If you're looking for delicious barbecue in the area, you can't go wrong visiting The Public House in Fort Benton. The Public House offers a range of smoked meat options, prepared by their resident barbecue chef, Alex Salazar. Alex has been cooking at The Wake Cup (and more recently at its sister restaurant, The Public House), but he has been smoking food most of his life.
I met Alex when he competed in the Big Sandy Church of God Brisket Cook-Off 2 years ago. Then, he was just beginning to learn to cook brisket, but now he's preparing around 4 a week for The Public House. That is a significant slowdown from the 8 to 10 he cooked during the summer.
He described the reactions he's gotten to his smoking as ranging from "Inedible" from one taster of one of his earliest brisket attempts, to the best compliments he receives: "Best compliment? When the wives tell me that my barbecue is just as good as their husband's. You can never beat home-cooked meals. The comparisons to the home cooks. The backyard cookout, they always taste better."
Texas style barbecue usually refers to smoked meat without a sauce applied during the cooking. Carolina style, for example, is typically served with a sauce and is often mopped with vinegar-based sauces during the cooking. Georgia style involves using mustard-based sauces in preparation. For Alex, barbecue is best prepared by rubbing it down with spices before cooking it very low and very slow.
Alex is a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute, but his Texas roots taught him plenty about barbecue. "I definitely lean toward the Texas style. Very low, very slow, very heavy on the smoke. No sauce at all. You get a heavy bark on there. My ribs are dry, which most people from Carolina cuss me out because ribs are supposed to be wet, not dry. I prefer mine dry because I don't like to use wet naps all the time. I put barbecue sauce at the table if they want it."
He generally prefers to season with a "Texas rub," which is "kosher salt, pepper, a little bit of chili powder, brown sugar, and granulated garlic. That's it. And that's kind of my base point for all of my rubs. Like my barbecue rib rubs, I add a mess of cajun spices. On the chicken, I mess around with different things, like dehydrated tomatoes to get a very creole feeling. During the winter time, I get more creative with my rubs because it's fun. People like a little bit of change."
"If you come down to The Public House, you should try the brisket or the ribs. And the corn bread. People seem to go crazy for the corn bread." My wife and I sampled both, and can say with certainty that the popularity of those dishes is well deserved. Apart from the staples, Alex explained that the specials are a lot of fun for him, since he gets to experiment a bit. "People here usually go for the specials. I just take whatever I have left over from the night before and see what I can turn it into, like croquets or I did tamales with brisket."
Alex is originally from San Antonio, where his father still lives. He moved here with his mother when he was 8. While growing up, he'd visit family in Texas during the summers and holidays. He attributes these experiences with influencing his cooking preferences. "Every year when I went down there, they had some kind of fiesta for me. All the uncles. All the aunts. There's been days where they dug a pit and threw a pig in and cooked it that way. That was pretty neat."
Talking about his experience with the Big Sandy Cook-Off he explained: "It was totally different from the working experience. For the competition, I stay up all night, I go very low... I think I started at 10 at night and pulled it off at noon because the competition started at one o'clock." His coworkers were quick to point out that it was one of his first attempts at cooking brisket, and that he was still learning. "It's a lot of trial and error with this stuff."
The most unusual and difficult dish he can remember preparing was a Brisket Wellington he did for a wine tasting. He said the experience stressed him out.
When I asked whether or not he'd be showing up for a rematch at Big Sandy Church of God's 10th annual cook-off, he wasn't sure of his availability. "October 10th, we'll see where I am then. I want to be a part of it, but I'm not making any promises."
He summed up his attitude toward talking about his own cooking by simply saying: "I'm a man of very few words. I'd rather people try my stuff and make their own decision."
