Ask any Texas barbecue joint owner what their most popular menu item is and they will probably say the two-meat plate.
Those big, Instagram-friendly trays piled high with every type of smoked meat may get all the publicity, but a modest plate with two meats, two sides, pickles, onions and a slice of white bread is the profit-making workhorse for most neighborhood barbecue joints.
To be sure, not every barbecue joint has the classic triumvirate of one-, two- and three-meat plates on the menu. Many stick to the butcher shop technique of ordering meats by the pound. Pinkerton’s Barbecue in Houston and San Antonio is famous for adhering to the meat market ordering technique.
Curiously, some barbecue joints only offer meat plates during the week, but not weekends.
Why? What’s the calculus that a barbecue joint owner goes through to determine if and when they should offer individual meat plates on their menu? The answer is essentially, “know your audience.”
First, some history. Even if you’re not a veteran barbecue hound, you’re probably familiar with a meat plate. Anyone who grew up going to Luby’s remembers standing before the steam table, ordering a LuAnn special and then having to decide what to order from the spread of meat and side dishes before you.
Square fish or bacon cheesesteak? To this day, assembling what is essentially a one-meat plate at Luby’s is the essence of Texas comfort food.
But let’s go back a little further. Starting in the early 20th century, when restaurants and cafeterias became commonplace in growing urban areas, a menu item known as a “meat and three” became popular.
This dish was the embodiment of Southern cuisine and soul food, matching an inexpensive meat (chicken, meat loaf) with three vegetables (collard greens, okra, tomatoes, etc.). The “meat and three” made it easy for city dwellers to make sense of the many choices among the agricultural bounty of Southern cuisine at the time.
There’s certainly a parallel with Texas barbecue in the early 1900s: instead of ordering meat individually and by the pound, city dwellers could order a convenient mix-and-match plate that offered a choice of the many smoked meat options for which the state is known.
Today, the choice to offer meat plates on a barbecue joint menu comes down to audience and demographics. Heralded barbecue joints like Franklin Barbecue in Austin and Snow’s BBQ in Lexington mainly see large groups of friends and tourists who tend to order those big trays of photo-worthy barbecue. There’s just not a demand for meat plates mostly ordered by individuals.
It’s mostly the opposite situation for everyday neighborhood barbecue joints. They cater to individual workers who wander in from a nearby construction site looking for a square meal to get them through the rest of the day.
Similarly, these types of joints might see a couple of friends or co-workers meet for lunch, and a two-meat plate allows them to get what they want and even pay separately, if that’s what the particular protocol for that meeting warrants.
On rare occasions, a barbecue joint may see mostly locals and regulars during the week and then big groups on weekends, which would explain why some only offer meat plates Monday through Friday.
On a recent weekday at The Brisket House on Woodway in Houston, office workers arrived individually and greeted lunch mates already standing in line. A steady stream of two-meat plates, the most popular menu item at the Brisket House, were brought out to most of the tables in the full dining room.
