A Renowned Texas Pitmaster Has Your Back, Brooklyn BBQ

It's pretentious. It's overpriced. It involves suspicious green vegetables. But it may be taking over the world, apparently? After Vice republished a 2014 article about Williamsburg's Fette Sau and the global popularity of so-called Brooklyn barbecue, Twitter united in outrage.

That horrible BBQ plate has united all of twitter in outrage

— 👑 Genghis Kellz (@KMJeezy) March 6, 2018

Kansas City had something to say. As did Ted Cruz. As did Steak-Umms. 

So, is anyone who knows anything about barbecue willing to step up and defend this stuff, or at least offer some nuance into the conversation?

Wayne Mueller, also known as "the Socrates of Barbecue," is a third-generation pitmaster at Louie Mueller in Taylor, Texas. And he told WNYC that after a decade of fostering several Texas-style barbecue joints, Brooklyn is "making its way to being Central Texas-Northeast."

"Ten years ago, there almost was no decent barbecue in Austin," Mueller said (his restaurant is in Taylor, just outside Austin). "Today, there's amazing barbecue there, and it's spawned from the tradition of the satellite communities surrounding it. Some of these go back into the 1880s. It's hard to match that. It takes a while to catch up to that, you know?"

Mueller spoke with WNYC's Richard Hake.