Today I shot at two of the legendary barbecue temples of Texas– Louie Mueller’s and Taylor Cafe in Taylor, Texas. And interviewed the proprietors of both— both of which present interesting problems for when I come to edit.

Mueller’s has to be the hottest, smokiest place I’ve ever been in my life. I’m glad I wasn’t on camera because my eyes were watering much of the time. You’ll get a sense of it from seeing how brown the whole place is stained. Mr. Bobby Mueller, who took it over from his father, is a taciturn Texan to be sure, and in fact we barely spoke during the first 30 minutes or so I was in his kitchen, as I simply watched him at his work; though our interview was long enough to extract a good story from, I’m kind of tempted to just show him at work without voiceover for much of it, and hope that the viewer will be as spellbound by his silent efficiency and expertise as I was. At least a short segment like that, I think.

Taylor Cafe was kind of the opposite situation. Mr. Vencil Mares spoke at length about many things, including his WWII service (he was a medic and landed at Normandy about 10 days after D-Day). Unfortunately I wasn’t really in a position (without being pushy) to shoot the most interesting thing I saw— him wrestling, at the age of 84 and with obvious arthritis, briskets with a fork out of his smoker and onto paper for his cook to wrap and put away. He had to use a walker to get back to the bar for our interview, but nothing was going to stop him getting the meat out when he thought it was done, the same way he has for 60 years. Anyway, the WWII stories were very interesting, but I’m not sure how they’ll integrate into a BBQ story. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, but it seems a shame not to use them in some fashion.

Here’s my LTHForum post on visiting these places last year.