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The opposite day, I used to be buying and selling texts with Brian Monk Jenkins, the pit grasp and co-owner of Monk’s BBQ in Purcellville, Va., a perennial contender for a spot on my record of favourite barbecue joints. He was telling me that of the 300 or so workers who’ve labored with him over time, solely 5 have developed the required abilities to run the people who smoke, and of these 5, solely three have earned “pit grasp” standing in Jenkins’s estimation. That’s a 1 % success charge, decrease than the proportion of school soccer gamers who make it to the Nationwide Soccer League.
All of which is preamble to a query that was working by my head whereas eating at Hello/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ, an outside beer garden-cum-Texas smorgasbord located behind Night Star Cafe in Alexandria: Why would Nathan Anda, an achieved chef who has little to show at this stage 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 quite a lot of inviting varieties at locations comparable to Pink Apron, the Partisan (RIP) and different Neighborhood Restaurant Group properties. Assume: Porkstrami and pancetta. Sizzling canine coaxed from regionally raised beef and pork. Forty-two-day dry-aged Black Angus rib-eye topped with a lemon-marrow-tarragon butter. Grass-fed and grass-finished beef burgers. Even a breakfast sandwich during which housemade bacon and a ground-beef patty are pressed between flapjack buns.
His facility with meats apart, Anda had a extra urgent motive to enter the barbecue recreation: For months after Mountain Tune — a short-lived collaboration between pit grasp Matthew Deaton and Neighborhood Restaurant Group — referred to 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 turning into white elephants proper earlier than Anda’s eyes — till he determined to start out messing with them. It was low-risk experimentation: Anda would smoke pork bellies, briskets and pork butts, which he might promote at Pink Apron or the now-shuttered Neighborhood Provisions. Errors could possibly be repurposed into different dishes amongst NRG eating places.
The people who smoke, Anda jokes, have been “calling me.”
“They have been like, ‘You need to come play with us at this time?’”
Anda’s smoker IQ rose considerably when Shannon Bingham, a revered Louisiana chef and pit grasp, began the R&D course of for Satan Moon Barbecue and Brewery Saint X, a pair of sister institutions that will mark Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s debut in New Orleans. Engaged on the people who smoke behind Night Star, Bingham was not simply prepping for his smokehouse in Crescent Metropolis; he was offering an schooling to Anda.
The teachings would all culminate in Hello/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ, an 84-seat patio idea that, like numerous Texas institutions, seamlessly cross-pollinates between two of the Lone Star State’s hottest cuisines till the road between them is virtually erased. While you order a platter at Hello/Fi, you may choose a tray of smoked meats with two sides or a tray of smoked meats with housemade flour tortillas and the toppings and salsas essential to assemble your personal mushy tacos. Given the choice, I’m going with the smoked meats platter 9 occasions out of 10, for one primary motive: Anda is producing some actually terrific barbecue, which I don’t need to diminish by tucking it inside a tortilla with a handful of acidic condiments, irrespective of how tasty the mixture could also be.
The road between Tex-Mex and barbecue can get blurry at Hello/Fi. Anda has developed a rub (used on his turkey, pork shoulders and spare ribs) that comes with not one, not two, however 4 chile powders, together with guajillo, jalapeño and chipotle. The chile mixture makes for some singular barbecue, significantly with Anda’s crusty, barely glazed spare ribs, which carry out a cool trick: They successfully bounce the species line, suggesting the flavors of carne asada as a lot as these of Central Texas barbecue.
Anda depends on prime beef for his brisket, and his crew, together with Marvin “Grande” Rivera, usually depart thick ribbons of softened fats on the slices. As such, the brisket, with a superb half-inch of fats nonetheless clinging to the outer edges, can really feel like a dare — like consuming moist, well-rested ribbons of beef, together with a stick of butter. I’m not complaining, probably not. Simply observing. I’m additionally not devouring as a lot of these slices as I’d like. I’ve no such hesitation relating to stuffing my face with Anda’s slices of turkey breast, directly succulent and smoky, and his pork, which is pulled and chopped earlier than getting doused in what the chef calls Texalina vinegar sauce and extra of the four-chile rub. The chopped pork has instantly earned a spot amongst my favorites.
The edges at Hello/Fi are likely to stray past Tex-Mex and regional barbecue, incorporating pickled curtido from El Salvador and conventional Latin American dishes comparable to fried plantains and pink pozole, every given a barbecue makeover in some form or type, just like the beautiful smoked crema that accompanies the caramelized plantains. The fascinating factor is, Anda steers away from the standard suspects, choosing sides with a extra acidic or candy profile, which assist present 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 placing collectively charcuterie boards.
I ought to notice that a few of Hello/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ’s tacos are smoky variations on these out there on the sister location inside the Roost, the meals corridor simply east of Capitol Hill. This model of Taco Evening in America — the unique is among the greatest handheld bites in Washington — options smoked brisket trim inside its crispy shell, whereas the orange-soda-braised carnitas incorporate smoked pork shoulder. Neither, I’d argue, is essentially an enchancment over the unique, however neither are they insults. If you wish to double your pleasure by ordering a meaty starter to go along with your meaty platter, it is best to dig into Anda’s smoked wings, these crackly specimens that pair effectively with the smoked crema. It most likely goes with out saying, however all of those bites can even pair effectively with a bottle from Greg Engert’s small however well-curated beer record.
As the times get shorter and the evenings colder, Anda will confront the obstacles distinctive to all smokehouses that function outdoor: He’ll face the weather that may, little doubt, have an effect on his barbecue. Maybe this explains why he’s nonetheless hesitant to formally name himself a pit grasp.
“I’m nonetheless a scholar of this, I feel,” Anda says. “I’m nonetheless attempting to excellent every part.”
2000 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria, 703-549-5051. hifitexmexbbq.com.
Hours: 5 to 11 p.m. Wednesday by Friday; 2 to 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with barbecue beginning at 5 p.m. on each days.
Nearest Metro: Braddock, with a few mile stroll to the restaurant.
Costs: $3 to $26 for all objects on the menu.
