One More Bite

The WacoFork Blog

BBQ Week: First stop, Tony DeMaria's of course

June 27, 2011 | Chad Conine | Around Town
BBQ Week: First stop, Tony DeMaria's of course

t's barbecue week.

Why? Because I decided so. Just like a couple of weeks ago when it was Mexican food week. It's a precise scientific process. I look at my weekly agenda and notice that I'm going to be eating a certain type of food on a certain day and I reckon whether or not I can eat that kind of food all week. And then it's done.

Barbecue week began at Tony DeMaria's on Monday. If you're going to do barbecue week in Waco, it's completely necessary to include Tony DeMaria's, and so I figured, "why put it off?"

The picture accompanying this blog, the one that I assume gave you a deep yearning for brisket and sausage, came from the cutting board at Tony DeMaria's. Geoff DeMaria was nice enough to allow me to snap a few photos during the lunch hour. I had forgotten to photograph my plate of barbecue, which is due mostly to the fact that the deliciously moist brisket and the potential for DeMaria's sausage doused with sauce and dunked in their special gravy caused me to forget anything but the devouring of those things. If you think I'm using hyperbole, please note that Tony DeMaria's currently has an unblemsihed five-star rating on our site.

It occurs to me that barbecue week could possibly include less variety of food when compared to Mexican food week, when I ate enchiladas and fajitas and a chile relleno and taco truck tacos and guacamole and, well, all that Mexican food implies. Barbecue week might end up being different versions of brisket and sausage. But then again, I could mix it up with, say, a gut pak, a Texas tater, ribs, etc.

But no pulled pork. In fact, nothing pulled. This is barbecue week in Waco, Texas. Not barbecue week in Memphis. We all know that Memphis or Kansas City barbecue are no matches for Texas barbecue in much the same way that the football teams from those places would be no match for football teams in Texas.