As a non-Texan who’s smoked brisket in Dubai, beef sausage in Vegas and pork ribs in London, pitmaster Orelle Young thinks Texas barbecue’s center of gravity is everywhere — especially Fort Lauderdale’s Sistrunk Boulevard.
He’s here at B&D Trap early Thursday, sweating despite the shade of a screened-in patio, flipping and pulling glazed ribs from a Primitive Pits offset smoker and 14-hour brisket from an Ole Hickory commercial gas smoker. At his new roadside stop, four blocks west of the L.A. Lee YMCA, Young aims to challenge long-held beliefs about the cult of Texas ‘cue: What it is, where it’s made, who’s allowed to make it.
“We get it out of the smoker just before opening, which is 11 a.m.,” he says. “Let’s get this out there: If it’s up to me, I wouldn’t serve barbecue sauce at all.”
Salt, coarse black pepper, cayenne, a pinch of granulated garlic powder. That, he argues, is the only dry rub Black Angus brisket needs as it roasts overnight at 225 degrees, the melting fat rendering low and slow like a baste, yielding a flabby fall-apart hunk of flavored beef.
At 40 seats, B&D Trap at 1551 NW Sixth St. is a proving ground for the globetrotting Young, who built his career training under pitmasters with family ties to Lockhart, Texas, the Lone Star State’s official barbecue mecca. The restaurant, which started offering takeout in mid-March, will mark its grand opening March 29.
“You can’t gate-keep Texas-style barbecue,” Young says. “The techniques shouldn’t be kept secret. Even people from Lockhart know Texas barbecue came from immigrants. The base of it comes from German and Czech people who smoked and cured meats out of necessity when they immigrated to the West. If you spend the right amount of time in the craft, you become an honorary Texas barbecue person.”
The restaurant came together with help from a $350,000 Community Redevelopment Agency grant plus a $1.1 million buy-in from Fort Lauderdale entrepreneur Tatum Martin, whose office is a few blocks away. It was Martin who wanted Texas-style on the block, and “what Tatum wants, Tatum gets,” general manager Kevin Rodriguez says.
“His idea was there’s all these new apartments coming to revitalize Sistrunk, and they need food and beverage,” says Rodriguez, a well-traveled Culinary Institute of America graduate who’s worked at the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan and the late Doral Yard. “We needed a barbecue pro.”
That meant hiring Young, 37, a Manhattan-raised pitmaster who cut his teeth for eight years at New York’s Hill Country Barbecue Market, a Texas-style temple. There he learned to cook brisket to perfection from owners Robbie Richter and Lou Elrose. Pitmasters from his favorite Central Texas stops — Southside Market in Elgin, Kreuz Market and Smitty’s Market in Lockhart — would often visit and share wisdom.
Young also competed on Food Network Canada’s barbecue competition series “Fire Masters,” and he’s opened Texas smokehouses in Dubai, London and New York, and has worked at The Beast by Todd English in Las Vegas.
Rodriguez says he and Martin loved Young’s food from the jump.
“When we had Orelle’s brisket, it was tender and soft, rub-seasoned perfectly, ribs super-soft and falling off the bone, and I knew this was our guy,” he adds. “No matter how good your food is, a lot of people don’t know what Texas barbecue means. It’s not about sauce, it’s about seasoning.”
A mural of a pink pig in full regalia – cowhide collar, gold chain, purple feather stuck in the hat brim — greets patrons inside the 2,000-square-foot pink-and-yellow B&D Trap. At lunchtime on the Astroturfed patio, old-school rap plays on speakers while a Broward County Transit bus hisses to a stop several feet away.
Behind the counter, meats are sold by the half pound (from $7 for two jalapeno-cheddar sausage links to $17 for pork ribs) and in sandwich form ($12-$14). There are also chicken wings ($10 for six, $14 for 10) and six sides ($3 for small, $6 for large) including baked beans, potato salad, coleslaw and griddled cornbread. For now, there are seven meat-and-sides combos ($15-$45) ranging from a brisket sandwich with side and soft drink or a hefty platter of smoked chicken breast and leg, pork ribs, brisket and sausage.
“Pastrami will come when we’re fully gentrified,” Young says with a deadpan, winking acknowledgment that his Sistrunk eatery shares a border with explosive downtown growth in Fort Lauderdale. He’s not kidding, though: Slow-smoked, five-day-brined pastrami will be introduced in April, he says.
And if you insist on sauce, there are three: Savory B&D (black pepper, cayenne, brown sugar), tangier SoFlo (a mustard base) and zesty Alabama white (chili, paprika, vinegar, brown sugar, horseradish, mayonnaise).
“We want our product to instantly be a part of the vibe of the community, not just be some outsider,” Rodriguez says. “The chicken wings are a bestseller and lately the community has been asking about daiquiris.”
Rodriguez says the restaurant’s name is inspired by the former Da Daiquiri Trap, a beloved neighborhood bar that shut pre-pandemic after authorities found out “they were selling liquor without a liquor license.”
B&D Trap, which has a beer and wine license and offers both, plans to serve frosé and low- and no-alcohol daiquiris later this spring.
B&D Trap, at 1551 NW Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale, is open 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Call 561-382-7944 or go to BDTrap.com.
