In his book The Great Plains, from 1931, Texas author Walter Prescott Webb wrote that, geographically, the Great Plains begin west of the 98th meridian. The town of Stoneburg sits at 97.9 degrees west, and about twenty miles south of Red River Station, where cattle drives along the Chisholm Trail crossed into Oklahoma. “It still kinda feels like the edge of the frontier out here,” Wes Stalcup told me. After a decades-long career as a computer scientist at Texas Instruments, he and his wife, Becky, opened 5 BarBQ in this speck of a town, just north of Bowie, in 2021. Stalcup bragged that just last week he served a group that represented three generations of a local ranch.
Driving at 75 miles per hour along U.S. Highway 81, which according to the Texas Historical Commission is literally paved with gold, it’s hard to spot the joint. “That’s been a huge challenge,” Stalcup said. “Everybody’s going so fast,” so they’re planning a billboard at the Oklahoma border to bring travelers down. If you’re passing through, look for a crumbling stone building that’s close to the road. After a 2009 wildfire destroyed much of Stoneburg, the outer walls are all that remains of the former gas station, which legend has it was visited by Bonnie and Clyde. “We’ve never been able to prove that,” Stalcup said, but he said the colorful glass blocks came from the long-gone Ball glass plant in Wichita Falls.
Two businesses have failed in the restaurant building since it was erected in 2017, and three years ago, the Stalcups became the third to give it a try. They had operated a barbecue truck in Celina, about an hour north of Dallas, in 2020, when people were desperate for outdoor dining options. Business was good, but the food truck life was exhausting, so they searched for a permanent space. Stoneburg was farther than they’d planned to go, but the building seemed to fit their needs, and there isn’t much competition in the area.
Stalcup had been a staunch stick burner in the food truck days, but when planning for the restaurant he sought a smoker that required less attention. He looked at Oylers and other rotisserie smokers, but said, “I didn’t like how they smothered the fire to control the temperature.” A Cookshack rep set up a demo for the couple to try a batch of barbecue smoked with pellets. “I was pretty antipellet at the time,” Stalcup admits, but he and Becky were impressed by the barbecue. He now smokes everything on a Fast Eddy 240 from Cookshack, with oak, pecan, and mesquite pellets.
Peppered pork belly is one of the house specialties. Becky does all the trimming and seasoning, and she coats a whole, skinless pork belly with their signature five-pepper rub. “There’s more to life than salt and pepper,” Stalcup said, so he blends twenty ingredients, including salt, black pepper, sweet smoked paprika, ground ancho chiles, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, white pepper, and two types of chili powder in his rub. I counted more than five peppers, and I’m not sure I could taste them all, but the combination provided more warmth than heat. I loved the tender layers of fat and meat in the pork belly, and how well the rub gathered the smoke flavor.
Pork belly can get pretty rich after a few bites, and the slices of lean brisket, though flavorful and tender, could have been juicier. I asked for a combination of the two on a sandwich with house-made sauce and Becky’s pickled onions. It was the perfect balance. Gluten-free buns are available for a $1 upcharge. The plain, white buns are actually the only item on the menu that isn’t gluten-free. Stalcup, who has an intolerance to wheat, wants anyone else with the same issue to be able to enjoy everything from his kitchen. Becky makes a simple yet delicious sour cream cake for dessert with a special gluten-free flour blend shipped in from North Carolina. The same flour goes in her freshly baked mini corn muffins that come along with every barbecue plate.
The pork ribs get the same five-pepper rub along with some sauce and butter as they’re wrapped in foil to finish. For the briskets, Stalcup uses the foil-boat method, but with a layer of butcher paper between the foil and brisket. Signs in the restaurant tout certified Hereford beef, but since its prices have been going up, he switched to Certified Angus beef just this past Sunday.
Muenster, a town known for German sausage, is just over thirty miles east. The Stalcups bought a range of sausages from Muenster’s 97-year-old Fischer’s Meat Market and several from upstart Hess Meat Market, which opened in 2010. They preferred the all-pork Oktoberfest links from Hess, which they get raw from the market, smoke, and serve as their smoked German sausage. It’s juicy and pairs well with the pickled onions. After some cajoling, they convinced Hess to make a beef sausage with jalapeño and cheese, and now offer two locally made sausage options.
Becky is from Pennsylvania, and never knew a potato salad with mustard in it. Stalcup likes a little yellow in his. They couldn’t agree on a recipe before opening, but have since come to a compromise on what they call their “at last” potato salad. It uses a blend of mayo, yellow mustard, and dijon along with pickle relish and eggs. The finely chopped slaw also gets some zing from dijon mustard. More than a dash of cinnamon in the beans turned me off, but Stalcup said plenty of customers enjoy them.
When ordering at the counter, I saw the combination plates included a bottle of water or a can of soda. There’s a $1.50 upcharge for bottles of Dublin soda and for iced tea. I assumed iced tea would be one of the least expensive items to produce, but Stalcup takes his tea seriously. He used to make several gallons at a time on the stovetop, but that got to be too time-consuming. He recently purchased a Bunn tea brewer, which allows him to adjust the flow rate of the water and the steep time. While the Luzianne box calls for a batch size of three tea bags, he uses four. “I’m a computer scientist,” he said, so he likes to tinker. He also prefers strong tea, and that’s what you’ll get at 5 BarBQ, along with free refills.
The Stalcups have come a long way from cooking on Big Green Eggs in their backyard, when they would watch cooking shows together and dream of having their own restaurant. It was Wes’s quadruple bypass surgery in 2017 that kicked them into gear. “Life’s too short not to go chase those dreams,” he said. The ride hasn’t been without speed bumps. “We’ve sold everything we own to keep this thing funded, especially the first two years,” Stalcup said, but remains hopeful about the future of 5 BarBQ. “We’re hanging in, and putting everything we have into it.”
