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

“Imagine you’re five years old, you’ve just had five margaritas, and your parents send you off to school,” says Alice McConnell, sipping hot tea at her kitchen table in northwest Austin. She isn’t setting up a joke, but explaining what it feels like for someone to have succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency, a debilitating genetic disorder that is estimated to affect 1 in 460,000 people worldwide. That would suggest there are more than 17,000 active cases today, yet only 450 patients have ever been diagnosed. Two of those are McConnell’s own children.“If I only had one [kid with it], I might not have answered the call,” she says. “But I got two. The universe hit me upside the head and said, ‘Hey, pay attention.’ ”“The call” led…

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

Mohammed, a 21-year-old economics major at the University of Texas at Austin, has only sporadic communication with his extended family in Gaza. He might hear from them a couple times a week—usually in a text, sometimes in a video, or maybe in a phone call if he’s lucky. Whatever the medium, he said, the news is never good. “You don’t even feel happy about that ‘I’m alive’ text,” he said, “because you know, at that same time, they might only have two minutes left.” His family, whose home is in the center of the Gaza Strip, was trying to make it down to Rafah, in the territory’s southernmost region, a couple weeks after Israel began its ground invasion. Subjected to an embargo on food and water,…

The post “This Would Have Been a Peaceful Gathering”: Behind the Scenes of the UT Protest appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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

Revamped from fifty shipping containers and an old city vehicle–maintenance warehouse and repainted black, Waco’s Hotel Herringbone still appears utilitarian from the street. Striking portraiture murals by Hawaii-based muralist Kamea Hadar and a red neon “Lobby” sign flashing to the street are the only hints of what lies beyond the corrugated walls. But past the iron gates is a steel menagerie of animal prints, comestibles, greenery, and time periods.Guests might start feeling the spirit of Greta Garbo or Jay Gatsby somewhere between checking in at the Persian carpet–covered reception desk and entering an art deco hotel room with an ostrich-feather floor lamp, a rotary phone, and a rolling not-so-mini bar cart. To provide visual relief from bold color blocking in the bedrooms, the bathrooms’ monochromatic…

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At InterStellar BBQ, outside Cedar Park, owner John Bates has just begun a year-long exploration into the roots of Texas barbecue sausages. He first chose to survey the origins of Polish sausage in Texas, and he is now serving the first in a series of kielbasas through the end of April. When I asked Bates to describe it, he said, “I hope this represents what a Polish immigrant might have been trying to make when he got to Texas.”“Kiełbasa” in Polish simply means “sausage.” There are many different varieties of kielbasa that vary in protein, seasoning, coarseness, casing type, and preparation. Bates developed InterStellar’s version based on kiełbasa wędzona, an all-pork Polish smoked sausage. He studied historical recipes to find a classic style with simple…

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

In 2020, Netflix released a show about a ragtag team of competitive cheerleaders from a small-town Texas junior college under the direction of a tough but loving coach. Cheer became an instant cultural sensation. But as quickly as the cast’s popularity soared, scandals began to mount. In this episode of the Story, Sarah Hepola recounts the challenges of covering the roller-coaster reputation of Navarro cheer for Texas Monthly‘s May 2024 cover feature: “What ‘Cheer’ Led to: How Viral Fame Upended Monica Aldama’s Life.”

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