In August 1974, Steve Onstad watched his summer barbecue Burn to the ground. “I started a fire in the hole and walked down the road to help a local gentleman start his car,” recalls Onstad, owner of the Swinging Door Bar-BQ in Richmond. “When I got back, the place was on fire.” He originally built a cabin on his family’s land southwest of Houston after he was kicked out of college. Two days before the fire, he installed an air conditioning system in a newly fenced patio, bringing the indoor seating capacity to 27. During the hot summer, he preferred these business expenses to buying insurance, which he regretted, like a garden hose he wasted . Aiming at the flame, he lost the pressure of the water. Onstad wasn’t sure he would ever try to reopen, let alone celebrate 50 years in the barbecue business.

On the north side of Houston, just in time for the Swinging Door fire, another barbecue entrepreneur was looking for a better place. In 1973, the late Roy Burns Sr. began selling backyard barbecues in the Acres Homes area. A year later, he moved to a car wash that is still behind Valero Station in West Montgomery and Little York. Roy’s sons Steve and Gary Burns, who still run the restaurant, remember him hauling his smoker full of brisket, ribs and hot links to the car wash on Fridays and Saturdays. “It all started with a small barrel pit,” Steve recalled, and as sales grew, Roy bought larger smokers to meet demand. He eventually moved the mobile operation to an empty pecan-planted lot next to his sister’s house (now called Burns Burger Shack) on De Priest. It was there that Roy and his family slowly built the building that houses the Burns Original BBQ today.

Thus, two Texas barbecue establishments appeared on opposite ends of the city. Thanks to the persistence of the owners and their families, both restaurants continue to serve smoked meats half a century later. It is this tenacity that the Texas Historical Commission (THC) wants to celebrate with the Texas Treasures Business Award. Any business that has been open for fifty years or more is eligible, but last year THC and Texas Monthly worked together to identify eligible BBQ businesses that have not yet applied. THC has included nineteen barbecues in 2022, with eighteen more in the pipeline.

THC representatives visited last year’s Texas Monthly BBQ Fest in Lockhart to promote our BBQ partnership with families and representatives of Kreuz Market and Black’s BBQ in Lockhart, Davila’s BBQ in Séguin, Louis Muller’s BBQ in Taylor, Southside Market in Elgin and Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que in Brownsville. You can find a current list of all past awardees on the THC website (the newest BBQ class will be added to this list soon), which includes not only BBQ, but everything from shoe makers to refrigeration companies.

Two newly eligible BBQ venues have witnessed the transformation of BBQ and Texas history over the past fifty years. “Perhaps it was a blessing that I didn’t have many clients because the few I had were very patient with me as they were my guinea pigs,” Onstad said, reflecting on those first few slow years. when he was learning how to barbecue at Swinging Door. He had friends at Pappas Bar-BQ in Houston and Hickory Pit in Bellaire who let him sit and watch the process in their pit room. Everything changed in Richmond in 1978, when the Pecan Grove development was under construction just a couple of miles from the restaurant. The influx of new customers that Onstad had hoped for has finally arrived. The following year, he entered the Houston Livestock Show BBQ competition and won everything. Word of his prowess spread.

By the late 1970s, the Luv Ya Blue era of the Houston Oilers football team was in full swing. Onstad had added a dance hall to his little restaurant, and Oilers coach Bam Phillips had a ranch nearby. “He liked this [the barbecue], started inviting some players and it became a weekly ritual on Thursday nights,” Onstad said of Phillips. “They went out and ate barbecue and drank beer in the backyard.” Dan Pastorini, Giff Nielsen and Earl Campbell were among the regulars. “It all added an aura to this small country town,” Onstad said.

Then he served brisket, ribs and sausage with beans, potato salad and coleslaw. He currently offers five meats and six side dishes, plus dessert, and still cooks on pecan wood in those indirectly heated pits built after the big fire. Barbecue plates are more popular than the sandwiches that Onstad carried in the early years, and it’s all about the brisket. “Beef is king in Texas,” he said. “The way it is”.

At Burns Original BBQ, brisket shares the crown with pork ribs. “Rib sandwiches and stuffed potatoes are equally popular,” said Corey Crawford, co-owner of Burns BBQ and son of Steve. For a sandwich, three ribs are cut in half and placed between two slices of white bread. Pickles, onions, and BBQ sauce are added extra, and you won’t want to miss out on the sauce here. “The same recipe from scratch,” is how Crawford describes the barbecue sauce served at the restaurant, which was developed by Roy Burns Sr. The establishment also bottles it for Kroger grocery stores along with seasoning spices, lemonade, tea and barbecue-flavored sauces. all chips with the Burns logo. Roy Burns Sr., who passed away in 2009, never saw this side of the business. After his death, the restaurant itself almost collapsed.

The Burns barbecue building was boarded up in 2010 when Gary opened his own place in Burns, his sister Cathy Braden opened another, and Steve retired. After the closure, Crawford and his brother Carl, a former MLB player, joined the family business to revive it, and in 2012 Burns Original BBQ reopened with a renovated building, a new covered deck outside, and Steve and Gary working together. again. The late Anthony Bourdain visited four years later to film an episode Parts unknown (Bourdain ate the ribs). It was a sort of homecoming after he helped raise the reputation of the establishment with an episode of his first show in 2003. Culinary tour, and this follow-up visit also breathed new life into the storied business. An image of Bourdain is included in a mural painted on the Burger Burger Shack wall that pays homage to founder Roy Burns Sr.

According to Crawford, the future of Burns BBQ is not in new traditional restaurants, but in partnership with Kroger. There are currently three Burns BBQ locations in Kroger stores in the Houston area. With more than a hundred Kroger outlets in Houston, there is no need to build new restaurants when they can just pull a food truck with a smokehouse next to Kroger to make barbecue and serve it at the store, Crawford said. This is something Roy Burns Sr. could never have imagined. “Looking back and seeing that this is still happening is helpful,” Gary said.

Steve Onstad said that in his fifty years at Swinging Door, he wouldn’t change much other than building the restaurant away from the road so it has ample parking. “I’ve watched evolution over the past five decades and it’s been a fun journey,” he said, noting that at a recent food service gig he served smoked pork belly tacos with bacon jam, which is nothing like brisket sandwiches. he started with. And at seventy, Onstad still comes to work every day. “It was supposed to be a temporary performance,” he said, “and in fifty years, I think that’s what I’m stuck with.”