Galveston’s Mardi GrasPastels and pettiness are forbidden by the Tutu Live Krewe. To become part of this Galveston-based dance troupe comprising 96 mature women, you’ll need knee-high black boots, a corset and tutu in their signature black, purple, and turquoise color scheme, and a desire to have fun, learn the choreography, and entertain the crowds at holiday parades. “It’s like a grown-up drill team,” says the krewe’s founder, Donna Joy Swartz. When not in tutu mode, she’s a program director and assistant professor of medical administration at Galveston College. Swartz started the group because she loved the camaraderie that performing in parades with other women her age brought to her life. “I would also look really silly dancing out there all by myself,” she says.Back in 2012, Swartz…

The post The Tutu Live Krewe Brings the Good Vibes (and Sequins) to Galveston’s Mardi Gras appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

A Los Weyes de la Asada steak night platter.Diego Zamora was 12 years old when he opened his first business, a torta stand next to the entrance of the Coca-Cola plant in Celaya, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Soon, Zamora moved on to selling sushi to-go, explaining, “When you’re young, sometimes you get bored and try more businesses.” At 21, Zamora opened a full-service Spanish eatery, followed by some rotisserie chicken and carnitas spots. He was insatiable, and his family supported his endeavors. “My father always tried to instill a belief in vision and confidence in [the] entrepreneurial spirit,” Zamora says. “He always told us, ‘You can do it, you can do it, you can do it.’ ”A friend convinced Zamora, who was born in Orange County, California, to operate his import-export…

The post You Shouldn’t Miss Steak Night at This San Antonio Taco Trailer appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Rashee Rice #4 of the Kansas City Chiefs celebrates scoring a touchdown during the first quarter against the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Wild Card Playoffs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on January 13, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri.Patrick Mahomes threw his first pass to Rashee Rice almost a year ago during an informal workout at TCU. Until that day, the two had never met, and it’s funny now how insignificant that throw probably seemed back then. Had either of them known then that they’d be playing together in Super Bowl LVIII, they might have marked the occasion with toasts and takeout from Joe T’s.Every championship team generates bits and pieces of folklore that live on long after the parades and confetti. If Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers to win their third Super Bowl in five seasons on Sunday in Las Vegas, that meeting in Fort Worth will be part of theirs.Rice, a standout receiver at Southern…

The post How Rashee Rice Became One of Patrick Mahomes’s Top Targets appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Paxton Watch: Ken argues his right to a speedy trial was violatedIs Ken Paxton in trouble? It’s a question that anyone aware of the Texas attorney general has been asking for a full decade now. Thus far, the answer has always been, “Not yet; we’ll have to see what happens with the various crimes he’s been accused of.” For a long while, resolution has seemed far away—particularly on the matter of the first crime Paxton stood formally charged with. A refresher: In 2014, the Texas State Securities Board disciplined Paxton, then an elected member of the state Senate, for violating the Texas Securities Act by soliciting clients for investment advisers without registering as a representative of those advisers. Then, in 2015, federal charges followed, and he was arrested and indicted with two counts of securities fraud. (He…

The post Ken Paxton Argues That Ken Paxton Has Violated Ken Paxton’s Right to a Speedy Trial appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Warthog AttackBy the age of thirty, a time when most people are just beginning to think about their mortality, Austin Riley had already conquered his fear of death. He’d come exceedingly close to dying on multiple occasions, including a few months before his first birthday, when doctors discovered a golf ball–size tumor growing inside his infant skull. He would go on to spend much of his childhood in and out of hospitals, enduring high-risk brain surgeries and grueling recoveries. Then, in his mid-twenties, he was nearly killed by a brain hemorrhage that arrived one night without warning, unleashing the worst pain he’d ever felt. He emerged from that experience reborn, feeling lucky to be alive and convinced that his life had been spared by God. So as he…

The post His Best Friend Was a 250-Pound Warthog. One Day, It Decided to Kill Him. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Amanda Edwards vs. Sheila Jackson Lee for U.S. HouseAmanda Edwards, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Texas’s deep-blue Eighteenth Congressional District, rarely mentions incumbent Sheila Jackson Lee on the campaign trail. On a recent evening spent criss-crossing the sprawling district that encircles Houston like a lumpy donut, Edwards, a 42-year-old municipal-finance lawyer, delivered her stump speech at three neighborhood meetings. At the first two, held in majority-Black neighborhoods, she made no reference to her opponent beyond calling for “new leadership.” At the third, before a mostly white audience in Houston’s Rice Military neighborhood, she was a bit more direct.“This race is not about me or Congresswoman Jackson Lee,” Edwards told the several dozen Houstonians who had gathered at Messiah Lutheran Church. “It’s about you getting the results that you deserve.” She predicted…

The post Sheila Jackson Lee Has Been in Congress for Three Decades. Challenger Amanda Edwards Thinks That’s Long Enough. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Tamir Kalifa wins the American Mosaic Journalism PrizeWHO: Tamir Kalifa, a 34-year-old visual journalist based in Austin.WHAT: Kalifa is one of two winners of the 2024 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, recognizing excellence in longform, narrative, or deep reporting about underrepresented or misrepresented groups in the United States, complete with a $100,000 cash grant.WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Most Texans will remember where they were as news of the shooting at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, began to break on May 24, 2022. Photojournalist Tamir Kalifa was working in a coffee shop in Austin, thinking, as many Texans were, Not again. “I didn’t want to go,” he tells me via phone. “I thought I could never cover a mass shooting again.”Kalifa had spent three months in El Paso in 2019 documenting the healing journey…

The post A Texas Photojournalist Is Honored for His Heart-wrenching Portraits of Grief appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!