WOMEN RISING IN THE ’CUE QUEUES
At smokehouses — if not at the rodeo — more females taking the pitmaster’s reins
Norma Frances “Tootsie” Tomanetz she says got into the barbecue business by accident.
In 1966 the owner of City Meat Market in Giddings, where her husband, Edward, was a butcher, called her to say one of his barbecue cooks didn’t show up. Could she fill in? Tomanetz recalls accepting with reservations, because at the time she didn’t know how to cook barbecue — and because cooking barbecue was never a woman’s skill.
“It’s just one of those things where the ladies have been head of the household taking care of the children and the house and the garden,” she said, “and men were the ones doing the barbecuing.”
Today Tomanetz, 82, is one of the most famous faces in Texas barbecue. She’s the pitmaster at Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, about two hours northwest of Houston, which Texas Monthly ranked as the best barbecue joint in the
state in 2017. The James Beard Foundation this month named her semifinalist in the Best Chef Southwest category for its prestigious annual awards.
High-profile female pitmasters — who actually operate the barbecue pit — remain few and far between in Texas. They are even more scarce in the competition realm, that showy, goodol’-boy network of pitmasters who gun for trophies and work the spotlight at events such as this weekend’s Houston Rodeo’s World’s Championship Bar-BQue Contest.
But the imprint of women in barbecue is growing, whether they cook meat, contribute to the business in other vital ways or simply are becoming more interested in the slow-smoked culture.
“With anything over time, we’re starting to see the tide turn,” said Robert Becker, chairman of the rodeo cook-off at NRG Center. “Women are getting more and more involved.”
Some are learning the ropes through traditional routes. Jeffrey W. Savell, a professor in the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University, said enrollment in animal science — where some of the state’s barbecue luminaries cut their teeth — is now 75 percent women.
There were only two women students at the first, now-hugelypopular Barbecue Summer Camp put on by Texas A&M and preservation-minded organization Foodways Texas in 2011. Today, the educational camps are about 10 percent female.
“There was never a line for the ladies room,” Jessica Timmons, one of the two original female campers, joked of those early days.
Timmons, a trained chef and longtime barbecue enthusiast, has spent many nights tending the firebox in competitions and professionally, including at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford. These days she co-owns The Caboose BBQ in Alvin, where she lets others handle the pits. She said her talents are now best employed creating entrees and side dishes that move beyond the traditional meat plate. Her chicken-fried pork ribs are a Caboose bestseller.
“It’s not just about smoking brisket for 25 hours anymore,” Timmons said. “I think that’s what’s contributing to the female factor — (barbecue has become) more creative and attractive than smoking brisket and sausage.”
At the rodeo this year, women’s involvement is likely not as pitmaster — of the 252 teams in one of the world’s largest and most prestigious competitions, none have female pitmasters, at least that organizers know about.
But there are women like Lisa Vuong, who has been an active member of Xtreme Texas Cookers of Houston since its inception in 2000. She is one of the team’s cooks, specializing in sides (her husband, Phong Vuong, is pitmaster). Sides are not judged at the rodeo — categories are brisket, ribs, chicken and Dutch oven desserts — but she has helped her team win in other contests throughout Texas.
Vuong said she’s seen an uptick in women at competitions.
“They’re just now getting into it,” she said. “Maybe they’ve cooked with their husbands and are now starting to get out there and show that women are just as good as men.”
Texas has 2,740 barbecue restaurants — about 500 more than in 2016, according to a 2017 report from food service data analytics firm CHD Expert. Not only has the renaissance spread the state’s low-and-slow smoking style to all corners of the world, it has caused a proliferation of barbecue festivals, cookbooks and online tutorials — and fostered an appreciation for other aspects of barbecue, such as inventive entrees and sides that can often set momand-pop operations apart from the pack.
Houston chefs Erin Smith and Patrick Feges married in 2016. Her experience leaned more toward classic dining, his to barbecue. They are set to open their long-awaited restaurant, Feges BBQ, in Greenway Plaza next month.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be the pitmaster — that was his dream, not mine,” said Smith, who won Food Network’s “Chopped” competition in 2016. “But I didn’t want to be invisible behind the pitmaster. At the end of the day I decided I could be an integral part of the business but not dissolve into the background.”
She will offer daily entree specials, entree-size salads and spiffed-up sides that might incorporate in-season vegetables or unusual-for-a-barbecue-joint spices.
Misty Roegels knows that her side dishes, house-made pickles and desserts have helped make Roegels Barbecue Co. in Houston a success. She also knows that the majority of the attention tends to center on her husband Russell’s smoker skills.
“It’s the meat that’s celebrated. What’s on all the Instagram shots? Meat. You don’t ever see my pickles or my sides out there” she said. “If I don’t get the recognition, I don’t care. It’s not going to make a difference to me. I’m still going to go to work and do what I do. I’m proud of Russell and the recognition of what we do.”
Still, she said, “I would like to see more women in the barbecue business — in competition or the restaurant side — recognized a little bit more.”
To that end, Catherine Stiles, who operates Austin’s Stiles Switch BBQ with her husband, pitmaster Shane Stiles, launched barbecuewife.com to tell the stories of women in barbecue who operate behind the scenes. The site also sells a line of Bloody Mary mixes and barbecue lifestyle accessories, including T-shirts and koozies.
“The good old boys network is not over,” Catherine Stiles said. “But women are now wanting to partake in the growing barbecue renaissance. Not just women, but a younger set.”
Jess Pryles, a prominent Austin-based barbecue blogger on the cusp of publishing her first cookbook, “Hardcore Carnivore,” hopes to get to the day where gender isn’t an issue in barbecue.
“When I’m asked during interviews what’s it like to be a woman in this industry I say I don’t think of myself as a female in barbecue, I think of myself as a meat expert,” said Pryles, who is in her 30s.
She revels in the burgeoning role of women in barbecue — “I don’t think you could have rattled off the name of a woman pitmaster even five years ago.”
So how do more women interested in barbecue get there?
“My message to them would be pretty simple. It would be what I did myself: to get unapologetically good at your craft where it’s not about gender anymore,” she said. “The message would be don’t be deterred, keep at it. There’s nothing to preclude you from being the best barbecue maker in the state if you keep pursuing your craft.”
For her part, despite her less purposeful entry into the industry, Tomanetz of Snow’s BBQ hopes there will be a new generation of female pitmasters. “I hope there are some ladies who get into the business and can find the enjoyment in it that I have,” she said. “Along with courage, it takes a lot of tender love and care to be a barbecue woman.”