Pinkerton's Barbecue in downtown San Antonio serves a variety of barbecues and side dishes, including sirloin, coleslaw, potato salad, jalapeno cheese rice, macaroni and cheese with beef brisket, beans, turkey, clockwise from the bottom left corner, Sausages and ribs.
The menu at the Pinkerton Grill in downtown San Antonio includes plenty of beef ribs.
Pinkerton's Barbecue, a Houston-based business establishment with a full bar, opened its outpost in downtown San Antonio in February in a sprawling hunting lodge-style building opposite the Frost Bank Tower.
Beef brisket is sold by the pound at the Pinkerton Grill in downtown San Antonio.
The side of the Pinkerton Grill in downtown San Antonio includes coleslaw, beans, macaroni and cheese with sirloin, jalapeno cheese rice and potato salad.
Pinkerton's Barbecue, a factory in Houston with a complete maintenance room, opened its outpost in downtown San Antonio in February in a huge hunting lodge-like building opposite the Frost Bank Tower.
Pinkerton's Barbecue, a Houston-based business establishment with a full bar, opened its outpost in downtown San Antonio in February in a sprawling hunting lodge-style building opposite the Frost Bank Tower.
The menu at Pinkerton's Barbecue in downtown San Antonio includes potato salad, beans, bacon macaroni and cheese, sausage and duck meat sauce, jalapeno cheese rice, and coleslaw, clockwise from the bottom right corner.
Pinkerton's Barbecue in downtown San Antonio serves a variety of barbecues and side dishes, including coleslaw, brisket, potato salad, jalapeno cheese rice, macaroni and cheese with brisket, beans, turkey, clockwise from the bottom left corner, Sausages and ribs.
Pinkerton's Barbecue, a Houston-based business establishment with a full bar, opened its outpost in downtown San Antonio in February in a sprawling hunting lodge-style building opposite the Frost Bank Tower.
Less than a year after the opening of the Pinkerton BBQ in Houston, its San Antonio outpost was ranked in the top 50 of the Texas Monthly BBQ list, which surprised some. I am one of these people.
Even as an early adopter, I say the same. A week after Pinkerton opened in February next to the Heritage Park opposite the Frost Bank Building, I wrote a short description of the sirloin "soft as waves" and the ribs "smooth as a new car."
Never mind the mixed metaphor. There is a reason why we didn't conduct a full review of the restaurant the moment it opened. That's because during those honeymoon periods, they throw as many false positives as false negatives. The soft waves and the light of the new car are weakened, replaced by polished poetry.
It's easy to be fascinated by the place itself. Pinkerton’s decor is like a grocery store on an oil tycoon’s hunting lease, showing all the metaphors of Texas: installed deer heads, antler chandeliers, and a huge pit room with piles Firewood ropes, a salon-style bar, with four shelves containing bourbon and whiskey, and the painted picnic tables extend all the way to the green lawn of Legacy Park. This is a barbecue theme park surrounded by skyscrapers and the stylish "air-conditioned" Robert E. Lee Hotel.
On ExpressNews.com: Comment: Burnt Bean Co. of Seguin is making the best barbecue in San Antonio
However, no matter what oak smoky charm these cosmetics have, they will become very thin the second or third time they pass the ordering line. They stretch their necks on the hand-painted menu board, and in the chaos of a long time ago. The people who couldn't hear the voice yelled that they lost their sense of humor.
There is no combo plate, only sides and sandwiches and meat by pound or bone. My order is wrong every time, no matter how big or small, when you process the sirloin at a price of $30 per pound, even small mistakes will add up.
If you roll your eyes at the $30 per pound brisket, stop. The price of beef has soared, and even the place where the feed trough is grilled is more than $20. I have eaten sirloin that I would spend more money on, but that's not the case.
The Man Bear Pig sandwich at Pinkerton Grill in downtown San Antonio is a mix of pulled pork and chopped sirloin, and can also be added with coleslaw.
During a dinner visit, the moist cuts were a conflicting mixture of fat and dry meat, with overworked stew. The lean meat has a yellow fat cap, which has not yet been fully revealed. That is a texture thing. It tastes better, with a smoky blend of salt and pepper bark and legumes and oak.
During a stopover for lunch, I asked to separate between moist and lean meat. I lost the yelling game, but won the war in the presence of damp conditions, which is closer to the early blush in February, all the soft waves and so on.
We need to talk about beef ribs, which are sold separately for $37. Unlike the majesty of a beef steak on the bone that a powerful beef rib can provide, this beef rib is thin and loose, and the meat lies on the bone as if it has been given up.
Nevertheless, it is not as weak as the ribs in this review. In one visit, medium-sized ribs clinked on the bones, as if they were cooked in a crock pot. Next time, I got the absolute end of the rack. The crispy and chalky ribs are very small and look like candy. Even if Pinkerton’s glazed ribs are praised for their "candy-colored" flavor, this is not a kind of Compliment. Do not. Glazed and dry-rubbed ribs are coated with sauce, which brings me back to the dark past, when barbecues were all sauces because the meat could not stand on its own.
On ExpressNews.com: 52 Weeks of Barbecue: Name the Best San Antonio Barbecue
As part of the Man Bear Pig, pork worked harder in Pinkerton, a juicy "South Park" sandwich stuffed with pork and chopped sirloin, served with a sweet and spicy barbecue sauce. Sandwiches are one of the side dishes that perform better than the main attractions, including spicy duck and sausage assortment and a bunch of Cajun-style boudin sausages, neither of which has played a barbecue game and performed better as a result.
I like Pinkerton’s sausages, regular and jalapenos, each of which is densely packed, shrinks at high temperatures, and emits the wisdom of smoke. This emotion is also effective for turkeys.
Beef brisket is sold by the pound at the Pinkerton Grill in downtown San Antonio.
Although Pinkerton does not sell plates, it does sell side dishes, and there are some good ones, including old-fashioned mustard potato salad, crunchy purple cabbage salad, and the best beans of any grill in town. No matter how much extra I paid for the chopped sirloin and extra cheese, I couldn't get rid of the sticky and dry lumpy dry jalapeno cheese rice and macaroni and cheese.
107 W. Houston St., 210-983-0088, pinkertonsbarbecue.com
Fast food: Houston has a barbecue in a hunting lodge-style downtown building opposite the Frost Bank Tower
Hits: sausages, beans, human bear pig sandwiches
Miss: Inconsistent breast meat, spare ribs, beef ribs
Time: Wednesday from 11 am to 9 pm; Thursday to Saturday from 11 am to 10 pm; Sunday from 11 am to 9 pm.
Price range: hot and cold noodles, US$3.50 for small, US$5.50 for large; sandwiches, US$10-15; turkey, ribs, pulled pork, beef ribs, sirloin and sausage, US$18-31 per pound; dessert, US$5.50- $6.50
Alcohol: beer, cocktails and wine
***** Very good, almost perfect experience
**** Not bad, among the best in the city
*** On average, there are a few outstanding
** Poor, there are one or two redemption factors
Express-News dining critics pay for all meals.
The honeymoon period in Pinkerton has passed, and now more difficult work has begun. You have to praise their appearance because they are open during lunch and dinner, not flirting in a game of "hurry up before we sell out". On a clear autumn night, Christmas lights were shining on the trees, young people on the table were playing chess, drinking Lone Star beer in a tall can on the covered porch, sometimes Pinkerton felt like a game A marriage worth saving.
msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking
Mike Sutter is an Express-News restaurant critic. Before joining the Taste Team in 2016, he served as a restaurant critic for Austin American-Statesman and an editor for FedManWalking.com. He appeared in NPR's "All Things Considered", ABC's "Tell the Truth", and wrote articles for The Guardian, Good Appetite, and The Wall Street Journal.