Daily Times

Barbeque is an indelible part of our culture, our earliest memories are of a family feast around skewered meat on hot coal at any number of social and religious festivals.

Good wholesome meals that we bond together on, creates memories and get heart burn over the next day. But it’s all worth it.

The root word for barbeque comes from the Spanish word Barbacoa, a cooking method by indigenous people of the Caribbean which involves slow cooking of meats over an open fire or a hole dug in the ground covered by agave leaves. Regardless of the etymology of it, every society has had its interpretation of this method of cooking. It could have been the most ancient form of cooking considering cooking in vats and ceramic pots came much later.

Enter the Black Tie Smoke House, a Texas style BBQ for the gluttons of Karachi. It is a passion project of Mubashir, a banker turned fire-starter, a hobby that’s transitioned into a full time profession. It started from just a movie scene with a Texas BBQ meal that fired up his imagination and pushed him to learn about the craft though internet videos and forums because a few years back there was no one to learn from about how to go about it.

Enter the Black Tie Smoke House, a Texas style BBQ for the gluttons of Karachi. It is a passion project of Mubashir, a banker turned fire-starter, a hobby that’s transitioned into a full time profession. It started from just a movie scene with a Texas BBQ meal that fired up his imagination and pushed him to learn about the craft though Internet videos and forums because a few years back, there was no one to learn from how to go about it

For the uninitiated, a Texas Style Barbeque is a slow cooking method where the meat is put in a ‘smoker’- a black horizontal barrel like contraption with a lid. The beef brisket chicken, meat loaves and sausage are slow cooked under a closed barrel over oak wood chips for a couple of hours until the meat is falling off bone. It’s only seasoned with nothing save salt and pepper, using other sauces and breads is an option but not encouraged. The end result ideally is tenderised meat where the fat tissue and collagen breaks down and gives that soft texture and taste to the meat.

Black Tie Smoke House is a pop up hosting meals at the proprietors own house. So if you are looking for waiters at your beck and call then you might want to look elsewhere.

The whole process the chef and proprietor tells me starts in the morning when the cuts of meat have to be prepared, the oak wood hacked and put in the smoker. It’s an extensive methodical process, a lot of slow preparation before slow cooking can take place. The black smoker Mubashir says was built by directing welders here instead of being imported.

With the recent openings of Prime 109 and Markhor, the competition for smoked meats and prime cuts is heating up- pardon the pun. Black Tie Smokehouse is the only popup in among them, so if small intimate dinners are your thing then this is your port of call. You may like it or probably won’t. However, approaching it as a novel experience with an open mind might help. Good gastronomy is as much as educational as well as culinary experience. But it’s certainly something you may haven’t experienced before. If for nothing else the Texas Style Smoker is a sight to behold in itself.

The writer is a freelancer and can be reached at raheel_@outlook.com