This Texas pitmaster's barbecue went viral. Now you can try his food in Utah.

08/21/2024 07:03 AM

Talking to social media influencer, pitmaster and "oxtail king" Les Rhodes Jr. in person is a lot like stepping into one of his Instagram or TikTok videos.

As he narrates in his deep voice what's happening in the barbecue pits behind his commissary kitchen in South Salt Lake, he wears a white cowboy hat, red sneakers and a red T-shirt that says "Paintin' 'Em Red," a reference to the deep red his meats take on as they're smoked.

After stopping at one particular smoker, nicknamed Big Red, he lifts the lid, unleashing a hot cloud of meat-scented air, and gently sprays the red hunks of pork (destined to become pulled pork) inside with a solution made with apple cider vinegar and water. This is meant to tenderize the meat and keep it moist.

Then he walks to another pit, nicknamed Candi Red, and opens the doors to reveal rows of smoking briskets, turning over and over one another like they're in a rotisserie oven.

The secret to real Texas flavor, Rhodes explained, is the wood that fuels the fires in the pits. No charcoal is used here, no gas — just wood, particularly hickory and pecan wood.

"That's going to give you your best flavor when it comes to smoking meat," he said, holding up a log. "And so that's what we use."

The only thing that's missing from this "video" is his signature sign-off: "And I'm out."

The videos he posts on social media of him smoking meats — especially oxtails, so tantalizing and mouth-watering you can almost taste them — are largely what's made Les Rhodes Jr. famous. Between Instagram and TikTok, he has almost 1 million followers. One of his latest videos, a slow-motion close-up of a cut brisket, has been viewed on TikTok more than 10,000 times in less than a week.

When he's not on tour doing barbecue pop-up events around the country with Candi Red — going to such places as Tampa, Houston and Atlanta, selling $100 tickets that include a plate of barbecue — he's busy smoking meats to supply his restaurant in Utah.

Officially opened in April, at 12059 S. State St., Suite 80, in Draper, Les BBQ Sandwiches is Rhodes' first brick-and-mortar restaurant. Its menu features such barbecue mainstays as pulled pork, chicken, brisket, the oxtails he's known for, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and more.

From Texas to Utah

"Cooking was never on my agenda. It just happened," Rhodes said in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. Originally from Texas, Rhodes said he remembers his stepfather would cook every Sunday, turning on the blues and a football game while he grilled meats over coals.

Rhodes didn't earn his barbecue chops until much later. As an adult, he became a bodybuilder and a personal trainer, and drilled oil and gas wells for 15 years, he said, once even drilling into a volcano in the Caribbean.

He came to Utah in 2017 with his wife and four sons when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, and they stayed with his wife's father, who lived in Tooele.

At the time, Rhodes was still drilling oil and gas wells, having to fly to Texas every 14 days, and then, after he switched companies, having to drive six hours to work in Wyoming, he said. In 2018, he got out of the oil and gas industry, and started working in Utah for Rio Tinto, where he worked for 3½ years, he said.

Rhodes started smoking meats in 2019, he said, after learning the basics of smoking brisket on YouTube. He set up a smoker in his front yard in Tooele, and would give samples of barbecue to his neighbors on holidays, he said.

"I was just doing a few catering jobs then, but it was my neighbors that would buy the food," Rhodes said. "Yeah, nobody ever complained about the smoke. They never complained. And I smoked meat every day, every day, with a big pit."

In June 2021, Rhodes quit his job at Rio Tinto, and was relying on barbecue to pay the bills, selling food at festivals and other events. That winter, business slowed down, and even though he was selling his barbecue wholesale to local restaurants, the bills were piling up, he said.

One day, he was walking through a store, picking up some meat, when he came across some whole oxtails. "I ate oxtails in my life, but it wasn't something that we ate every day, but I ate them before," Rhodes said. "I looked at them and said, 'Man, that'd be something that I could smoke on a pit, just to see what it looked like.'"

He bought about three bags of meat, took the meat home and smoked it. When he barbecued the oxtails, they were "beautiful," he said. He asked his wife to come shoot a video of the meat, "and that video when viral, like millions of views on them," he said. "People wanted these oxtails."

"And after that, I just kept the fire lit," he continued. "So here we are, what, going on two years now. I just post videos and market food to keep the fire lit in them."

A loyal following

The oxtails come from bulls, in a cut of meat as big as your arm. But Rhodes slices the long tails straight across into a series of smaller cuts, so each piece is about as big as a softball.

After the juicy "softballs," as Rhodes calls them, come out of the smoker, they comprise a ring of unctuous fat and meat surrounding a slice of bone. You can tear into it with a fork to get to the tender meat, or just pick it up with your hands and pull it apart. And, of course, they're a deep, satisfying red.

The look of the meat is something in which Rhodes takes a lot of pride.

"I just started smoking these meats, and I just got to the point where I perfected the fire to get that red color of that look of the meat, and that's what draws people in," he said. "That's what made us famous."

Rhodes built his social media following over a few years, he said, before he did his first pop-up tour last December. He said he's so well known now that he could go tour anywhere and loyal fans would come out to eat barbecue.

However, "I never had set out to say, 'You know what, I want to sell barbecue so I can become famous,'" he said. "That never was my deal. I was just trying to provide a way for us to survive."

Now, Rhodes is focusing on building an audience in Utah, "because we have a storefront here, and that's going to be the foundation," he said.

It seems to be working. He stopped this interview to speak with a devoted fan who was picking up an order and wanted to meet him.

Rhodes said he still gets people who come from far away to taste his barbecue. He said his restaurant is becoming a "destination" for tourists who have seen him on social media. "They jump off that plane, go eat, jump back on the plane and leave," he said. "And that just blows my mind."

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