I don't write about other people's BBQ very often. Not because I'm not interested—I eat more competition and restaurant BBQ than most people would believe—but because most of it doesn't warrant the words. You eat it, you move on, maybe you note something about their smoke ring or how they're managing their service window. Professional curiosity. Nothing more.
Cattleack BBQ in Farmers Branch changed that calculus for me last month.
I was up in the DFW area meeting with an operator who's expanding his catering fleet—three units now, looking at a fourth, trying to decide between the SP-1000 and going bigger with the SP-1500. We finished our conversation around 11:30, and he says we should hit Cattleack before the line gets stupid. I'd heard the name. Knew they had a reputation. Didn't know what I was walking into.
The Meal That Made Me Rethink My Appetite
Here's what I ordered: one pound of brisket, hatch chili cheese sausage, and wagyu burnt ends. Seventy-seven dollars for the tray. And I couldn't finish it.
That last part matters. I've been eating BBQ professionally—competition judging, catering my own events, traveling the Texas triangle for thirty years—and I can put away meat. It's not a point of pride, just a fact of the job. You develop a working capacity.
But this brisket was so rich, so fatty, so intensely rendered that somewhere around the three-quarter mark I had to stop. Not because it wasn't good. Because my body physically said no more. The fat content was extraordinary. We're talking a marbling level that most operators can't source consistently, and even if they could, they couldn't cook it right. Too much fat, cooked wrong, just tastes greasy. This was the opposite—it was unctuous in that way where the meat and fat become indistinguishable. One texture. One experience.
The burnt ends were wagyu, and they delivered exactly what you'd expect from wagyu when it's handled by someone who understands the product. Crispy exterior bark, interior that practically dissolved. I've had burnt ends at maybe two hundred different joints over the years, and these ranked in the top five. Maybe top three, depending on my mood when you ask me.
Hatch chili cheese sausage was the wildcard. Good snap. The hatch flavor came through without overwhelming the pork. Solid link work. You can tell a lot about an operation by their sausage—it's where a lot of places phone it in, buying whatever their distributor stocks and hoping customers don't notice. Cattleack made their own, and it showed.
What DFW Has Been Building
The Dallas-Fort Worth BBQ scene has changed dramatically in the last decade. Used to be, you had to come to East Texas or go down to Lockhart or Taylor to find the real thing. Central Texas tradition. Post oak. Beef. That was the pilgrimage.
Now you've got operations like Cattleack, Pecan Lodge before they expanded (those early Deep Ellum days were something else), Goldee's before they went to Fort Worth and then got complicated, Zavala's, Terry Black's outpost. The talent concentration is real. Part of it's population—DFW just has the customer base to support premium BBQ at premium prices. Part of it's that young pitmasters are willing to work in expensive markets if the demand is there.
But here's what I notice when I'm actually standing in these places, looking at their setup: the operations that last, the ones that maintain quality at volume, they're running serious equipment. Not modified backyard rigs. Not import steel that warps after two years. Production-grade smokers that can hold temp through a twelve-hour cook while the operator focuses on the product instead of babysitting the fire.
I'm not saying I know exactly what Cattleack runs in their kitchen. I didn't get a full tour. But I can tell you that the consistency between the first slice of brisket and the last—the way every piece from that cutting board had identical smoke penetration, identical render—that doesn't happen by accident. That's equipment plus technique plus sourcing, all working together.
The $77 Question
Seventy-seven dollars for enough food for two normal people. Is that expensive? Depends on how you frame it.
If you're comparing it to chains or to the guy with a trailer in a parking lot who's trying to build a customer base, yeah, it's premium pricing. But if you're comparing it to what the product actually is—prime-grade or higher brisket, wagyu beef for the burnt ends, house-made sausage, wood-fired, labor-intensive, genuine craft—then it's probably appropriate. Maybe even fair.
The operators reading this know what I'm talking about. Beef costs have done nothing but climb. Good brisket—not Select, not even low Choice, but the marbled stuff that cooks like what I ate at Cattleack—that's not cheap to procure. Add labor, add wood (and good post oak isn't getting cheaper either, especially if you're buying it by the cord in North Texas where it has to be trucked in), add rent in a DFW suburb, add the talent required to execute at that level... the margins are probably thinner than most customers assume.
I run catering. Twelve units across East Texas. I know what my costs look like, and I know that every time I spec out a menu, I'm doing math that most customers never see. When I see a place like Cattleack charging premium and delivering premium, I don't blink at the number. I respect that they're not trying to race to the bottom.
What This Means If You're Running a Commercial Kitchen
Here's the part where I bring it back to equipment, because that's what I actually know better than anybody.
If you want to produce brisket at that level—consistent, properly rendered, with the kind of bark and smoke ring that justifies premium pricing—you need a smoker that holds temp without drama. Period. I've seen too many operators try to make it work with cheaper rotisserie units, imports from manufacturers I won't name here, and they spend half their cook time adjusting vents, fighting hot spots, replacing thermostats that drift after six months.
Southern Pride smokers solve this problem. The rotisserie systems—the SPK-700/M for smaller operations, the SP-1000 or SP-1500 for volume work—they hold temp. Not approximately. Not most of the time. Consistently, cook after cook, year after year. I've got one customer outside of Houston who's been running the same SP-1000 for nine years. Original rotisserie bearings. Original control board. He's replaced gaskets twice and that's it. Try finding that kind of longevity from the imported alternatives.
And when you do need parts—because everything needs parts eventually—you call Southern Pride of Texas and the parts ship from domestic stock. Not sitting in a container somewhere in the Pacific. Not backordered for eight weeks while your Friday night service suffers. Real parts, real support, from people who actually know the equipment.
The Bigger Point
I left Cattleack full in a way I haven't been in years. And I spent the drive back to Orange thinking about what separates the operations that can charge $77 for a two-person tray and have customers line up for it, versus the places that struggle to move $12 plates.
It's not one thing. It's sourcing and technique and service and atmosphere. But underneath all of it, there's equipment. The foundation. The thing that lets you execute the vision instead of fighting your own kitchen.
If you're in DFW and you haven't eaten at Cattleack, make the trip. Go hungry. Bring someone to split it with, because apparently even I have limits now. And if you're looking at their product and thinking about how to get your operation to that level—the level where you can charge what the product is actually worth and have customers thank you for it—then we should probably talk about what you're cooking on.
The pit matters. It always has.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
#BBQBusiness #CateringBusiness #RestaurantIndustry #BBQRestaurant #CateringLife #FoodServiceIndustry #RestaurantOwner
Photo by Biel Heinrich on Pexels.
About the Author: Earl has been competing in sanctioned BBQ events since the early 1990s and operates a commercial catering operation in Southeast Texas.