Well, of course we had to get barbecue when we were in Dallas for the CEDIA Expo last fall and the Godfather of Dallas barbecue joints is quite possibly Sonny Bryan's whose family has been doing barbecue in the Big D for over 100 years. There happened to be a Sonny Bryan's in the historic West End entertainment district, about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. Our group took off on foot on an unseasonably warm evening to go have barbecue at Sonny Bryan's.
It was 1910 when Elias Bryan moved from Cincinnati to Dallas with his family and opened his barbecue place in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Elias Bryan had come up with a new way to smoke meats with sausage being his specialty. He would place the meats in large pans and smoke them over a mesquite fire. Bryan's oldest son, William Jennings - also known as Red - (and not the former Presidential candidate, but named for him) helped his father out in the barbecue business, but had dreams of doing something else with his life after he graduated from Oak Cliff High School in 1920. The younger Bryan went to Southern Methodist University and studied botany in hopes of being a florist after college. And he did just that, graduating in 1924 and opening his own floral shop.
Pictured right - Elias Bryan. Photo courtesy Texas Monthly BBQ.
After Elias Bryan passed away in 1929, Red Bryan realized that the Oak Cliff area was growing and the residents had an insatiable appetite for his father's barbecued meats, Red Bryan decided it was time to get into the barbecue business to continue his father's legacy. He sold his floral shop and bought an old tin street car that he set up on W. Jefferson St. as Red Bryan's Smokehouse in 1930. "The Tin Shack" served all walks of life from captains of business to blue collar workers trying to make their way through the Great Depression. Red Bryan sold burgers for 5 cents and barbecue sandwiches for a dime.
As World War II raged, Red Bryan started to think that it was time to get out of the barbecue business. He put this business up for sale in November of 1942 for just $1500. His sales were averaging around $800 a month, so it was clear that Red wanted to sell and sell fast. However, there were no takers for the business and the Bryan family barbecue legacy stayed intact.
Pictured left - William Jennings "Red" Bryan. Photo courtesy Texas Monthly BBQ.
In 1946, Red decided that it was time to get out of the old street car and he commissioned famed Dallas architect Charles Dilbeck to come up with a new building that would seat up to 200 people. The new Red Bryan's Smokehouse opened down the road on Jefferson at Llewellyn on February 13, 1947, the exact same date that his father had opened his barbecue place 37 years prior.
The new building didn't come without a healthy cost. Estimates are that it cost around $50,000 to build (that's around $535,000 to $550,000 in 2016 money) and because of that Red had to raise prices, but he also added items to the menu such as ribs, smoked chicken, steak sandwiches and - the most important item when it comes to barbecue (in my book) - cold beer. The restaurant was open from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m. seven days a week. It featured cowhide booth seats, table-top warmers for the barbecue sauce (can't have cold or even room temperature barbecue sauce on Texas barbecue), and had a huge stone fireplace near the entrance. Much of the stone work on the outside of the ranch-style building was salvaged from an old East Texas courthouse.
Red Bryan's son, William Jennings II - who was known as Sonny - worked for his father in the new building. Sonny Bryan lived in the apartment above the restaurant and learned all the family secrets of barbecue. But Sonny saw that the new place was zapping the life out of his father. When Red was in the "Tin Shack", he was making the sandwiches and interacting with the customers. In the new building, all the meals were made in the kitchen and sent out to customers via servers. Sonny Bryan observed that his father wasn't happy in the new place, even though business was booming. Red Bryan had literally handed the keys to the place over to his son and he began a career as a prominent member of the Dallas City Council.
But it was beer that was possibly the cause of Red getting out of his eponymous restaurant. In 1957, a temperance group headed by members of churches around the area voted to make Oak Cliff dry. By this time, Red had had enough of the business and he ended up selling the place in 1958. (The original building is still there - it houses a Mexican restaurant.)
While all this was going on over a 10 year (or so) period, Red's younger brother, Fred Bryan, had moved to the West Coast in the early 50's and began selling barbecue sandwiches - made with the Bryan family barbecue sauce recipe - out of a stall at the Los Angeles Farmers Market. (Even though Fred Bryan's family sold the spot in 2011 after 60 years of ownership, Bryan's Pit Barbecue is still located at Stall 740 in the market.)
After Red sold the restaurant in Dallas, he got into the frozen meat business where he made a line of pre-cooked frozen barbecued meats and sold them in grocery stores. The Bryan brothers must not have gotten along very well because Red Bryan began to send frozen packages of barbecue to Los Angeles to sell against his brother at the L.A. Farmers Market. That only lasted for a couple three years up to the time that Red sold the frozen meat business to another company.
To carry on the Bryan family name in barbecue, Sonny Bryan decided to strike out on his own. In 1958, Sonny convinced his wife Joanne that they needed to open their own barbecue place. But they needed to raise capital to do so. Sonny and Joanne sold their house, sold their beloved 1955 Ford Thunderbird car, and sold a collection of antique Colt rifles and pistols to get the money to open the business. They had only been able to put $6500 into the new place which was located at Inwood Road and Harry Hines Blvd, not far from Parkland Hospital. The Bryan's opened their barbecue place on - yep, that's right - February 13, 1958. They were on such a tight budget that they didn't even have the electricity turned on for their opening day.
Pictured right - William Jennings "Sonny" Bryan II. Photo courtesy Texas Monthly BBQ.
Five years after Sonny opened his smokehouse, he found himself in direct competition with his father who was flush with money from the frozen barbecue meat business he had just sold. Red Bryan - who also doubled as a distributor for rotisserie smokers - opened up what became four locations of a new rendition of Red Bryan's Smokehouse. But he also had a franchise idea that he tried to get off the ground - literally. He devised a complete barbecue restaurant on a trailer and called it The Bar-B-Q House. The "pop-up" barbecue smokehouse wasn't like the food trucks of today - they actually had seating in a dining area, they were air-conditioned, and they were outfitted with an Oyler rotisserie smoker - the same ones that Red was the distributor for. He tried to franchise the concept, but it never really caught on.
A Dallas Cowboys fan since they came to town in 1960, Red Bryan was enjoying a Cowboys game in his plush seats at the then new Texas Stadium in 1973 when he suffered a stroke and died not long after. But his barbecue legacy continued with Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse.
Sonny had two sons, William Jennings III - known as Bill - and Burt. They both began to work in the restaurant as 10-year-olds starting out as dish washers. Bill and Burt learned enough about the restaurant business that they decided that they didn't want to follow in the family tradition. Both became doctors - Bill is now Dr. Bill Bryan, the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Southern Methodist, while Dr. Burt Bryan is on the faculty at Texas A&M's Health Science Center's Baylor College of Dentistry as an assistant professor in the school's Department of Restorative Sciences.
Sonny Bryan once said the smartest thing he ever did was not expand or franchise out his restaurant. He continued to run his smokehouse until his health began to deteriorate. In 1989, he ended up selling the Sonny Bryan's business, complete with the family recipes, to a group of four long-time customers to carry on the Sonny Bryan's name. Sonny Bryan died of cancer at the age of 63 just a few months after selling the business. (Joanne Bryan passed away in 2005.)
Even though Sonny Bryan never wanted to expand his business, the group of investors did just that. In addition to the original Sonny Bryan's on Inwood Rd, there are six other locations in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The group of investors - headed by CEO Brent Harman - continues to run the Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse restaurants.
(For those of you worried about the legacy of the Bryan family in the barbecue business, there's actually another Bryan family member that is involved in making barbecue. David Bryan Harris - the son of Red Bryan's youngest of two sisters, Mildred - opened David's Barbecue in Arlington, TX in 1988 using the same family recipes and smoking methods that were started by his grandfather, Elias Bryan. Today, David Bryan Harris' son, Jimmy Harris, is the owner and pitmaster of David's Barbecue.)
The Sonny Bryan's location in the West End is located on N. Market Street at the corner of Elm. (see map) Being from the Quad Cities, I saw the name "Moline" above the front door of the entrance to Sonny Bryan's. It turns out that this Sonny Bryan's location is housed in what was the old Moline Machinery office building that was used for the Dallas operations in the early 1900's.
Inside the restaurant, it featured a long and narrow dining area with an open kitchen in the middle. Our hostess took us toward the back part of the restaurant and sat us at a large table that was entirely too close to other large tables. Getting up to go to the bathroom was sort of a hassle - you had to sort of zig-zag around tables and then had to push in a code to activate an elevator that took you to the restrooms on the lower level of the building.
The menu at Sonny Bryan's is your typical barbecue fare - there isn't a lot of things to choose from and that was fine with me. Ribs, barbecue sandwiches, pulled pork, brisket and chicken entrees were available. Of course, we had to get a couple large orders of Sonny Bryan's huge and thick onion rings to start out. The onion rings were big and delicious. You almost needed a knife and a fork to eat them.
For my meal, I got a combo plate that consisted of two pork ribs, pulled pork, sliced brisket (I could have also gotten chopped brisket - East Texas-style) and a side of baked beans and green bean casserole. I had ordered a Deep Ellum IPA, a locally brewed India Pale Ale when I first sat down. Then I pulled my head out of my butt and ordered a Lone Star - the National Beer of Texas - to go along with my Texas barbecue.
The ribs were good - not the best I've had, but good for where we were. They had a nice smoke ring along the edge and were easy to chew off the bone. With the warm barbecue sauce - naturally - served in a Corona beer bottle, the ribs were pretty tasty.
I got about three slices of the brisket. The brisket was yummy. It, too, had a nice smoke ring around the outer edge of the meat. It was easy to cut with a fork and tasted good with the rather basic sweet and tangy Sonny Bryan's sauce.
But the best thing on the plate was the pulled pork. Moist and flavorful with a good smoky taste, I didn't put much of the barbecue sauce on the pulled pork because it was good on its own. In fact, there was a lot of meat on the plate and I didn't eat much of the baked beans - which were good - and the green bean casserole - which was, basically, just green bean casserole.
Our marketing guy who hails from Montreal was seated next to me and he got the rib dinner. It consisted of 7 or 8 meat pork ribs with a couple of sides of his choosing. He didn't really know what fried okra was and a couple of us talked him into getting the okra along with the mac & cheese side. He sort of chuckled that mac & cheese was considered a side at a barbecue restaurant. But he seemed to like the ribs just fine. He pretty much devoured them and still had room to eat some of the okra - which he discovered that he liked - and the mac & cheese.
I believe everyone was happy with their meals at Sonny Bryan's. For the first stab at real Texas barbecue I think it's probably best to go to Sonny Bryan's and then go out from there. My barbecue was good - not the best I've had considering I've had some great barbecue in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Memphis in my travels over the past few years. But there's something sort of religious about Texas barbecue and while the West End Sonny Bryan's isn't quite like worshiping at the barbecue alter at the original location, this was good enough barbecue on its own.
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