The Big Texas Party

The Big Texas Party highlights Houston's best barbecue, so you know it's gotta be Super

For the tens of thousands of visitors flocking to Houston for Super Bowl LI, few goals will be higher on the list than getting a taste of authentic Texas barbecue. While Houston has become known nationally for its diversity — just ask anyone who watched Anthony Bourdain’s trip through the city’s Parts Unknown last year — the old stereotypes about meat-loving Texans still holds true, at least to a certain extent.

Thankfully, the number of restaurants serving high-quality barbecue has never been higher. Inspired in part by the success of Austin’s acclaimed Franklin Barbecue, a wave of new school restaurants have flooded the market.

Dubbed “big city barbecue” by Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn, these restaurants embrace the Central Texas ethos of all-wood cooking and pepper-heavy rubs with a couple of twists. In addition to the Texas trinity of beef brisket, pork ribs, and sausage (typically a pork-beef blend), these restaurants also serve classic Southern-style pulled pork and pay more attention to side dishes and desserts than their more old-school brethren.

Killen’s Barbecue, which opened in 2014, began the wave of “big city barbecue” in Houston. Ronnie Killen brought his chef’s training to the restaurant’s menu, with the result being that sides like creamed corn (praised by JJ Watt on an episode of the HBO reality series Hard Knocks) and desserts (banana pudding, carrot cake) are also as much a part of the experience as the juicy brisket and meltingly tender beef ribs. Hour-long waits are common, although the recent introduction of dinner service should help a bit.

Pinkerton’s Texas Pit Barbecue made the jump from underground pop-ups to a brand new restaurant in The Heights. Roegels Barbecue emerged as one of the city's most innovative barbecue spots when owners Russell and Misty Roegels decided to end their relationship with Dallas-based Baker’s Ribs and go out on their own. Fans line up for specials like lamb chops and pastrami.

The most exciting new direction in Houston barbecue involves a variation on the big city trend that blends Central Texas-style barbecue with Tex-Mex flavors. At El Burro and the Bull, pitmaster John Avila mixes the training he received during a stint at Franklin Barbecue with his heritage growing up in Houston’s Second Ward neighborhood. The result are housemade flour tortillas, boudain, and tamarind barbecue sauce that represent an only-in-Houston mashup of Tex-Mex, Creole, and Asian influences.

Attendees at The Big Texas Party (presented by CultureMap, ESPN 97.5 and SB Nation) will get to taste bites from several of these leading lights and other rising stars in Houston’s barbecue scene. Pinkerton’s will serve classic Texas brisket along with its signature smoked duck and sausage jambalaya. Tomball’s Tejas Chocolate Craftory will also serve brisket and a carrot souffle that was one of the best bites at 2016’s Houston Barbecue Festival.

Don’t worry, Falcons fans; we’ll have plenty of smoked pig, too. Roegels and Harlem Road Texas Barbecue are both serving pulled pork. Patrick Feges, a CultureMap Tastemaker Awards Rising Star Chef of the Year with experience at both Underbelly and Killen’s Barbecue, will serve Carolina-style whole hog with cornbread and coleslaw.

Ray’s Real Pit BBQ Shack will mix offer a diverse menu of brisket, ribs, beef belly sliders and a brand new side dish. Located in Southwest Houston, MADMAX BBQ has earned an enthusiastic following for its traditional, East Texas-style barbecue of tender ribs, smoked chicken, and saucy brisket. Killen’s also has yet to commit to a menu, but its crowd-pleasing appearances at the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival mean that lines will be long for whatever chef Killen opts to serve.

Although VIP tickets are sold out, determined barbecue fans may want to consider finding a ticket scalper. El Burro and the Bull’s five-course menu that includes a field green salad salad with crawfish tail croquette, a slider trio (chopped beef, pulled pork, and jalapeno sausage), mac and cheese topped with pork rib, and a boudain-stuffed pork tenderloin promises to be the party’s culinary highlight.

Thankfully, general admission tickets remain, but they're going fast. In addition to bites from eight Houston-area barbecue joints, attendees of the Big Texas Party will get to meet legendary football players like Cris Dishman, Ed "Too Tall" Jones, and Randy White and listen to music by rising star Bart Crow. Don't miss it.

Killen's barbecue will be featured at The Big Texas Party.

Photo by Kimberly Park

Killen's barbecue will be featured at The Big Texas Party.

barbecue super-bowl news-you-can-eat

Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

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