Houston’s Hottest BBQ Spot is at a Gas Station

We are probably one of the best

gas station barbecue restaurants in the world.

Brisket & Rice is located in an old Church's Chicken,

which is next to a gas station.

When customers come in for the first time,

they don't think Texas craft barbecue.

When they come in and they see

two Asian, Vietnamese guys running it,

they really question it. [chuckles]

We cook some really top-notch brisket.

On top of that, we make our fried rice,

hence the name Brisket & Rice.

Once they pair, it's like a match made in heaven.

[upbeat music]

Morning, guys.

My name's Hong Tran, co-owner of Brisket & Rice.

It's 5:00 AM.

Let's get these pits lit.

Welcome to the restaurant.

It's a 1,900 square foot space that we work in.

This is our dining room.

One of the first things we do in the morning is

we'll pull the briskets that we've trimmed

and seasoned from last night.

We have 30 briskets on here.

Let's bring these back to my brother, Phong.

[Phong] Morning, y'all.

Morning, Phong.

We like to load pre-fire to get as much smoked flavor

as we can in these briskets.

These smokers are double 500 gallon pits

from Primitive Pits out of Georgia.

This is what, typically, most smaller joints start with.

I place the biggest one up front,

the second bigger ones, second row,

and then the smallest ones in the third row,

'cause normally it seems like it's hot,

gets less hot, it gets less hot,

then they start ramping up in heat again.

The way I put 'em, they cook perfectly,

and they come out all at the same time.

Getting ready to light the fire up.

We use Post Oak wood.

We cross hatch it to get started.

It gets lit better that way.

So we're about a hundred feet, roughly, from the gas pumps

that are over at that gas station.

Part of the reason we were able to put these pits here

and use live fire next to a gas pump and gas station is

'cause the fire code deems that we need

to be so far away from combustible things,

non-fire rated walls, which we are,

so all the permitting and oversight has been done

by our architects and was submitted to the city,

so we're safe.

This flat plate right here

is an option on one of these pits.

A lot of people cook on this.

That's what they're advertised for.

We chose these plates specifically to stack wood,

kind of preheat the wood.

It brings out some of the moisture, so when you throw it in,

it's closer to temp and it ignites a lot faster.

We are in Houston,

probably one of the most humid cities in the US.

This helps with that.

The cost of wood is fixed for this pit to run,

no matter if you're cooking a chicken wing or 40 briskets.

It doesn't matter, that cost to keep this pit running

at a certain temp is the same,

so it's almost like a fixed cost,

so you're trying to get as much as you can out of a cook.

I normally check 'em about every 45 minutes

throughout the day for about 12 to 16 hours

until they're done.

I'm not gonna move it, I'm not gonna do nothing.

That's it.

Now that the fire is lit, the brisket's on,

we're gonna go and season the ribs

and the chicken and everything else.

[gentle jazzy music]

It's 6:30 in the morning.

These ribs have been trimmed already from the previous day.

Brisket is more liberal in the seasoning,

it's more forgiving.

The proteins of a rib or a chicken,

it'll be over seasoned, I think,

if you let it sit too long on the meat,

so it's more of a light seasoning, and it gets sauced.

We like the flavor profile of a Worcestershire sauce.

It's a slight subtle taste

that you can get throughout the meat.

[Phong] Our spice is nothing too crazy.

It's just a 16-mesh black pepper

and kosher salt for the ribs,

and then we run it back with 16 mesh black pepper

just to give it a little bark.

When you season higher, it seasons more evenly.

We learned to smoke ribs

the same way we learned to smoke brisket.

You mess up enough times, and you eventually get it.

Me and Phong do come from a manufacturing background,

CNC machining specifically.

We did a lot of parts for oil filled products,

our whole careers have been in machining,

and so any machinist will tell you is

that it's very tight tolerance, very exact,

very particular on the steps that you take

to have it go from raw material to finished goods.

I think that kind of trained us for this barbecue thing.

These ribs are ready.

Let's get these on the pit.

These normally come on at like 6:30.

They'll be just ready at 11 o'clock, at lunchtime.

Well, the ribs go on the top,

because we have no more room. [chuckles]

We normally cook about 14 racks or so a day.

We cook 'em pretty soft here.

I mean, we don't want it completely to melt,

but ours is pretty tender.

I won't check on the ribs until probably

about two and a half, three hour mark.

By then, they should be pretty close to being ready.

[upbeat jazzy music]

We finished putting on all the stuff.

There's still a lot of stuff that needs to be done for open.

[upbeat jazzy music]

It's 9:00.

Our name is Brisket & Rice, so let's make some rice.

We use a long grain rice that's not as sticky.

It separates it much more easy.

Just growing up in an Asian household, we always had rice,

so we would, you know, eat rice

with our barbecue and barbecue sauce,

and that's the catalyst of how we started Brisket & Rice.

We want to get the starch out of the rice,

especially for fried rice, because you want separation.

If you kind of hold rice in your hands

and just kind of play with it,

it's coated in micro grains of rice and starches,

so if you take it and you just kinda,

you know, you can kinda see it.

You want that washed away as much as possible

for separation of the grain.

That way, you can have individual char of the grain,

which is what's the goal of fried rice,

and if it doesn't separate and you get a clump,

then it's not gonna happen.

We go through about a 50-pound bag of the fried rice a day.

It flies off the shelf.

All right, so right now, the water is kind of clear.

We have a pre-made mix that we've made for the rice

to put into the rice while it's cooking in the rice warmer.

So part of the mix in here, we have chicken bouillon,

salt, pepper, some sugar,

and then after that, we add sesame oil.

The sesame oil will add a fragrance, very aromatic.

And that's our fried rice mix,

and then we will put this on the rice cooker,

and it'll probably cook for about 45 minutes.

This right here will probably run out within an hour.

This making of the rice kind of happens throughout the day.

Yeah. People come in here

for the fried rice, at a barbecue joint.

To not knowing how to make fried rice

to where we are now with the fried rice,

I think is pretty awesome.

We learned when we opened, to be honest with you.

We didn't have the wok burner until we decided to open,

and you need the wok burner to really get that heat

on that grain and really char that rice.

So it's a little bit different from just stirring it around

in the hot pan at home.

[upbeat music]

Let's move on to prepping ingredients

that actually go into the fried rice.

So this brisket was made specifically for the fried rice.

We typically make extra and we put it in the fridge to rest.

Next morning, while it's nice and cold, we trim.

Part of the reason we like to keep it cold is

'cause it's a lot easier to cube.

With a hot brisket, you typically need a serrated knife

to cut it correctly.

This push down method I'm doing here

will not work with a hot brisket.

The standalone barbecue fried rice

is cubed brisket, Chinese sausage, eggs and onions,

and then we have a dish that's called Brisket & Rice,

which basically is a third-pound of sliced brisket

over our barbecue fried rice.

If we do fried rice to order, it goes into that wok

as soon as that ticket's fired,

and within three to four minutes later,

it's a hot batch of fried rice.

At first, the rice had peas and carrots,

and I thought that, I didn't like that.

Most people don't come to a barbecue joint looking for peas.

When I decided to really take the plunge

into opening this restaurant,

there was a lot of pushback from family members and,

not really doubting me, just really worried

about me not knowing, I guess, the failure rate of it.

But if anybody knows me, I'm a little crazy,

and I didn't care.

It was our money on the line,

basically any future savings you have is on the line.

You know, my dad in Vietnam was a business owner.

You talk about taking risk, you know,

they were part of the boat people, the Vietnam boat people.

You know, that's a big story here in the US.

This is a small risk compared to, I think, what they took.

Yes, exactly. So,

just be grateful that we're here,

understand why they took that risk and honor it,

push forward and basically strive to be the best you can be,

because they strived to get us here.

Brisket's cubed. Onto the Chinese sausage.

We've had people ask to use our house sausage,

but we stuck with this, because I think this brings, like,

the Asian side of it to it.

It's a very distinct flavor

that I don't think a lot of people are used to

if you're not familiar with Asian cuisine.

The Chinese sausage, there's a sweetness to it.

When it's cooked, it just almost caramelizes,

big chunks of fat that stays real well.

Kind of makes for something a little nice

and a little chewy.

All the cubing for the fried rice is done.

Let's check in with the front

and get ready for people coming in,

and let's see what else needs to be done.

[upbeat music]

All right, 20 minutes to open.

Let's check some of the briskets.

These warmers are held

from the briskets cooked from last night.

We do what's called a long hold.

It's a long rest for briskets

to redistribute the juices into the meat.

We use these Alto-Shaam warmers.

That's probably their most expensive warmers.

They provide gentle heat, or halo heat.

It's very gentle on the brisket.

Most cabinets will just turn on

until the cabinet reaches a certain temperature,

and then cuts off to, and it just keeps doing that.

The Alto-Shaams do a very controlled heat source

to where I think it gradually comes up to heat,

and it's a lot more gentle on the meats.

So these briskets have been cooking

for about 14 to 16 hours last night.

When we test for pulling off the pits,

we're looking for this flexibility

right around this middle section of the brisket,

if you can kind of see that kind of wiggle,

and you're just looking for tenderness all along the lean.

This jiggling of the brisket tells me

that the muscle fats and the fibers have cooked

at a temperature long enough to really break down.

Part of the reason why we wrap with butcher paper is

because it lets out enough moisture,

but it retains enough moisture.

If you use foil on these,

basically you'll have a sweaty piece of meat

at the end of it, in my experience,

and you'll lose a lot of the bark

that you've worked so hard to set.

So here, from this little hump here back,

we call the lean, here to here.

Here to here, we call the moist,

and it has a different grain structure,

so as you cut, you're kind of fanning like this

to continue cutting cross grain.

So I'm gonna go ahead and separate the moist

from the lean,

and if you look, you know,

that's a nice jiggly piece of brisket.

This is what's considered bark.

If you look right here, there's a nice crust on the brisket.

This is where the two different muscles meet.

On the moist side, you have the upper muscle

and the cross running bottom muscle.

So each brisket gets one of these.

It's the most sought after, basically called the burn in.

There's only so many can go around,

so everybody can't have one.

Brisket looks good, so let's wrap it up

and get ready for service.

[upbeat music]

It's 11:00.

Tickets are coming in.

Time to leave, guys.