Percy Me

Where there's smoke, there's Philly's first Texas barbecue joint.

by Drew Lazor

Neal Santos MEAT US ON SOUTH STREET: Percy Street's Texas barbecue is served on butcher paper by the half or whole pound, with sides like slaw and green beans.

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Addressing a small group of staffers, PR pros and industry types in the still-coming-together dining room of his Percy Street Barbecue, Steve Cook looks alert, focused and serious.

He does not look hungry.

"Welcome to the last brisket tasting at Percy Street," he says, with the slightly weary cadence of a man who's eaten enough meat to tide him over through Chinese New Year. "Hopefully."

Cook, along with chefs Michael Solomonov and Erin O'Shea, opened their Texas barbecue haven on Tuesday, in the South Street space that briefly housed Crescent City. The trio and a crew took a well-publicized trip through Austin's Hill Country in August to see (and taste) firsthand what's been a tradition in central Texas since European immigrants started putting down roots there in the 19th century. But this right here is R&D on the homestead — the team's tested somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 different brisket preparations on a quest to get it just right. Tally up similar numbers for other menu items like chicken, pork belly, pork spare ribs and sausage, all in a period of roughly a month, and you realize this group has been packing away flesh at a pace that could make even the most protein-dependent vegetable hater fall to his gout-ravaged knees, begging for a Waldorf salad.

We grab seats and are provided with sheets on which to judge four distinct brisket portions, on a slightly sardonic scale gauging smoke, tenderness, moistness and seasoning. (Too smoky for you? Circle "Like an Ashtray." Salt dead-on delicious? Mark "Umami City," please.) People chew, mull and chew some more, scratching down thoughts and hitting up bites of beans and slaw because it seems like a good idea. (It is.) When we finish, Cook floats around like a schoolteacher on exam day and collects the sheets, intent on culling the ratings to determine which brisket will rule them all.

Later, O'Shea reveals that of all the brisket preparations they've put out there — all those painstaking tweaks in time, temperature, seasoning and smoke — they've decided to go with the very first recipe they tried. Frustration or relief? Steaming helpings of both, probably. But such is life when you're rolling out an unfamiliar style of barbecue in a town that already juggles plenty of notions of what the hell barbecue actually is.

"Most of the barbecue that's up here tends to be Carolina style," says Cook, drawing an important distinction between that school of sauce-focused, pork-heavy cookery and this particular sub-tradition, where a couldn't-be-simpler cure of salt and pepper is all that goes on most meats before they're bathed in red oak smoke at 200 to 250 degrees for hours on end. "So we thought there was an opportunity to do Texas ... [but] our opportunity is also a challenge."

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That challenge, at least in the eyes of these restaurateurs, is twofold — endearing Philadelphians to this specific style of cooking, where meat is encouraged to be capital-letter MEAT ("The point of it is to showcase the flavor ... brisket is going to be beefy," explains O'Shea); and putting in the work necessary to ensure they don't cause the Texas pit bosses of yore to roll over in their smoke-stained graves.

On paper, it reads easy — you cure your meats in S&P, then you smoke 'em, then you got 'em. But Percy Street is far from some out-of-a-box operation, evidenced both by these meticulous tasting sessions and the thoughtful trio — chefs, all three — behind them. "When I opened Zahav, I thought, 'I was Marc's sous chef at Vetri for three years, [so this] shouldn't be too difficult,'" Solomonov recalls. "Then it came down to perfecting hummus, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do." He recognizes a parallel in his crew's laborious trials with the meat at Percy Street. "It's very difficult to keep the simple things consistent."

But that's former Marigold Kitchen chef O'Shea's chief aim, armed with two industrial smokers way taller than she is. She and her team are cranking out pork spare ribs and pork belly, half or whole smoked chickens and a killer sausage, which boasts a juicy medium grain thanks to a tirelessly tested ratio of pork fat, pork butt, beef fat and trimmings of brisket. That last cut of meat sits atop the hierarchy of Texas barbecue, which is funny considering it's something Cook and Solomonov grew up eating on the reg in their Jewish-American households. ("Steve and I, being Jewish, ate plenty of fucking brisket," laughs Solomonov.) It's the star here at Percy, available traditional (part "moist" — aka deliciously fatty — and part lean, with burnt ends) or extra lean, for those averse to the fat.

In a way, Percy's preparation pays homage to the crew's favorite brisket on their Texas trip, which they uncovered at Smitty's in Lockhart (the seasoning is what set it apart), but it's definitely done their way, smoked for less time to ensure moisture is center stage.

O'Shea, a former Texas resident, admits to some trepidation over how Philly will react to barbecue in this context — no six different sauce squeeze bottles on the table, no mountains of pulled pork, no cornbread. (There are quite a few sides, though, including vegan chili.) "There's going to be people who come in here and say, 'That's not what I was expecting,' because everyone has their own perception of barbecue," she says. "You've already got your back against the wall in that sense."

But Cook, who began his career as Marigold Kitchen's chef before opening Xochitl and Zahav, is confident that those unfamiliar with Texas barbecue will warm to its straightforward charms. After all, Percy Street's guests aren't going to be filling out his über-detailed scorecards, agonizing over whether a cure or a brine would produce the most magical results — they're just going to be rolling up their sleeves and digging in. "Philadelphians are incredibly savvy as diners, and they can sniff out a fake a million miles away," he says. "You cannot fool the diners in this town, and we're not trying to."

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)

Percy Street Barbecue, 900 South St., 215-625-8510, percystreet.com. Open Sun.-Thu., 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-11 p.m.; bar till 2.