MASALATEXT BY MAE HAMILTON
Smoke Meat Every Day
How did two brothers and their best friend pull off a revolutionary spin on Texas barbecue? For starters,
they just wanted something good to eat.
In the back of a restaurant located in an incon-
spicuous strip mall in Bellaire, Texas, a small
chimney is puffing away a steady stream of post
oak and pecan smoke. Inside, three best friends
toil away on their day off, feeding casing into
a sausage-stuffing machine while old-school
rap blares in the background. Tomorrow, those
hot links could be served up next to a bánh mì
sandwich and paired with gochujang beef belly
burnt ends. Or maybe just eaten with some good
old-fashioned Texas dry rub brisket. Hold the
sauce, of course.
Blood Bros. BBQ is one of Houston’s newest
barbecue joints to break onto the city’s compet-
itive smoked meat scene. The restaurant was
founded in December 2018 by brothers Robin
and Terry Wong and their friend Quy Hoang.
Robin is usually in the kitchen, Terry likes to post
up at the front of the house, while Hoang is set up
on the cutting station. Though they’ve only been
open for about seven months, they have already
established themselves as a Houston institution,
having been featured in Texas Monthly, the New
York Times, as well as on ABC’s Localish. Why?
Well, because the trio is ... Asian. And Hoang
happens to be Houston’s first-ever Vietnamese
pitmaster. The three are serving up traditional
Texas-style barbecue (think brisket smoked in
an offset smoker for over 12 hours, hand-stuffed
boudin and melt-off-the-bone pork ribs) but
with a bit of Asian flare.
Despite what most people from outside the
great Lone Star State might think, H-Town is
actually known for its large Asian presence. After
World War II, Houston’s Chinese population
grew from a measly 121 residents to a whopping
one thousand, many immigrating from other
areas of the American South to seek oppor-
tunities in the city’s growing economy. Then,
in 1975, when Saigon fell, the federal refugee
resettlement system designated the metropo-
lis as a “major resettlement site” for the fleeing
Vietnamese. Almost overnight, Houston’s Viet
population exploded from less than 100 resi-
dents to over 25,000.
The Blood Brothers see themselves and the
grub they serve up as a product of this legacy of
immigration. They grew up in Alief, a suburb of
Houston near Chinatown. They rattle off the
different ethnicities they grew up around, like
Bubba from Forrest Gump rattling off shrimp
dishes. “Indians, Mexicans, black folks and every
kind of Asian. Vietnamese, Laotians, Filipinos,
Chinese, Thai, Korean,” Terry says. “The whole
nine. We’re really lucky. Armenians, even.”
The trio have been friends since they met
at Elsik High School (which Beyoncé also
attended, by the way). Robin says growing up in
“the hood” gave them a unique outlook on life.
“That was the great thing about growing up in
Alief,” Robin says. “Everybody was pretty much
middle to lower class. So, there wasn’t really
that whole ‘I’m better than you’ thing. And we
always joked that everybody in Alief grew up
with the hustler mentality. Whether you were
an honor roll student or a dropout, everyone washustling something.”
The barbecue restaurant isn’t these good ol’
boys’ first endeavor into the food service busi-
ness. Blood Bros. BBQ actually originated as a
result of “steak night” at their club, Glitter Kara-
oke, where the Wong brothers recruited Hoang
to take over the meats. Soon, steak night evolved
into a pop-up trailer, which then became their
brick and mortar. Before he partnered with the
Wong brothers, Hoang worked at his uncle’s
aquarium shop. “I used to grill in my backyard
all the time,” Hoang says. “But, I used to joke
around that I wasn’t about to spend 12 hours
a day sitting around a pit cooking barbecue.
Then when we started the steak night, I was like,
‘Y’know, today’s the day. I’m gonna sit down and
see if I can do this.’ From there I just got kind of
hooked on it, the whole process of it.”
Despite their commitment to traditional
smoking methods, the trio say that they’ve taken
liberties on the hard-nosed definition of what
“Texas barbecue” is. The three make it clear that
they are making authentic Houston barbecue.
“Besides our traditional style barbecue, every-
thing else is just experimenting with different
flavors we grew up eating in and around Hous-
ton,” Robin says. “We take pride in what we do,
so we try to make everything from scratch in
a way that’s 100 percent unique to us. It’s just
weird because it’s evolved into something big-
ger. We’re not just Blood Bros. BBQ representing
Houston. We’re Blood Bros. BBQ representing
Houston and the Asian community.”CM