![]() and I don’t know if they gravitated to Ruby’s because it was me hiring or not, but we’ve always had some really strong women shift managers and pit masters here."ĭunn’s menu consists of Texas barbecue staples (like brisket, sausage, pork ribs, potato salad, and coleslaw), Korean items (like bulgogi, kalbi, kimchi and cucumber salad) and her Cajun influenced best-selling chicken jambalaya and red beans with rice. "I was always a real tomboy, around my cousins and a bunch of guys. "I’m a pretty strong person," says Mares. In those early days, Zimmerman mainly worked daytimes and Mares picked up mostly night shifts, which meant she was doing a lot of grill work, plus setting the overnight pit fires. "All of us had an idea of when something was done or how it should taste," Mares remembers, smiling behind her signature cat-eye glasses. ![]() They developed a unique method of slow smoking the brisket overnight and created all the recipes for sides together, enlisting the taste-testing help of the barbacks at Antone’s, which shared an alley with Ruby’s. ![]() Mares sourced all-natural, steroid-free beef through a neighboring co-op grocery store long before that became a thing, and hired a local mason to build a customized brick pit for cooking over indirect heat. “So we made a lot of trips to Lockhart, where they almost all have brick pits, which you could say inspired us." "There were some places in Austin but back then, if you really wanted barbecue, you went to Taylor or Lockhart,” says Mares. Ruby’s quickly became a pillar of the community and a popular stop for both local and visiting musicians, from Townes Van Zandt to Buena Vista Social Club to Spoon. Together, they decided to open a barbecue spot right next door to Antone’s, Austin’s iconic blues venue, and they named it Ruby’s BBQ after a juke joint that appeared in the Marlon Brando movie The Fugitive Kind. Our Favorite Barbecue Rubs and Spices for 2024 She attributes both her success and longevity to her staunch work ethic. on Saturday to shovel smoldering coals into the box pits, haul stacks of live oak wood and swing open the pits’ steel lids to lift massive racks of sausage links.Īs of 2018, Tootsie had only missed two Saturdays working the pits at Snow’s, and it was only because she was recovering from a complete knee replacement. That doesn't stop her, however, from working five days a week for the school district’s maintenance department, then rising at 2:00 a.m. Tootsie, who grew up cutting wheat and threshing peanuts on her family's farm, is no stranger to physical labor - though she admits barbecue, a year-round operation out in the elements, is harder than farm life. “I wouldn’t have opened it if she wouldn’t have agreed to the do the work.” “None of them can pack the load she packs," says Bexley. It took several years of convincing, but she eventually agreed to cook alongside him at Snow’s if he could weld up a few direct-heat pits identical to the ones she’d mastered over the years. Tootsie had continued to cook for the new owners when Bexley, a local who had grown up visiting her at the meat market with his family, began approaching her to come work at the barbecue joint he wanted to open. ![]() After her husband suffered a debilitating stroke in 1996, they decided to shut down the market. ![]()
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