Smokin D's BBQ SF

 Zen & the Art of Barbeque, Baking & Babies

Near the corner of 23rd Avenue and Irving Street sits a small unassuming storefront with butcher paper in the windows. A weekly schedule is written in sharpie with promises of a full menu coming soon. I parked around the corner in the loading zone and carried Chamaca here in the car seat. This is supposed to be a quick food pickup on our way to the playground in the Richmond District. I can’t let her out of the car seat until our next activity or it’ll be hell to get her back in. I rather lug 30lbs of baby + carseat weight around than try and wrestle a 22lbs baby back into the truck. Although Smokin D's BBQ has been a staple at farmers markets in San Francisco for a while now, their actual storefront is yet to open with a full menu. I can respect the soft opening, only serving buns at this point. Barbecue is not an easy thing to scale up because it takes lots of skill and precious time. 

Barbecue pitmasters are like the Samurai of the food world. Cooks and Chefs all look up to them, want to learn from them, but realistically, do not have the patience to become them. It takes a lot of energy from a person to produce decent barbecue. But to produce extraordinary barbecue requires a deep understanding of fire, smoke, heat and time. Ever shown up to a Labor Day BBQ at a friend's house, only to find the host cursing and sweating at a dead barbeque fire? The half drunk host opening and closing the lid, playing with vents and louvers like a 16th century chimney sweep. I've seen it a dozen times. For some reason, people think it’s easy to barbecue meat properly. You know what? It’s not. It takes some real fucking talent. 

Now take that knowledge of barbecue, and throw the science of baking bread on top of it. Anyone who’s ever spent weeks feeding a starter only to have their bread fail to rise in the oven understands the hard work involved in making a passable piece of bread. Frustrating is a word that comes to mind, followed by disappointment, self loathing, anger and finally the words “trash can” finish the journey. So to take something like barbecue, and combine it into a bun seems like a good idea at the time. But to produce both excellent barbecue and an excellent bun takes a talent that I dare to say, a majority of Chefs can’t hold a candle to. There, I said it, fight me Internet Chefs.

The first time I bit into Smokin D’s BBQ bao bun I was a little bit mad. Mad because it was so damn good. I knew in my heart that whoever made this smoked beef brisket had spent countless hours in search of the perfect flavor, texture and fire. I could distinctly taste the crust on the smoked brisket but it didn’t overpower the rest of the bun. Let's talk about this delicious Chinese milk bread bun. It’s soft and chewy, but holds the barbequed meat well and I don’t have barbeque sauce running all over my hands. It has this nice, glossy brown exterior with a few sesame seeds sprinkled on top. I mean just looking at the bun from the outside makes me daydream of biting into it. Chamaca was feeling it too, when to my surprise she sat up attentively in her stroller and rubbed her hands together to clean them. She repeatedly pointed at the bun and shouted, “a bite, a bite”. This is the perfect snack for a traveling parent and child. I can't wait until their storefront is fully open. If the buns are any indication of what's to come, I know it's going to be good.

There is a Zen you learn from barbecue, baking and babies. This Zen requires you to be guided by intuition, rather than your ego and conscious effort. You have to take a step back in order to really see what is happening in front of you, and then make intuitive and educated choices. This feels like the exact opposite of what you should be doing. Your mind and ego tell you to helicopter over your child, or helicopter over the piece of meat that has been in the barbeque for hours, or to helicopter over the rising buns. Alan Watts once said, “No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.” 

What does make a difference is the cornerstone you lay for these things. Read your conditions and environment, get the fire right in the smoker and close the lid, mix your dough and walk away, you cannot make it rise any faster if you stare at it. Most importantly, teach your kid to walk with their hands in front of them in case they fall down, teach them how to go down stairs using a handrail, teach them how to get off something high by sliding down on their belly feet first. Then stand close, but not too close, and let them find their way. If you’ve done your due diligence, you’ll be rewarded by good barbeque, plump baked buns, and a happy, tired toddler. 

 

Smokin D’s BBQ SF

2181 Irving Street San Francisco, CA 94122