Pecan Lodge

Gorging on real Texas BBQ has been at the top of my bucket list for a long long time.  Now when I say long, I mean since I was in Elementary school.  There is a certain appeal to attacking big portions of meat and eating it off the bone.  Now I've had some decent BBQ up in Vancouver such as Dixie's and The Hog Shack, but I finally got the chance to make it to the promised land by virtue of a cruise.  You see, I booked a cruise that left out of Galveston and conveniently made it the second week of spring break.  Hence, it gave me an excuse to do a quick tour of Texas the week before!

We hit the ground running by taking an early morning flight and arriving in Dallas just in time for lunch.  Our first stop was Pecan Lodge in Deep Ellum.  We only waited in line for 45 minutes (which is actually very reasonable).  The first thing I dug into was their famous Hot Mess consisting of a jumbo sea salt-crusted sweet potato, South Texas barbacoa (shredded brisket with southwestern seasoning), chipotle cream, cheese, butter & green onions.  As featured on Triple-D's, this monstrosity was super delicious!  Soft and extremely buttery, the sweet potato was delicate and creamy.  The combination of toppings added depth, saltiness and spice as well as even more creaminess.  This was sinfully delicious and even though I didn't want to eat too much, we ended up finishing it.

We also had the 3-Meat Combo Plate that included brisket, pork side rib and home-made sausage.    As evidenced in the picture, the fatty brisket was beautifully smoked.  In fact, this was one of the smokiest briskets I've ever had.  I personally loved the flavor as well as the tasty bark.  The meat itself ranged from tender to a touch dry.  That didn't make or break it though.  As for the rib, it was equally smoky and fell-off-the-bone.  It was moist and the spice rub was well-balanced.  Lastly, the sausage was pretty good having a good mix of meat and fat.  It was juicy and tender with some spice.  For our side, we had the mac n' cheese that was creamy, saucy, tangy and slightly spicy from the green chilis.

To get a sense of their pulled pork (without the Southwest seasoning), we had the Pitmaster Sandwich sporting brisket, pulled pork and sausage topped with slaw bbq sauce & fresh sliced jalapeños.  For $10.00, this was an enormous concoction that had enough meat for more than one sandwich.  As mentioned above, the brisket was fatty and delicious while the sausage had a good snap to the casing as well as being meaty.  I found the pulled pork to be smoky much like the other meats, but also a touch dry as well.  An extra dousing of their sweet and tangy BBQ sauce helped alleviate that.  The crunchy slaw and fresh jalapeños added a tangy crunch as well as some heat.  What brought it all together was the soft buttered and toasted bun.

Our last item was their Southern Fried Chicken with a side of West Texas pinto beans and a roll.  Wow, the batter on the chicken was super on point.  It was crunchy and well-seasoned while not being greasy at all.  The skin was fully rendered while the meat in the drumstick was succulent.  I found the the breast to be somewhat dry though and needing a brine of some sort as the chicken itself was a little bland.  The beans were pretty hearty being only mildly sweet.  For our first BBQ of the trip, Pecan Lodge was pretty solid.  Surprisingly, my favorite item was the hot mess, it was just a combination of tasty things.  Fried chicken was good too.

The Good:
- Overall solid BBQ
- Hot mess rocked
- Fried chicken surprisingly good

The Bad:
- Of course, the lineup
- Portion size for the 3-meat combo was not very big for the price