If you and your posse are seeking a laid back casual Friday night eating slow cooked Texas BBQ style meats with accompaniments, look no further than the monthly event "Up In Smoke" that Dan The Man Cooking is hosting at Eastern Suburbs Rugby Club.
Bring your appetite! Dan The Man loads up a cafeteria style tray with lots and lots of meat. Not any ordinary meat mind you. He has slow smoked a ginormous piece of beef brisket for 13 hours. It's hard not to drool as he carves generous thick slices right in front of you. But it doesn't stop there. For your $35 you are guaranteed the beef brisket and a glorious pile of pulled pork plus a side of creamy mac and cheese, crispy coleslaw, 2 slices of soft spongey dirty white bread, pickles, and jalapenos to be joined by a rotating selection of other slow smoked meats. On the list of rotating meats you can expect to see chicken, beef sausage, and pork ribs.
On my visit I experienced the brisket with its strong smokey flavour - what you would expect after being slow cooked 13 hours inside a smoker. I also dug into pulled pork, smoked chicken and a pulled beef brisket and black bean mix bringing that TexMex flavour with lots of chilli, chipotle, and smokey paprika added in. My rotating meat was a chunky piece of smoked chicken. On top of all that came the sides of mac and cheese and coleslaw.
All in all I had a tasty dinner full of that Texas BBQ cooking style that is all the rage on The Food Network (I've seen hours and hours of shows featuring it).
Dan The Man loves to barbeque and he has even travelled to the US to learn the "slow and low" cooking technique (the style used in Southern-style barbequeing) from the Brooklyn pitmaster, Nestor Laracuente. Apparently Nestor is also going to be involved with "Up In Smoke" nights as he is going to be shipping his own range of meat rubs to Sydney exclusively for Dan.
Get along to "Up In Smoke" for your Texas BBQ fix.
Details: "Up In Smoke"
cost - $35 per BBQ tray
when - from 6pm first Friday of every month
where - Eastern Suburbs Rugby Club, O'Sullivan's Road, Bellevue Hill.
beverages - licensed premises with beer and cider on tap, bottled wines and spirits
suitable for groups, couples, families