Feges BBQ opens in Greenway Plaza food court

A sampler from Feges BBQ in Houston. Clockwise from top left: Beef short ribs; pulled pork; kale salad; mustard sauce; sliced brisket; Moroccan spiced carrots; pork ribs; pickles; sweet barbecue sauce; Alabama white sauce; beef belly burnt ends; pork belly. Center: Smoked half chicken; boudin; sausage. less A sampler from Feges BBQ in Houston. Clockwise from top left: Beef short ribs; pulled pork; kale salad; mustard sauce; sliced brisket; Moroccan spiced carrots; pork ribs; pickles; sweet barbecue sauce; Alabama ... more Photo: Robert J. Lerma Photo: Robert J. Lerma Image 1 of / 38 Caption Close Feges BBQ opens in Greenway Plaza food court 1 / 38 Back to Gallery

Feges BBQ, the much-anticipated barbecue restaurant from husband-and-wife team Patrick Feges and Erin Smith, will open in the Greenway Plaza food court on Thursday.

Pitmaster and chef Patrick Feges will oversee a full menu of smoked meats including the "Texas trinity" of brisket, ribs and sausage, in addition to turkey, pulled pork, pork belly, chicken and boudin. Feges will make the sausage and boudin from scratch, in-house.

Chef Erin Smith has developed one of the most creative menus of side dishes in Texas barbecue, with items including Moroccan-spiced carrots and roasted eggplant with mint embellishing a selection of old-school favorites such as braised collard greens and elote corn salad.

"We realized that office workers may not want to eat heavy barbecue every day," said Smith. Other meatless options include a large kale salad.

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On a recent pre-opening visit I was able to sample from most of the menu. Although Feges had only been cooking on the new Oyler rotisserie smoker for a couple of days, the selection of smoked meats was excellent. The side dishes also were outstanding and fully accomplished Smith's goal of offering kicked-up versions of the typical barbecue joint menu of beans and coleslaw.

Feges is still working on the recipe for the house-made sausage and boudin and hopes to have them available for the restaurant's official debut.

Other team members involved in the opening effort include assistant pitmaster Wade Elkins and kitchen manager Jaime Valencia.

The restaurant will be open from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, and will expand to serving breakfast in the future.

Opening a barbecue joint in an office food court may seem unusual, but the circumstances offered Feges and Smith a perfect opportunity as first-time restaurateurs to open their dream restaurant.

The Greenway Plaza food court is known as something of an incubator for up-and-coming restaurateurs. Greenway Coffee has been a destination for coffee lovers for years, and recent additions such as the Rice Box and Burger Chan have burnished its credentials among the city's food lovers.

When Greenway Coffee owner David Buehrer heard that his friends Patrick and Erin were looking for a location to open their first restaurant, he put them in touch with his landlord, Parkway, at Greenway Plaza. A deal was struck in which Parkway would build-out a 1,400 square foot counter-service restaurant and the Feges team would provide a smoker and run the restaurant.

This is an ideal situation for any first-time barbecue restaurateur. Opening a barbecue joint often entails large upfront costs for infrastructure like smoke exhaust and fire extinguisher systems. Having a landlord shouldering those costs is invaluable.

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It's a win-win for both parties. In exchange for building out the restaurant, Parkway is able to provide world-class barbecue as an amenity to the thousands of workers in the Greenway Plaza complex.

For Smith and Feges, they can concentrate on developing the menu and cooking the barbecue while tapping into a built-in market of hungry lunch-time office workers. And yes, barbecue fans who don't work at Greenway are welcome and encouraged to seek out Feges BBQ. Just head for the visitor parking at Building 3 and don't forget to bring your ticket to get validated.

At a time when barbecue is one of the hottest trends in the food world and many celebrity chefs are buying a smoker and calling themselves pitmasters, it is heartening to see Feges and Smith do it the old fashioned way – through relentless hard work and many years paying their dues.

Smith graduated at the top of her class at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and worked in celebrated restaurants such as Per Se and Babbo in New York City. She returned to her native Houston in 2010 as the executive chef at Plonk! Beer & Wine Bistro and has since worked for the Clumsy Butcher restaurant group and opened the Main Kitchen restaurant at the JW Marriott Downtown.

Feges, a native of Sugar Land, is a classically-trained chef and a self-taught pitmaster. He bought his first trailer smoker in 2012 and started cooking outside of bars on weekends. He worked in some of Houston's most celebrated menus for creative and traditional smoked meats like Underbelly, Killen's Barbecue and Southern Goods.

Feges has not only paid his dues in the barbecue realm, but also in service to his country. He is a Purple Heart recipient from injuries sustained during a tour in Iraq.

Houston is a city of opportunity and entrepreneurial spirit, especially when it comes to barbecue. The collaboration between Greenway Plaza and Feges BBQ is a perfect example of that. For the legions of Houston barbecue fans, the smoked meat options just keep getting better and better.

Feges BBQ, 3 Greenway Plaza Ste C210, Concourse Level – The Hub, 832-409-6118; fegesbbq.com. Look for Visitor Parking for Building 3. Two-hour validated parking is available.