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butt, and how to smoke ribs. Gonzalez did his best to follow their instructions and, after finishing, went back to see if he had missed something. It improved his level of ability, but he wasn’t really comfortable with cooking briskets, which is serious business, involving smoking 12, sometimes 14 hours — and that’s just the cooking. There are still countless hours of preparation beforehand, plus trimming and seasoning it. Depending when you start, it can be an all-night job. Gonzalez was working at Shell at the time in New Orleans, and had been for about six years. Before long, he started catering on the side for plants in St. Charles Parish. “I used to work out with some of those guys that worked at the plants,” he said. “They knew I was just doing this in the backyard, but they’d say, ‘Hey man, can you cater for my office?’ That got my foot in the door before I even did pop-ups or did any of the big festivals in New Orleans. People would just put in an order to do a big ol’ pan of brisket and sides, and I’d deliver it to the plant.” Standing next to the pit outside Rouses, it’s hard to imagine Gonzalez was ever anything other than a seasoned pro, let alone an apprentice with a day job. Like many, if not most, who finally decide to pursue their dreams, it took employment issues to really spur Gonzalez into action. In 2015, the price of oil destabilized and the oil industry generally had a bad year — which meant oil workers had a bad year, too. “Shell ended up pretty much laying off the whole office,” he said. “They consolidated to a few people and moved everybody to Houston, and then they laid off all drafting and design and engineering people, subcontracting all that work out instead.” That is when he started to really focus on his barbecue and see if he could actually take it to the next level. He took his severance check from Shell and bought a good-quality pellet smoker, which allowed greater control over the fire and would allow him to better dial in his recipes. He also took one-on-one classes from Dylan Taylor, a well-known pitmaster in Texas. “We did brisket, ribs and sausage,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t really understand how important it is to trim the brisket properly to get a

really good end product. Watching Dylan trim a brisket properly really just changed everything — making them all the same size, giving them that nice, even fat cap on top. After taking that class, I went back home and it was on . Between that class and the new smoker, the game changed for me.” He started to think he could make a career out of barbecue. “When I got laid off from Shell, it kind of opened my eyes,” he told me. “I thought I was going to retire there. Once that happened, it was kind of like, alright, we’ve just got to look out for each other.” Before jumping into the barbecue business, however, he found a job at another firm and, for the next several years, continued doing drafting and design during the week. On his days off, he kept his barbecue side business going, building a big customer base in the process, which grew and grew from word of mouth. In 2020, right before the lockdowns, he finally bought the space of today’s Gonzo’s Smokehouse. It was, and remains, a family run shop. They didn’t plan to open to the public for dining. Originally Gonzo’s was all to-go and more a place for him to prep meats, make the family’s own boudin, and smoke things for catering, but the demand got too great. “We did that probably about six or eight months. Then we eventually opened up to the public and started serving them,” he said. It was always going to be a family business. His late grandmother, Mabel, was a major inspiration for Gonzalez; he’s even named one of his smokers in her honor. “I remember sitting in her kitchen cooking with her. She was a really, really great cook, and she’s where I got a passion for cooking. I wish she were here to see where I am now.” Most pivotal during his slow maturity in the barbecue world was a trip to Austin, where Gonzalez had a series of “real eye-opening experiences,” he said. He went to Franklin Barbecue, whose videos he had spent so much time studying. He waited in line for six hours to get barbecue. “It blew my mind,” he said. “From the start, I was like, oh man, we don’t have anything remotely close to this.” He said it expanded his ideas of what barbecue could be. At other places he later visited, however, he learned another lesson: that just packing a smoky, exquisite flavor profile on a

“Jason does such a good job. He’s young, he’s aggressive. And every day there are people lined up at his restaurant. They give beer to people because the lines get so long! And we love that. We’re not only about Rouses. We’re about community. And we love seeing members of our community succeed.” — Donald Rouse

22 ROUSES SUMMER 2024