Why a Michelin-starred Texas barbecue restaurant chose Oregon for its first ‘sister restaurant’

When a Michelin-starred Texas barbecue restaurant opens in Portland later this year, the weather, the Portland Pickles and the late culinary icon James Beard will be partly to thank.

On Monday, The Oregonian/OregonLive broke the news that

that the GM and pitmaster at Austin’s La Barbecue

, Ben Vaughan, was moving to Portland to open a spin-off restaurant, Lil Barbecue, later this year.

Now pretty much any serious Texas smokehouse expanding to Portland would be a big deal. But La Barbecue happens to be one of the four barbecue restaurants to earn a Michelin star from the fancy French food guide’s

first foray into the Lone Star State

. And La Barbecue is a staple on

on Texas Monthly’s influential top 50 BBQ list

, which is released every four years.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Vaughan, who owner Ali Clem has said is her

“right and left hand”

man, was still packing up his Austin home, getting ready to hit the road to Portland. By next month, Clem will join him in Portland to scout locations, searching for a full restaurant space with room for a bar. Their custom smokers — a rotisserie from M&M BBQ Company and a 1,000 gallon offset from Mill Scale Metalworks — are still in production, but will follow by late summer or early fall.

The most common question I’ve heard from those in Portland’s tight-knit barbecue scene this week was, “Why here?”

In an interview this week, Vaughn explained why he and Clem picked Oregon for their first expansion. Questions and answers below have been edited for length and clarity.

Q:

So why is La Barbecue expanding to Portland?

A:

We’ve been looking to get out of Texas for a while. My wife was born and raised here. I lived here for 12 years. We wanted to try something new. We were up in Portland last year for her cousin’s wedding, and I don’t know if you’ve been to Texas in June, but it’s oppressively hot and humid. Portland just ticked all the boxes for climate and people, and everywhere we went people said, “You’ve got to move up here and start a barbecue.”

Q:

Clem called Lil Barbecue an “extension” of La Barbecue. But what does that mean? Is it a spin-off, its own thing, or what?

A:

We’re calling them sister restaurants. So Ali is going to be a partner in the Portland restaurant, but it will not be a franchise, but more of an extension of La Barbecue. So, very similar menu. All the meat will be cooked the same way we do it here, with Ali as a part owner and a big part of it. The spicy garlic pickles will be coming, and the brisket, ribs and sausage, which are the big three in Texas.

Ali actually has an apartment in Los Angeles as a second home, and I’m lobbying her to move it up to Portland so she can be there more often. She’s also friends with one of the owners of the Pickles, so she’s excited to go to a game. We tried to go to a game last year but it got rained out.

Future Pickles fans Ben Vaughan and Ali Clem will open Lil Barbecue, a “sister restaurant” to their Michelin-starred La Barbecue in Portland later this year.

Courtesy of Ben Vaughan

Q:

How did it feel learning that La Barbecue had earned a Michelin star?

A:

We knew we were on their radar, and Ali and I had talked about how, well, obviously we’re not going to get a star, but it would be cool to be a Bib Gourmand, which is like their version of an honorable mention. As a place where you eat off of butcher paper with plastic forks, it’s kind of unheard of to be in the Michelin Guide at all.

We had been at a food and wine event in a little Texas town all weekend, and when we got back Ali had to head right back out to Houston for the ceremony. They went through all the Bib Gourmands first, and a bunch of great restaurants got that, and we were left off. And I was like, “Oh man, I feel so bad for her. We just did this long cooking weekend, and she drove down there just to get snubbed.”

So yeah, once they called her on stage to actually get a star, I was very proud. And it’s crazy because I started off in fine-dining places after culinary school, then started to gravitate more toward casual restaurants, which is really where most of my career has been. As a cook, reaching that level is something you have to be in fine dining to do, and then to be recognized by them, I think it’s really cool.

Q:

Did the star have an impact on the business?

A:

It raised our profile. We’re open Wednesday through Sunday, and Wednesday and Thursday used to be a good day for locals to come. Austin is a big bachelor and bachelorette party destination, with lots of music festivals, so Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are kind of given over to tourists. But locals used to be able to sneak in during a half hour lunch break on a Wednesday or Thursday. That went away after the Michelin star.

Q:

What about last week’s Texas Monthly top 50? La Barbecue made it again this year, though not in the top 10.

A:

Yeah that’s a big deal. People really get nervous. I moved to Texas in 2013, and just in that time, the number of good barbecue restaurants in the state has just blown up. We were disappointed not to be in the top 10 — we’ve never been in the top 10 — but then you look at the places that didn’t make it

at all

, and that’s a sign that the competition is really insane.

Then we went through the top 10 and thought, “Well you can’t really argue with that.” I don’t really eat barbecue on my time off, but the places that I have been to, well, there’s no arguing with LeRoy and Lewis. Me and Ali went to eat there a few months ago, and everything they do is incredible.

The guy who got No. 1 this year (Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin) has this YouTube video that I was watching a few months ago where he was sitting on a couch and he said, “I slept on this couch for the first six months we were open.” I was not surprised that they won. That guy is very serious.

Q:

What do you know about Oregon barbecue?

A:

I’ve heard some really good things about Matt’s BBQ and Bark City food truck. Podnah’s is another one that I’ve heard about. And then Har-BQ is his name on Instagram, I’ve been following him for a while. And then Grasslands in Hood River. Their briskets always look great, but they’re doing more interesting cuts of meat, too, like those volcano pork shanks that you don’t even see here. They reached out to me this morning, saying they’d like to grab a beer once I’m up there, which I thought was incredibly kind.

From what I hear there’s great barbecue up there, but there’s also just fewer people in Oregon doing barbecue. But Portland definitely has a reputation as a food-obsessed city. James Beard himself was from there, I believe.

Q:

It’s true. So, is there a specific part of town you’re looking at for Lil Barbecue?

A:

Uh, not really. We’re leaning more toward the east side, since that’s where we’ve spent most of our time. In Portland, we just rented a house in Woodlawn, on Dekum Street — is that how you pronounce it, ‘Deckum?’

Q:

More like ‘Deekum.’

A:

Ah yeah. I had to learn how to say Willamette, too.

Anyway, one thing that has really attracted me to Portland is the walkability, the way you have commercial districts nestled into the old streetcar lines. Texas is not walkable. It’s a state for cars. We walked all over the city the times I’ve been up there, from 28th Avenue down to Puff Coffee. We don’t have anything like that in Austin, this beautiful mix of restaurants and coffee shops and bars, with the commercial all mixed in with the residential.

Q:

Yeah, but that also means you’re going to have to make sure your neighbors don’t hate the smell of smoke. Speaking of neighbors, I imagine many Portlanders will be excited to get an extension of Texas’ first woman- and lesbian-owned barbecue restaurant.

A:

You know, Ali doesn’t really like to promote that. She just wants to be known as a great pitmaster, not a great lesbian pitmaster. But I think it is cool that people will identify with that.

Ali is a great teacher, and she’s also done everything in the restaurant industry over the course of her life. And then her late wife, LeAnn, was a great teacher too, because she’s like barbecue royalty. Before

she died

, her

brother died

, and he was a legendary barbecue guy. And her dad was the first guy to win a James Beard Award for barbecue, and they grew up in a barbecue restaurant in Taylor, Texas.

She’s been a close friend and mentor to me for a long time. My last day of work was Saturday, and she was in New York for a chef thing, and I’m already missing her, since today would have been the day I would have seen her.

Q:

You were La Barbecue’s GM and pitmaster. What exactly did that entail?

A:

We have a few people that we call pitmasters that cook, and so it’s not just me back there all the time. And that’s allowed me to both be in the front and in the back, which is nice because I can have a hand in everything, and when it’s 105 degrees out and I don’t have to cook. We have the Michelin star, but we’re definitely not white tablecloth, so the front of house role is mostly just talking to people and making sure they’re getting what they need.

Q:

Can you tell us a bit more about your background?

A:

Sure. I was born in Nashville, but I mostly grew up in Birmingham Alabama. I went to Auburn University for school, but ended up dropping out my senior year to go to culinary school. I moved out to Austin to do my culinary school externship, worked in a few places there, then started working at La Barbecue part time in the afternoon as a second job, mostly because I was bored — my other job I got off too early.

I peeled potatoes and washed dishes to start, because that’s what needed to be done at the time, but then I just stuck around and eventually became full time. They promoted me to general manager and pitmaster in 2020, but I’ve done a little bit of everything there.

— Michael Russell;

mrussell@oregonian.com

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