News
 
Gravatar

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

Harlem Road BBQ Smoked Pork ShankChef Ara Malekian takes a puff from his cigar, the smoke swirling around his black flat-brimmed cowboy hat. He wears silver bracelets on his wrists and a turquoise ring on his right hand. The ends of his gray mustache are twisted and dangle on either side of his mouth as he describes how he aged the bourbon we’re about to taste. The bottle (not for purchase) is branded with a sticker (available for purchase) that features a line drawing of his face. Sitting in the back room of his restaurant, Harlem Road Texas BBQ, in the Houston suburb of Richmond, we alternate sips of the liquor with freshly brewed Armenian coffee, a nod to his ancestral homeland, though he was born in Iran. Malekian doesn’t…

The post This Stylish Pitmaster Goes Way Beyond Salt and Pepper For His Smoked Meat 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.

Erik MaundErik Maund had always lived the high life, as you might expect of a man whose surname had been blasted on TV ads for decades. By the time he was in his forties, he was an executive at Maund Automotive Group, a car sales business whose first dealership was opened by his grandfather Charles Maund. “If you say the Maund name in Austin in a 7-Eleven, two people say, ‘I bought a car from him,’ ” said Wallace Lundgren, a retired Chevrolet dealer. Austinites could probably recognize the major names in the car business better than they could identify any local politician. And members of the city’s old power circles would recognize Erik—a six-foot-three white guy with short brown hair, a boxy head, and heavy-lidded eyes…

The post The Problem With Erik: Privilege, Blackmail, and Murder for Hire in Austin 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 bump stock is installed on an AK-47 and its movement is demonstrated at Good Guys Gun and Range on February 21, 2018 in Orem, Utah. The bump stock is a device when installed allows a semi-automatic to fire at a rapid rate much like a fully automatic gun.An Austin gun-shop owner succeeded Friday on a years-long quest to overturn a federal ban on bump stocks, winning a 6–3 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.Bump stocks are devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire hundreds of rounds in a minute. The court ruled that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives cannot include bump stocks under legislation banning machine guns. The overturned ATF rule required owners of bump stocks to either destroy them or surrender them to the ATF to avoid criminal prosecution.The case was filed by Michael Cargill, the owner of Central Texas Gun Works and an outspoken proponent of gun rights in Texas, after he surrendered two bump stocks to the ATF. He argued that the ATF incorrectly identified…

The post An Austin Gun Dealer Won a Suit to Overturn the Bump Stock Ban 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.

Ride Star Jake Allyn on Making Movies in TexasAs kids, Jake Allyn and his brother Conor ran around their Preston Hollow neighborhood in Dallas, shooting movies with their father’s camcorder. Conor, who is older by four years, usually directed his sibling in what must have been action-packed thrillers. “I always say I started in stunts,” Jake says. “I was usually getting blown up or knifed or shot or thrown out of a tree or something very dangerous that you would only have your little brother do.”The Allyn brothers have turned their childhood antics into Hollywood ambitions with Margate House Films, a production company they run with their dad, Rob, that’s named after the street where they grew up.The younger Allyn, now 33, is still willing to put his body on the line for…

The post Jake Allyn’s New Movie, ‘Ride,’ Is the ‘Friday Night Lights’ of Rodeo 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.

Buc-ee the Beaver Is Svelte Now, and We Have ThoughtsFast-food mascots come in every shape and size, but personally, I like to see ’em with a little girth. Big Boy’s belly isn’t just his body type—it is proof to road-weary travelers that the burger he hawks is worth eating in large quantities. Ronald McDonald is unfortunately quite ectomorphic, but by his side is Grimace, whose portly pear shape signals to all that at least one guy on the team gets high on his own supply. For more than forty years, Texas’s most famous fast-food mascot, Buc-ee the beaver, was a beefy guy. He welcomed us into his fabulous restrooms with a beaming, buck-toothed grin and a midsection you just wanted to wrap your arms around. He seemed soft, even as the bronze statue out front…

The post Buc-ee the Beaver Appears to Be Having a Midlife Crisis 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.

Who's Paying Jonathan Mitchell's Legal Bills?Sometimes even big-time lawyers have trouble getting paid. Consider Jonathan Mitchell, who says his regular hourly rate is $1,200. The baby-faced Austin-based savant graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 2001 and clerked for right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. Mitchell has since earned a reputation as the canniest champion of the movement against abortion rights. He’s the architect of Texas Senate Bill 8, the law that allows anyone to sue, and collect civil damages from, anyone who has “aided or abetted” an abortion after about six weeks of gestation. He’s also crafted a host of other ingenious attempts to eradicate abortion rights in Texas. But though Mitchell was the winning lawyer last year in a defamation case that…

The post Who’s Bankrolling These Prominent Abortion Rights Opponents? 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.

Meanwhie emus in zilker parkAnimal-protection officers who captured two emus found running loose in Austin’s Zilker Park said they were “just as confused as everybody else” about how the flightless birds ended up there.A Houston man was charged with orchestrating a scheme to steal more than $1 million worth of vehicles after he persuaded individuals on Instagram to reserve rental cars for him that he then had picked up and driven to Mexico.A 58-year-old Bedford woman was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for paying $10,000 in Bitcoin to a man she hired on the dark web to kill her boyfriend’s lover.The Harlingen school district awarded a range of prizes to students who had perfect attendance records, including a brand-new car to a high school junior who doesn’t…

The post Meanwhile, in Texas: Emus Get the Bum’s Rush, and a Kilt-Clad Shopper Gets, Well . . . 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 spread including guacamole, a margarita that blends mezcal and champagne, and the flag-adorned Santana Sour.After a couple of visits to Mexta, two things became clear: The restaurant, which opened in March in downtown Austin’s historic Littlefield Building, has all its bases covered, from perennial Mexican favorites (guacamole, ceviche) to exciting, lesser-seen regional specialties (pork belly encacahuatado, tikin xic salmon with xnipec salsa). Second, it intends to be the boldest Mexican restaurant in the city.Peering in from the foyer, distracted by happy-hour chatter and the whir of blenders, I looked around for half a minute before I saw my friends waving their cocktail glasses. I made my way across a room utterly transformed from the breezy white-on-white palette of the short-lived previous occupant, Simi Estiatorio. Room dividers lined with diminutive terra-cotta bricks are offset by massive copper-clad columns, huge straw…

The post Mexta Intends to Be the Boldest Mexican Restaurant in Austin 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.

Brendyn's BBQWhen I first visited Brendyn’s BBQ, in Nacogdoches, six years back, owner Brendyn Todd offered a sample of a coffee-rubbed brisket alongside a conventionally seasoned one. I liked the coffee flavor so much, I urged him to ditch the other. He did, but it took me far too long to return to see just how far he’d come since those food truck days. Todd opened a permanent spot in 2020 in a building he now owns, and his barbecue joint has become locally beloved.“We had an overflow of daily loyal customers,” Todd said of his motivation for expanding. His timing gave him reason for pause when the COVID-19 pandemic set in just after he made the move. Todd worried about his business, but the locals…

The post Follow the Smell of Oak and Coffee to This East Texas Barbecue Joint 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.

pronghorn critterEach month, we get to know one of the state’s many wonderful and quirky critters. Latin name: Antilocapra americanaSize: 3–5 feet long and 90–150 pounds (males)Texas habitat: The Panhandle, far West Texas, and San AngeloWhen they hit their top speeds of nearly 60 miles per hour, pronghorn kick up clouds of dust that swirl in their wake. Only cheetahs can sprint faster. With their curved black horns, white patches along the neck, and dramatic eyelashes, these ungulates (hooved mammals) exude intensity. Otherworldly, ancient creatures, they seem to have time traveled from another era. In fact, they pretty much did!What do you mean by time travel?Pronghorn are essentially the last of their kind, having evolved at least 12,000 years ago, when a dazzling array of megafauna roamed…

The post The Pronghorn, America’s Fastest Land Mammal, Rules the Texas Desert and Plains appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!