2019-02-01_Southern_Living

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SOUTHERNLIVING.COM / FEBRUARY 20 19

79

ow in her

eighties, Tootsie

Tomanetz is a

Texas legend.

In the 1960s, she would

lend a hand to her husband,

White Tomanetz, who was a

butcher at City Meat Market

in Giddings. One day, when

a pit hand didn’t show up,

Tootsie stepped in. Soon,

she was cooking six days

a week. When the owner

opened a branch of the mar-

ket in Lexington, he asked

her to run the operations—

including its burn barrels

and barbecue pits—and later

sold it to the Tomanetzes.

The couple put their

market up for sale in 1996,

but in 2003, a longtime

customer convinced Tootsie

to cook at Snow’s BBQ, the

Saturday-only restaurant he

was opening in Lexington.

During the week, Tootsie

still works for the local

school district’s mainte-

nance department in

Giddings. Come Saturday,

she wakes up at 2 a.m. to

drive over to Lexington and

get the meat on the pits.

Most modern Central

Texas barbecue is slow-

cooked on offset smokers

over indirect heat. At Snow’s

Tootsie cooks it the same

old-school way she did

at City Meat Market: over

direct heat on waist-high

metal pits with flat, raisable

lids. She carries shovelfuls

of glowing coals from the

firebox to each pit and

scatters them beneath the

cooking meat. She mops the

ribs, pork shoulder steaks,

and half chickens with a

vinegar-and-Worcestershire

blend, turning the meat and

moving it to hotter or cooler

parts of the pit.

She’ll emerge from

the pit area to mingle with

guests and is often seen

scrubbing a big pot or two

at the outdoor sink. After all,

there’s still work to be done.

Tootsie

Toma ne t z

Snow’s BBQ

LEXINGTON, TX

N

Laura Loomis

Two Bros. BBQ Market

and Alamo BBQ Co.

SAN ANTONIO, TX

L

AURA LOOMIS didn’t even know what

a brisket was when she took a job as

a cashier at Two Bros. BBQ Market in

2013. But one day, she stepped in to
      help when one of the pit hands quit,
      and soon she was working in the pit house
      full-time. “I just kind of started doing it and
      fell in love with it,” she says.
      She threw her passion into the work, and
      when the previous pitmaster resigned, owner
      Jason Dady promoted Loomis to the position,
      making her one of the youngest pitmasters
      in Texas. Not all of the men working the pits
      were thrilled to have a woman in charge,
      Loomis admits. “In the beginning, it was an
      issue,” she says, “because I went from being
      their equal to their superior, and obviously
      I wanted to change things.”
      And she did make changes, delving
      into barbecue cookbooks, watching online
      videos, and then introducing more consistent
      procedures—like a system of resting the meat
      using Yeti coolers. As pitmaster, Loomis is
      in charge of a lot—supervising the kitchen
      staff, placing all of the orders, managing food
      costs—and last year, she helped Dady open
      a second restaurant, Alamo BBQ Co., where
      she cooks once a week. At the end of the day,
      it’s tending the fires in the big offset pits at
      Two Bros. that remains her passion.
      Loomis knows that a lot of women in the
      restaurant industry are leery of working in
      pit houses, where the hours are long and the
      conditions hot and dirty, but she hopes that
      will change. “Maybe others will see me and
      say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it too.’ ” Â