The different day, I used to be buying and selling texts with Brian Monk Jenkins, the pit grasp and co-proprietor of Monk’s BBQ in Purcellville, Va., a perennial contender for a place on my checklist of favourite barbeque joints. He was once telling me that of the 300 or so workers who’ve labored with him through the years, best 5 have evolved the important talents to run the people who smoke, and of the ones 5, best 3 have earned “pit master” standing in Jenkins’s estimation. That’s a 1 p.c luck price, not up to the share of school soccer avid gamers who make it to the National Football League.
All of which is preamble to a query that was once working thru my head whilst eating at Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ, an outside beer lawn-cum-Texas smorgasbord located at the back of Evening Star Cafe in Alexandria: Why would Nathan Anda, an completed chef who has little to end up at this level of his profession, join such abuse?
Anda has his causes. For starters, he’s spent a lot of his skilled profession round meats, sourcing them and manipulating them into a number of inviting paperwork at puts equivalent to Red Apron, the Partisan (RIP) and different Neighborhood Restaurant Group houses. Think: Porkstrami and pancetta. Hot canines coaxed from in the community raised pork and beef. Forty-two-day dry-elderly Black Angus rib-eye crowned with a lemon-marrow-tarragon butter. Grass-fed and grass-completed pork burgers. Even a breakfast sandwich wherein housemade bacon and a floor-pork patty are pressed between flapjack buns.
His facility with meats apart, Anda had a extra urgent explanation why to go into the barbeque sport: For months after Mountain Song — a brief-lived collaboration between pit grasp Matthew Deaton and Neighborhood Restaurant Group — known as it quits in 2020, its people who smoke sat idle, together with a 1,000-gallon offset that NRG bought from Austin Smoke Works. The people who smoke have been becoming white elephants proper earlier than Anda’s eyes — till he made up our minds to begin messing with them. It was once low-possibility experimentation: Anda would smoke beef bellies, briskets and beef butts, which he may just promote at Red Apron or the now-shuttered Neighborhood Provisions. Mistakes might be repurposed into different dishes amongst NRG eating places.
The people who smoke, Anda jokes, have been “calling me.”
“They were like, ‘You want to come play with us today?’”
Anda’s smoker IQ rose considerably when Shannon Bingham, a revered Louisiana chef and pit grasp, began the R&D procedure for Devil Moon Barbecue and Brewery Saint X, a couple of sister institutions that may mark Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s debut in New Orleans. Working at the people who smoke at the back of Evening Star, Bingham was once no longer simply prepping for his smokehouse in Crescent City; he was once offering an training to Anda.
The courses would all culminate in Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ, an 84-seat patio idea that, like countless Texas establishments, seamlessly pass-pollinates between two of the Lone Star State’s most well liked cuisines till the road between them is almost erased. When you order a platter at Hi/Fi, you’ll be able to choose a tray of smoked meats with two facets or a tray of smoked meats with housemade flour tortillas and the toppings and salsas important to build your personal comfortable tacos. Given the choice, I’m going with the smoked meats platter 9 instances out of 10, for one elementary explanation why: Anda is generating some actually terrific barbeque, which I don’t need to diminish by means of tucking it within a tortilla with a handful of acidic condiments, regardless of how tasty the combo could also be.
The line between Tex-Mex and barbeque can get blurry at Hi/Fi. Anda has evolved a rub (used on his turkey, beef shoulders and spare ribs) that accommodates no longer one, no longer two, however 4 chile powders, together with guajillo, jalapeño and chipotle. The chile mixture makes for some singular barbeque, in particular with Anda’s crusty, reasonably glazed spare ribs, which carry out a groovy trick: They successfully soar the species line, suggesting the flavors of carne asada up to the ones of Central Texas barbeque.
Anda will depend on top pork for his brisket, and his workforce, together with Marvin “Grande” Rivera, incessantly go away thick ribbons of softened fats at the slices. As such, the brisket, with a excellent part-inch of fats nonetheless clinging to the outer edges, can really feel like a dare — like consuming wet, smartly-rested ribbons of pork, along side a stick of butter. I’m no longer complaining, no longer in point of fact. Just staring at. I’m additionally no longer devouring as a lot of the ones slices as I may like. I don’t have any such hesitation with regards to stuffing my face with Anda’s slices of turkey breast, immediately succulent and smoky, and his beef, which is pulled and chopped earlier than getting doused in what the chef calls Texalina vinegar sauce and extra of the 4-chile rub. The chopped beef has in an instant earned a place amongst my favorites.
The facets at Hi/Fi generally tend to stray past Tex-Mex and regional barbeque, incorporating pickled curtido from El Salvador and conventional Latin American dishes equivalent to fried plantains and purple pozole, every given a barbeque makeover in some form or shape, just like the beautiful smoked crema that accompanies the caramelized plantains. The attention-grabbing factor is, Anda steers transparent of the standard suspects, choosing facets with a extra acidic or candy profile, which lend a hand supply some sense of steadiness amid the onslaught of smoked meats. It’s a lesson, Anda tells me, that he realized from his a few years of striking in combination charcuterie forums.
I must word that a few of Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ’s tacos are smoky permutations on the ones to be had on the sister location throughout the Roost, the meals corridor simply east of Capitol Hill. This model of Taco Night in America — the unique is without doubt one of the very best hand-held bites in Washington — options smoked brisket trim within its crispy shell, whilst the orange-soda-braised carnitas incorporate smoked beef shoulder. Neither, I’d argue, is essentially an development over the unique, however neither are they insults. If you wish to have to double your excitement by means of ordering a meaty starter to move along with your meaty platter, you must dig into Anda’s smoked wings, those crackly specimens that pair smartly with the smoked crema. It most certainly is going with out pronouncing, however all of those bites will even pair smartly with a bottle from Greg Engert’s small however smartly-curated beer checklist.
As the times get shorter and the evenings chillier, Anda will confront the stumbling blocks distinctive to all smokehouses that perform outside: He will face the weather that may, certainly, impact his barbeque. Perhaps this explains why he’s nonetheless hesitant to formally name himself a pit grasp.
“I’m still a student of this, I think,” Anda says. “I’m still trying to perfect everything.”
2000 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria, 703-549-5051. hifitexmexbbq.com.
Hours: 5 to 11 p.m. Wednesday thru Friday; 2 to 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with barbeque beginning at 5 p.m. on each days.
Nearest Metro: Braddock, with a few mile stroll to the eating place.
Prices: $3 to $26 for all pieces at the menu.