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He Risked It for the Brisket

By David W. Brown, photos by Romney Caruso Jason Gonzalez uses a shovel to rake the shimmering coals of his offset smoker. We are at the picnic area just outside the Rouses Corporate Headquarters in Schriever, about 12 miles from Houma. Cloudless blue skies and an easy breeze make this the perfect day for a barbecue, and Rouses found just the pitmaster for the job: the man behind Gonzo’s Smokehouse & BBQ in Luling. He has prepared for us the most popular dishes he serves, and the smoky smell of seasoned meats has a dozen of us inching involuntarily closer around him.

W hile tending the pit, Gonzalez talks proudly about his barbecue shop, five minutes from the Luling Bridge heading toward New Orleans. Gonzo’s is a smokehouse that needs no introduction. Word of mouth is so strong that people gladly wait hours for a table and, on Fridays, Gonzalez keeps an ice chest full of free beer and free water for his loyal — and sometimes a little obsessed — customers. No one would argue that it’s some of the best barbecue in the New Orleans area. Customers drive in from Houston and farther, suggesting that it is probably among the best barbecue joints in the country. For that kind of quality barbecue, you have to come early, but the beer and anticipation give the shop a festival vibe. Gonzalez gestures at the smoker: “The one we have at the shop is a 500-gallon way bigger than this one,” he says, and leans his shovel against it once the coals are just right. “Before we had a shop, I had a smoker in my front

yard for a short time, but people were giving me the eye. It’s 20 feet long.” Gonzalez is a young 46, fit and draped in the modern chef aesthetic: tattoo sleeves, a black T-shirt embla zoned with the single word brisket, a cap turned backwards and Vans on his feet. The “small” smoker is this great beast of a thing, with faded green paint and rusted iron accents so perfect as to appear painted on, and with white walled tires and red rims. It looks like photos I’ve seen of the City Produce truck that J.P. Rouse used to haul around vegetables a hundred years ago. On the platter featured on the cover of this issue, you can see what Gonzalez had in store for us. In addition to his famous brisket, he prepared pork belly burnt ends, smoked turkey breast, beef cheeks, a brisket boudin (made from the smoked-down trimmings of the beef cheeks and his grandmother’s dirty rice), cherry cola brisket burnt ends, pork jowl cracklins topped with Mike’s Hot Honey, which — and you’ll have to trust me on

this — was something like a barbecue crème brûlée, savory and decadent and alone worth the trip to Luling. (On the Gonzo’s menu it’s called Hot Honey Jowl Cracklin, and as he described it: “It’s super rich, it’s super fatty,” he said, “but it’s got that crunch on the outside with the honey.”) Lunchtime can’t come soon enough. Across the picnic area, Gonzalez’s aunt, sister and father are prepping the service area with stacks of plates and an array of foil containers holding sides and smoked meats, wrapped and awaiting the hungry Rouses team. Gonzalez, a native of the West Bank, talks about life in the barbecue business. Though he has been approached regularly about opening a second location of Gonzo’s in the city of New Orleans, he isn’t interested. “I’m keeping it small,” he said. “One store is enough.” Before he was a pitmaster, Gonzalez had an office job. He grew up in Waggaman, Louisiana, and had been a draftsman his whole life, working at different engineering firms. In 2014, he bought a little box smoker from Acade myand and, as a hobby, started smoking things in the backyard. Right away, he knew he had a knack for it and took the task seriously. He started off with books and videos on YouTube, trying to figure out the magic of smoking meats. Franklin Barbecue — a celebrated Austin, Texas barbecue joint under pitmaster Aaron Franklin, who won the James Beard Award for Best Chef and was inducted into the American Royal Barbecue Hall of Fame in 2020 — had posted some videos at the time demonstrating how to smoke a brisket, how to smoke a pork

Team members eagerly line up to sample Gonzo’s Smokehouse & BBQ during a special company event.

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