Hugh Mangum began slicing through a huge slab of brisket, its blackened crust falling away from the blade to reveal intensely pink flesh beneath and release the aroma of cooked meat. The scent got the people watching to become even more alert. When the knife’s edge finally touched the slicing board, Mangum picked up a halved chunk of flesh and presented its sliced side to his audience proudly. There it was: a quarter-inch smoke ring so rosy, full of promise of flavor and heat, the sign of a well-smoked barbecue. At its sight, people broke into applause.

It was the lunchtime opening of Mighty Quinn’s in Manila, the New York barbecue joint that Mangum had built (and earned a two-and-a-half-star review from the New York Times) and the restaurant whose savvy marketing had gotten self-proclaimed foodies in the metro talking excitedly about barbecue — and not the grilled, skewered, and sauce-doused kind that’s often treated as a secondary or tertiary dish at Filipino fiestas and celebrations. It’s barbecue with gravitas, the kind that demands to be the main show, what with the laborious cooking process it requires and the immense satisfaction it delivers.

“Barbecue,” in the purist American culinary sense, isn’t so much a verb as it is a noun. “You do not barbecue meat; you smoke it until it becomes barbecue,” stated The Economist in its December 2010 story “Fire in the hole.”  Mangum, who is also Mighty Quinn’s pitmaster and therefore an expert on the topic, is willing to let pass certain connotations, though. “The thing with the term ‘barbecue’ is there’s no right or wrong way of using it,” he said as he surveyed the scene of people chowing down on dark hunks of meat. “Through time, it became a verb for people to signify how they cook meat: ‘to barbecue.’ But based on its origins, barbecue is what’s made when meat is cooked over indirect heat for a long period—anywhere from 12 to 24 hours—with live wood as fuel.”

Within a commercialized setting such as Mighty Quinn’s, it becomes easy to forget that this American classic had very humble beginnings. “It started from the meat that was cast away by ranch hands to the migrant workers,” Mangum narrated. “The peasants then learned how to take the brisket, which is very hard to cook, and make it palatable.” Widely agreed to have adopted its name from the Spanish word barbacoa, barbecue was a well-established dish in the American South by the 19th century, with different regions developing their own cooking style and flavor profile: Texas, North Carolina, Memphis, and Kansas. “It’s uniquely American in the sense that its inception actually happened in America, one of the few things we can say we created, as opposed to taking something from somewhere else and making it ours.” Unlike the fast yet nutritionally dubious appeal of hamburgers and hotdogs, barbecue resonates with the soul and culture it was born from.

But would it have an equally strong hold on Filipinos who have the tendency to pick up whatever is novel but whose long-term loyalty can be tricky to capture?

Local reception

Juano Gutierrez of Holy Smokes hopes so but he is keeping his expectations realistic. On soft opening since October, his cozy smokehouse has fast become a favorite pit stop for families willing to endure the Makati traffic and brave the parking difficulty in Poblacion’s narrow residential streets for a taste of their buttery-soft brisket and meaty ribs. Gutierrez’s experience in finding the right formula for smoking meats keeps him cautiously optimistic, though.

He and chef Red Espiritu began experimenting on smoking in late 2014, drawn by the appeal of American barbecue that they’d see all over food channels and food blogs. “There weren’t any American-style barbecue houses in Manila then and we became passionate about bringing that authenticity here.” Aside from determining the right temperature and length of time to cook each kind of meat (pork, beef, and chicken), finding the right kind of wood was crucial as it influences the meat’s flavor. “Pecan, we found out, creates a nutty flavor while oakwood is very subtle,” Gutierrez said. They eventually decided on santol, which creates the closest flavor profile to that of applewood but is easier to source locally. “It brings a sweet note to the meat, and we know Filipinos like a sweet flavor profile.”

For eight months, the two would start smoking at 12 midnight for up to 14 hours, and plenty of “imperfectly” smoked meats were discarded along the way. It was neither an easy nor inexpensive process: Aside from the costly raw materials, they also had to have an off-set smoker custom-made so it would fit in the narrow space beside the two-story house that is now Holy Smokes and would direct smoke in a direction that would least inconvenience the neighbors. “Sometimes I’d ask myself why we’re doing this because it’s tiring,” Gutierrez admitted; he and Espiritu still start smoking their meats at midnight, in time for the restaurant to open at 5 pm. “But the food we make and seeing people enjoy it are worth it.”

Mighty Quinn’s and Holy Smokes seem to be proof that slow-smoked barbecue will be the next food trend to crest this year. While other smokehouse joints have been around for a few years already, the concentration of at least four new places opening last year (which include Pitmaster Smokehouse BBQ in Kapitolyo and Smokeyard, also in Poblacion) seem to indicate that Manila is ready to read more closely into the delicious smoke signals coming its way. Even Erwan Heussaff is said to be putting up one soon.

Jamie Garaci, managing partner of The Standard Group, which brought Mighty Quinn’s to the country, agrees. “Meat is one of the last few frontiers in food, one that can still be developed, at least locally.” She pointed out the Filipinos’ affinity for meat, especially the oft-discarded parts that get deliciously reincarnated as sisig, bopis, and more, much like how the brisket used to be in the US. “As a carnivorous market, we’re looking for the next big thing in meat.” Could the current focus on slow-smoked meat be a continuation of the rising appreciation for slow food? “It could be subconsciously a part of the slow food movement, but I think it’s more of people looking for something authentic, especially in food,” Garaci answered. “What’s the story behind the food they’re eating? Where does it come from? How is it cooked? Is it sustainable?”

The real deal

“Authenticity” is a key concept that keeps popping up in discussions about American-style barbecue. In differentiating grilled barbecue from the slow-smoked one, Mangum says it’s much easier to get away with certain liberties with the former. “You can grill using gas, wood, charcoal, or even electricity. While you can’t necessarily hide imperfections in grilled barbecue, most dining establishments tend to make up for them by drowning the meat in sauce—which is okay, it would still be delicious. With smoking meat, if it isn’t done right, the ribs would easily fall off the bone or the meat would look gray. But if you get to know how to do it right, something magical happens with the meat—something that can’t be mimicked.”

Ribs that don’t fall off the bone may sound sacrilegious to a crowd that has been weaned on Rack’s, but Gutierrez elaborated on the particular pleasure that a chewier, firmer, perfectly smoked meat could bring: “First you taste the peppery crust, all the spices and herbs that were in the rub that now saturate the meat. Then you feel the bite to the barbecue, you relish how your teeth sink into it. But the meat isn’t tough at all: If it’s good barbecue, it’ll be a clean bite.”         

Among the four regional styles that can be found in the US, it’s the Texan one that both Mighty Quinn’s and Holy Smokes are offering—or at least, in the former’s case, it’s in their DNA. “My father’s from Texas so our methodology when it comes to beef is very Texan,” Mangum explained. “But the place isn’t known for pork. My wife’s family is from North Carolina, and that’s where I learned to pull pork from the shoulder.” Another proof of the marriage between the two regions is his all-purpose sauce, a blend of sugar, vinegar, and mustard he calls Texalina. “We cull from the heritages of Texas and North Carolina,” he said, “but New York is home and we embrace that. We respect the history and methodology of what we cook and put our own flair to it.”              

To help ease the local palate into the peppery, spicy flavor of Texas-style barbecue, Holy Smokes presents side dishes that have a citrusy profile: cilantro creamed corn, Cajun rice, garlic lemon broccoli. There’s also mac and cheese, whose richness can cushion and balance the piquancy of the meat. As for sauces, they offer three kinds: smoky original, sweet and tangy, and spicy.

 A community of smokers

“Barbecue alone encompasses the high- and lowbrows, the sacred and the profane, the urban and the rural, the learned and the unlettered, the blacks, the browns, the yellows, the reds, and the whites,” Lolis Eric Elie wrote in Smokestack Lightning, a seminal book on barbecue. His sentiment is shared by Mangum, Gutierrez, and Espiritu. “Whenever I visit my father in Texas, we’d go to these roadside barbecue places and see people who are dressed nicely, coming up in limos, and people coming in fresh from the oil rigs,” Mangum shared. “And where they come from doesn’t matter. When you’re eating barbecue, you’re family.”

“Filipinos are very family-oriented, and the barbecue culture is very similar to that,” Gutierrez opined on what could help make slow-smoked barbecue click in Manila. “We put everything in the middle of the table for everyone to share. Now, Filipinos love to have barbecue with rice, but I would love for them to experiment also with novel ways of enjoying barbecue.” Espiritu added, “We encourage people to eat with their hands, which is part of our culture anyway and adds to the pleasure of eating.”

Every trend brings out competitors from the woodwork but with the difficulty in creating the perfect slow-smoked barbecue, there could be a community of smokers created instead: Gutierrez has eaten at Mighty Quinn’s, Mangum has tasted Holy Smokes’ meats, and Espiritu and Gutierrez personally know the folks behind the other smokehouses around the city. “We plan to form a small group to meet once a month to share secrets and tips,” revealed Espiritu. “Smokeyard, Mighty Quinn’s, Pitmaster, Big D’s...it’s a tight-knit community and we respect each other for doing this kind of food.”

“It’s nice that we’re getting into smoked barbecue the same time as others are,” Garaci concluded. “We see these independent smokehouses in the metro as being in the same boat we’re in, cultivating a local eating culture that appreciates slow-smoked meat.” The heat, so far, remains only in the kitchen and in the succulent, tender barbecue. “We’re happy to be at the forefront of this new movement.”

A vision of this story was published in the February 2017 issue of F&B Report. Lead image is by Anthony Cantin on Unsplash.