F ive years ago, Travis Taylor stood outside the acclaimed Lewis Barbecue in Charleston, wondering why his friend had dragged him there. About 50 people stretched from inside the cheerful blue restaurant out into a muggy afternoon. The line moved forward at a crawl. Even worse, when Taylor finally stepped up to the meat-cutting counter, he froze. “I had no clue how to order,” Taylor recalls. He’d only seen meat listed for sale by the pound at a grocery store. His friend rescued him, stepping in to order slices of fatty brisket, ribs and pulled pork, paired with a few slices of Wonder Bread, pickles, onions and pickled jalapenos. One hour before, as he was standing in the sun-beaten lunch hour line, bored and irritated, Taylor had no idea that a single mouthful of beef would change his life forever. Growing up, Taylor knew barbecue as grilling hamburgers and dogs. At the time, he didn’t understand the difference between the backyard pastime and the offset smoking technique that could, after hours, render a fibrous slab of meat riddled with connective tissue into meltingly tender bites of beef. “That first bite of brisket was just life- altering for me,” Taylor says, “and started this craving that I wanted to keep going back for more.” Taylor set about spreading the gospel of brisket with the zeal of the newly converted. Now CEO of Caldwell County BBQ — a burgeoning Valley institution with four loca- tions and counting — he has made up for lost time. In 2022, he bought into the barbecue business founded by Clay Caldwell, a Snowflake pig farmer turned pitmaster. Caldwell opened Waldo’s BBQ in Mesa in 1993 and planned to ride off into retire- ment when he sold his stake in 2014. During a trip to Austin, Caldwell experienced his own come-to-Jesus moment over a slice of brisket from Franklin Barbecue. Owner Aaron Franklin built the modern standard for Central Texas-style barbecue, won a James Beard Award for his craft and has hosted countless pitmasters who would go on to build their own notable smokehouses, like Lewis in Charleston. When the Caldwell family founded their barbecue joint in east Gilbert in 2018, they cast it in the image of Franklin’s, adding subtle nods to Arizona through mesquite and chiles. A place like Arizona has the ingredients to be a barbecue powerhouse. Ranchers have long raised cattle here, and an abun- dance of hardwoods, ideal for low-and- slow smoking, grows throughout the state. But oddly there’s virtually no such thing as “Arizona barbecue.” The best barbecue chefs in the Valley are importing other styles from other states. The ques- tion endures even as some Valley barbecue is hailed among the best anywhere in America. Have we, in this most red-blooded state, actually made this staple of American food ours? Taylor and a half-dozen other barbecue experts and enthusiasts I spoke with all discovered their taste for smoked meat in some faraway place. I did, too. As a kid visiting family in Lockhart, Texas, there’s not much else to do than to eat barbecue, which happens to be some of the best on Earth. I was raised at the meat altars of Smitty’s, Kruez and Black’s, taking communion of brisket and white bread throughout my childhood. When I moved to Arizona, I was horri- fied to find places where I didn’t see people cutting the meat right in front of me or asking for my preference of lean or fatty brisket. Some of the first barbecue restau- rants I visited here felt more like Cracker Barrel than craft barbecue. Since then, in smokehouses big and small throughout the Valley, I’ve also seen people sweating in front of tank smokers radiating heat. These folks are putting in the hours, grinding to put Arizona on the map for barbecue. If they fail, it won’t be for lack of creativity. Local pitmasters are testing many options: Master another place’s style but mix in Arizona flavor. Make it distinct to the state’s culinary heritage. Add your own experience to the platter. Without generations of tradition to box you in, why not experiment? “Because Arizona is still developing as a barbecue state,” Taylor says, “I think we’re not locked into all the same rules or stereotypes you might have for barbecue.” Purists, look away. You’re in Arizona now. HOW THE FIRES STARTED The United States owes its melding of cultures and foods less to the proverbial melting pot and more to a smoking-hot pit. Barbecue’s cooking traditions began with Indigenous people across the Americas, explains Adrian Miller, a food historian in Denver who wrote the James Beard Award-winning book “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.” Caldwell County BBQ. (Tirion Boan) Beerded BBQ’s Brisket. (Isaac Torres) Caldwell County BBQ CEO Travis Taylor. (Sara Crocker) SLOWBURN Valley pitmasters stoke Arizona's late-blooming barbecue scene. BY SARA CROCKER
