BBQ Switcheroo

Killen's Barbecue fires up new restaurant in familiar Cypress space

Killen's barbecue meat platter with sides

Killen's Barbecue has the meats.

Photo by Robert Jacob Lerma

A barbecue switcheroo is taking place in Cypress. Killen’s Barbecue will be taking over the space currently occupied by Burro & Bull (25618 Northwest Fwy.), chef-owner Ronnie Killen tells CultureMap.

Killen, who teased the deal over the weekend on social media, explains that he couldn’t pass on the opportunity to take over a fullyequipped restaurant in a prime location. He expects Burro & Bull to close later this week; once it does, his team will get to work making some minor changes such as installing a cafeteria-style serving line and Killen’s signage. If all goes according to plan with construction and permitting, the new Killen’s Barbecue could open in early October.

“What sold it for me is there is a Chick-Fil-A under construction [nearby],” he says. “If Chick-Fil-A is going to come out here, I know they do their research. I know several people that own Chick-Fil-As. They know people are going to be there.”

Although Burro & Bull only opened its Cypress location last fall, founder John Avila tells CultureMap that he and his wife and business partner Veronica had quietly stepped away from operating the restaurant in March. They’re focused on opening a second location of their modern general store Henderson & Kane at the Houston Farmers Market.

“We’re very lucky that Ronnie took an interest in the building,” he says. “There’s no better person to go into the space, and he will make it work for sure.”

Cypress will be the third location of Killen’s Barbecue, joining the original in Pearland and a Woodlands location that opened in early 2021. Widely credited with being among the first to bring craft barbecue to the Houston area, Killen’s remains ranked among the state’s 50 best barbecue restaurants by Texas Monthly. It features an extensive menu of proteins that includes beef brisket, pork ribs, beef ribs, and housemade sausage along with Killen’s signature sides such as creamed corn and mac & cheese. Earlier this year, rising star pitmaster Willow Villarreal (Willow’s Texas BBQ, J-Bar-M Barbecue) joined the Killen’s team.

Part of the reason Killen is so excited about the space is the location’s overall design and layout, which includes a dedicated bar area and spacious patio. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a wood-burning grill and two Southern Pride smokers that Killen may keep — “they work for chicken, ribs, and smoked sausage,” he says — or swap out with an Oyler rotisserie like those he uses at the Killen’s Barbecue’s other locations. Briskets will be prepared on a 1,000-gallon offset smoker — either a trailer-mounter barbecue pit or one from Mill Scale Metal Works, Killen says.

The wood-burning grill gives the restaurant the ability to serve similar dishes to Killen’s STQ, the chef’s upscale, live-fire steakhouse in Briargrove. Killen plans to introduce a STQ-style dinner service complete with the same elegant table linens and flatware as the original. He describes the hybrid concept of barbecue during the day and steakhouse at night as “Killen’s Barbecue Plus.”

“We’re going to make it as nice as we can. If we can put linens down, put nice silverware down, and have the whole deal that we do, we’re going to push it as far as we can towards the STQ side,” he says. “Who doesn’t like a good wood-fired grilled steak?”

[Editor’s note: No one we want to be friends with, chef.]

Growing his operation to nine Houston-area restaurants — three barbecue restaurants, two Killen’s Steakhouses, STQ, comfort food restaurant Killen’s, Killen’s Burgers, and Killen’s TMX plus barbecue service at both NRG Stadium and Minute Maid Park — has Killen in a reflective mood. He says he realizes how far he’s come from the days when he only operated an under-the-radar steakhouse in Pearland.

“I get excited about things we’re doing, changes, progress, moving forward. I’m doing all this myself. I don’t have partners,” he says. “When I was in high school I couldn’t read well. My brother was always the smart kid. [I’ve created a business] by hard work and trying to give people what they want. It really makes me feel good.

“For me, all those people that tried to prove me as being a dumb kid or wouldn’t be successful, my motivation is to prove ‘em wrong.”

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Here's why a top Texas pizza team makes a yearly pilgrimage to New York

Photo courtesy of Missy Davis

In late April, some of the Home Slice team took a field trip to New York to bring authentic NYC flavors and service back to Houston.

There's a saying in the pizza world: "smooth is fast." No yelling, no chaos, no sprinting across a kitchen. Just calm, practiced movement, one pie at a time. It's a philosophy Home Slice Pizza has tried to bottle since its very beginnings. Every year, to make sure this message lands, the team flies to the Big Apple to watch it in action.

In late April this year, 17 Home Slice employees including kitchen managers, front-of-house staff, server trainers, and lead servers boarded flights from Texas to New York for four days of eating, walking, subway rides, and the kind of bonding that only happens when you're crammed around a table at a legendary Brooklyn pizzeria at 9 pm on a Monday. The trip includes employees from the store's Houston location in Midtown, and Home Slice is busily working on its new location in the Heights that will open this fall.

"You can serve New York-style pizza," says Sara Ronder, who has made the trip more than a dozen times. She works as an executive assistant to founding owners Terri Hannifin, Jen Scoville Strickland, and Joseph Strickland. "But there's a whole other level you just soak in when you go."

The tradition dates back to 2006, a year after Home Slice first opened its doors. The restaurant's founders, Hannifin and Strickland, met as roommates at NYU. New York pizza was a way of life for them. They had no idea at the time they'd open a New York-style pizzeria in Austin one day. But after they did it, they knew bringing the team back to where it all began would be important. The team has made the trip every year since — minus a few during the Pandemic.

The itinerary this year was a masterclass in eating: Rubirosa for lunch on arrival day, a sunset Staten Island Ferry ride, then dinner at Lucali in Brooklyn to kick things off. Day two brought a full pizza and sub crawl — Prince Street Pizza, Faicco's, Joe's Pizza, Lucia Pizza of SoHo, L'industrie Pizzeria, Upside Pizza, and Regina's Grocery — before a sit-down dinner at Roscioli.

Wednesday opened with breakfast at the classic Ukrainian diner Veselka, then split the group into teams fanning out across the boroughs: Brooklyn Bridge walks, a Roosevelt Island Tramway ride, Patsy's in Harlem, the Museum of the City of New York, and stops at Juliana's and Angelo's Coal Oven Pizzeria. The trip closed things out with lunch at John's of Bleecker Street, then led back to Austin and Houston.

Dividing up a slice in front of Joe's Pizza. Photo courtesy of Missy Davis

Lucali kept coming up as the runaway favorite. Karen Flores, assistant kitchen manager at the North Loop location, was transfixed watching the pizza maker work the room, stretching dough, stacking pies, drawing little heart shapes in the air for appreciative guests, and never breaking a sweat.

"It didn't matter how busy it was," Flores says. "There was no hecticness. Everybody was just kind of doing their things nice and calmly."

For first-timer Matthew Stoughton, a front-of-house employee at the South Congress location, a highlight came from Lucia Pizza of SoHo, where a server named Maria remembered the group from a visit eight months prior: what they ordered, where they were coming from, how the night went.

"She was amazing," Stoughton says. "There's a group of 17 people in this tiny little bar, and she was just totally crushing it." Or as the Home Slice Ethos puts it, "smooth is fast."

Kelly Ball, a front-of-house server trainer and lead server at the original South Congress location, says the trip recalibrated her relationship to high-volume service.

"It's the comfortability that people have being in close spaces together; the way that they move around each other, and you even find yourself kind of hustling at first, just to match the vibe," she says. "And then you realize that you're the one hustling, because everything is actually just kind of going. So I really enjoyed that part."

Between meals, the group played scavenger hunt bingo around the city, snapping photos of classically New York sights for prizes. They sought out things like rats in the subway, pigeons wrestling with too-large food items, campaign sticker art, and sidewalk cellar doors.

Johns of Bleecker Street The whole group at Johns of Bleecker on their last day in New York.Photo courtesy of Missy Davis

And of course, aside from coming back with inspiration on how to prep and serve the best New York slice in Austin, the team has also come back a whole lot closer.

"That whole saying, a 'New York minute' — I'm so confused about what that actually means now," laughs Ball. "Because in New York there's so much happening in a minute, but also it just flies by. So it's just that general sense that we're all doing this together, we will get there, we're gonna do it as a team, and it's gonna be awesome."

Plus, now that they're back and have tasted the pizza that inspired it all, when a New Yorker comes into Home Slice and gives praise, it means all that much more.

"When somebody says, 'I'm from New York and this pizza is legit,'" Flores says, "we made that happen. I made that dough. And at the end of the day, I think that that is a beautiful thing."

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