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[title]RECOMMENDED: Food & Drink Awards 2013
In this ’cue-crazy town, we’ve got smoked meat aplenty, with more Dixieland honky-tonks in New York than plaid shirts on a Friday night in Williamsburg. There’s no shortage of big wooden halls lit up with bluegrass and sprawling menus. Yet this year’s reigning minister of meat was a tiny, virtuoso temple to Central Texas brisket, surprisingly run by Jersey boy Daniel Delaney. Its newfangled pop-up precursor, BrisketLab, may have no Lone Star precedent, but Delaney tips a ten-gallon wide-brim to Texan tradition, with a wood-fueled smoker from Austin’s Franklin Barbecue. At Delaney’s white-walled Brooklyn shop—often cleaned out by 9:30pm—we tore into terrific meaty ribs and cream-swathed homemade pies. But it was his Pat LaFrieda brisket—gloriously pink slices burnished with black pepper and smoke-infused lacings of fat—that made us yell “preach!” for the slow-and-low gospel. BrisketTown, 359 Bedford Ave between South 4th and 5th Sts, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718-701-8909)