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Bad Wolf BBQ’s main protein is brisket — a Texas inspiration. Traditional barbecue doesn’t involve much, if any, trimming of the meat, or much seasoning at all. It was just a way for butchers to get rid of cuts of meat that people didn’t purchase, or didn’t want to purchase because of the difficulty in cooking them properly. But in modern barbecue, he said, “People are doing very aggressive trims on brisket. We get something like a 33% yield of finished product off our brisket, and then we do a 20-hour-plus smoking process on them. So, we’re spending almost an entire 24-hour day on a brisket. Just that smoked meat is already going to be great. But to take that smoked protein and then make dishes with it that are more elevated? This is where modern barbecue shines.” Caskey set up Bad Wolf BBQ at Heard Freighthouse Food Park in Downtown Ruston, a food truck concept similar to what you see all over the place in Austin and Dallas. The park is the brainchild of Desi Bourgeois, the former executive chef of Google’s dining program in Austin. It was perfect for Caskey, because Bad Wolf BBQ is not the sort of food truck that turns up at conferences or outside bars. In fact, they don’t move around at all. “Heard Freighthouse Food Park has been a great avenue for us to be able to do exactly the sort of food that I am passionate about,” he said. When he first started the food truck, Caskey and his father did some local events, but realized quickly that those markets were more about feeding large numbers of people. “It’s not a repeat customer base, and I just didn’t feel like I was putting out food that I could feel passionate about.” Instead of quantity and easy money, he leaned into quality: serving exquisite cuisine on the weekends for the locals

feed a large crowd. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of barbecue, Caskey said. But he wanted to do something a little more elevated. “I was already passionate about barbecue before that, but after experiencing other people doing the sort of barbecue I was looking to do, that’s when I knew it was something that maybe I could do — something I had to do.” He decided to get in the business. He purchased a trailer with the savings he had from working in the oil field; his plan was to cook on the side on the weekend, but to stay in the oil industry. “I didn’t have any experi ence in the restaurant world, and I didn’t feel comfortable just jumping into the deep end, quitting my job and buying a brick-and mortar building,” he explained. Monday through Friday, he worked at the oil field job. On Friday nights, he would start cooking briskets. On Saturdays, he would open the food truck for business. “If I did sleep at all on Friday nights, I would set a watch timer and I would sleep in 30-minute intervals so that I could wake back up, go refuel the smoker, and cook those briskets all through the night. Then we would serve them on Saturday — and then do the same thing Saturday night to serve on Sunday. And then I would go back to the full-time job Monday through Friday.” He added with a laugh, “So, yeah, it gets old really quick.” But the Ruston community’s response fueled his efforts, and he kept at it until he felt confident he could leave his oil career and just barbecue for a living.

the country. He found work as an operator at a salt cavern storage facility that stores liquified petroleum gases. Whenever Caskey had free time, he spent it at the grill. After getting promoted to safety management, doing hazard analyses and developing programs for mechanical integrity, for the first time he found himself in a job where he worked from Monday through Friday, with weekends off. That meant the freedom to barbecue every single weekend — and he began thinking seriously about a life outside the oil industry. It was a trip through Texas that pushed him over the edge. He had heard about the modern barbecue movement there, but had never really experienced it. Once he built up some vacation time at his nine-to-five, he decided to explore it. “Eight or nine years ago, a lot of chefs with a lot of experience decided to get into the barbecue world and elevate the dishes. They were making something different and creative and new and modern, and I was really inspired by that.” He planned a trip through Dallas, then down to Austin and on to Houston, and then back home. Almost immediately, he realized that this was not your father’s barbecue. “Basically, I only knew the barbecue that I grew up with. The newer, modern barbecue that was coming up in Texas was something completely different, though.” MODERN BARBECUE A lot of the old-school barbecue that most of us are familiar with is geared toward being an affordable meal with large cuts of meat to

in the community, hoping to gain people’s trust with passion, and create a repeat customer base. The plan worked. In 2018, he quit his day job and turned to barbecue full-time.

Before opening the food truck, Andrew Caskey of Bad Wolf BBQ honed his barbecue skills in the backyard. Bad Wolf BBQ now offers Texas-style prime brisket and new-age craft BBQ dishes.

30 ROUSES SUMMER 2024