Los Fresnos barbecue joint joins the ranks of Texas legends

This story was almost delayed by an afternoon nap — narrowly averted after a two-meat combo plate of ribs, smoked chicken breast, homemade macaroni and cheese and ranchero beans at Wild Blue BBQ outside Los Fresnos in preparation for an interview with owner/pitmaster Abraham Avila.

The Brownsville native opened Wild Blue on Highway 100 between Los Fresnos and County Road 803 in April 2005. Inside three years Texas Monthly magazine had included the restaurant in its 2008 list of Top 50 Texas barbecue joints. Now Wild Blue has been invited to the exclusive Texas Monthly BBQ Festival 2010 taking place Sept. 19 in Austin, where a select group of 2008 winners will offer samples of their meats.

Wild Blue is the sole invitee from South Texas, with the exception of McBee’s Bar-B-Q in Hondo, 40 miles west of San Antonio, 260 miles north of Brownsville and barely in South Texas anyway.

“We’re probably going to do chopped brisket sliders and baby back ribs,” Avila says. “Sausage, I think Smitty’s and Kreuz (in Lockhart) — I’ve never had a better sausage than family recipe. I’m not even going to try and put my sausage up against theirs. Ours is really good but theirs is just spectacular. But I think our baby back ribs, if we execute the recipe the way we’re supposed to they’re pretty hard to beat. I might do pulled pork sliders as well.”

Avila learned his art at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh. He enrolled at the urging of wife, Cynthia, who was attending medical school in Cleveland. While a student Avila worked for minimum wage as a prep cook for Big Burrito Restaurant Group in Pittsburgh — his first fine-dining job.

“It couldn’t have been a better place to learn,” Avila says. “I was in over my head, but I made it.”

After graduation he spent three years as a station chef for Cleveland’s Ritz-Carlton. Cynthia finished med school and the couple returned to Brownsville in 2000. Avila worked at various cooking jobs for a few years before sinking his savings into Wild Blue, which he built from the ground up. The early days were tough going, he admits.

“We struggled a lot getting consistency,” Avila says. “In fact the whole first year we struggled to get the timing down on the brisket. It’s easier to cook a lobster tail or a filet mignon than it is a brisket.”

It’s the difference between cooking something for 10 minutes versus 16 hours, he says, which is why most four-star chefs wouldn’t know what to do with brisket unless, like Avila, they specialized in it.

“After you’ve cooked it for so long, you can’t just cut into it,” he says. “You’ve got to let it rest a couple of hours. The inside of the meat is kind of like boiling. If you cut it when all the juices are running rampant, all the juices are going to run out. You end up with dry brisket and you’ve wasted 16 hours. We learned the hard way.”

In Texas, barbecue means brisket. Sausage comes next, then everything else. Wild Blue isn’t strictly Texas-style or Memphis-style or anything else, Avila says, but a combination of different styles.

“It’s just what we came up with, trial and error,” he adds. “There’s a million books on barbecue out there. The only way to get better with this is trial and error.”

Avila concedes that making the 2008 Top 50 list (Smokey Joe’s Bar-B-Q & Grill in Harlingen also made the cut) and being invited to the Austin festival is “really good advertising.” Besides Smitty’s Market and Kreuz Market in Lockhart, September’s all-star lineup includes legends such as Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, Baby J’s Bar-B-Que & Fish in Palestine, Buzie’s Bar-B-Que in Kerrville and Casstevens Cash & Carry in Lillian.

“Most of these places have been open longer than I’ve been alive,” Avila says. “In a way it’s humbling to be even included in the company of these restaurants.”

Despite the accolades from Texas Monthly, as well as passionate customer testimonials scribbled on napkins displayed around the restaurant, Avila says his location on Highway 100 isn’t bringing in as many customers as he’d hoped. He guesses people are in a hurry to get to South Padre Island and don’t want to stop. Wild Blue’s catering business is growing, though, and helping take up some of the slack. And word-of-mouth continues to spread.

“We’re not getting rich, but we’re doing good enough to stay in business,” Avila says.

While the prospect of opening another location may be appealing from a financial perspective, he worries that the quality of the food — all of it homemade, from the brisket to the corn pudding to the sweet potato flan — would suffer. Avila depends heavily on his kitchen managers, Ricardo and Leticia Uribe, who have been with him “since day one,” and says it’s hard to find such talent.

“To be honest I’m kind of scared to grow,” Avila says. “We would have to find more good people. You’ve got to get the right people in the right places. I can only be in one place at a time.”