David Ovalle—also known by his DJ handle, D-Rock—has been spinning records for most of his life. He’s played at baseball games, clubs, house parties, and South by Southwest. He even owned his own radio station at one point. On the night before my visit to his Laredo restaurant, Livi’s Mexicue, Ovalle played a gig at a nightclub that was broadcasting a Canelo boxing match. But the 35-year-old, with a trim, light brown beard and a rigid part near the top of his closely cut hair, has recently spent more time remixing other things: barbecue and tacos.
DJing came more naturally to Ovalle at first. “It just called to me,” he says. “I love seeing the way that one person can control a whole audience, their emotions.” But learning his way around smoked meats was more of a challenge. He cooked his first brisket in a pellet smoker in 2019. “I was really excited. I invited my friends over. I showed it to them. They laughed and said, ‘My God, that’s super cute. You’ve got an Easy-Bake Oven,’ ” Ovalle says. To add injury to insult, his brisket was as firm and straight as a ruler. “I could measure a fish with it,” he admits. At first, his friends and family complimented the meat to protect his feelings, to the point that he thought he was ready to start selling it—but “then the whole truth came out,” Ovalle says, laughing.
He was determined to improve. Besides, he also felt, half jokingly, that he was fulfilling one of his father’s longtime dreams. (His dad, a good cook, had wanted to become a chef.) “My brother became a doctor, so I was screwed, and I said, ‘I guess I’ll go into restaurants,’ ” Ovalle says.
Inspired by family carne asadas and Sunday-morning barbacoa, he worked toward his goal. In the early COVID-pandemic days, Ovalle sold barbecue plates once a month from his home. Twenty orders soon ballooned to almost five hundred. A friend in Austin noticed Ovalle’s success and offered him a food truck for free. He accepted and surprised his wife, Jackie, with the rig. He was finally ready to try selling his barbecue commercially, but she was not amused.
He pushed forward anyway. Livi’s Mexicue, which he opened in 2021, is named after his daughter (the first choice was D-Rock’s, which Jackie shot down) and blends his two culinary loves: barbecue and Mexican food. “All the plates are the ones we had growing up at our grandparents’ house,” Ovalle explains. “We combined them—we didn’t want to just do one style.”
This past January, he was able to upgrade to a permanent building in a strip mall, where the menu is heavy on breakfast tacos made with flour tortillas from the local Los Dos Laredos Tortilla Factory.
The smoked meats in the breakfast tacos—which can include barbacoa, brisket, and kielbasa-like country sausage—had a subtle, sweet smoke from the cherry- and applewoods and were not oversmoked, as many barbecue breakfast tacos in the state are. The salty and peppery brisket was paired with well-seasoned eggs, a buttery tortilla, and a fiery but fruity chile de árbol salsa that provided complexity.
Unfortunately, the barbacoa needed that salsa to salvage it. The beef was greasy, and my first bite was all fat, but the pop of the chilé de arbol dampened the negative aspects. The smoked sausage, sliced on a bias, was thick, with a slight snap. The classic weenie-and-egg breakfast taco got grilled hot dogs instead of the sausage, and the caramelization helped bond the franks to the eggs. The potato-and-egg, my litmus test for breakfast tacos, had a fluffy interior and a firm exterior, and surprisingly, it didn’t need more salt. I was also happy to see more-traditional options, including machacado a la mexicana (shredded dried beef with onions, chiles, and tomatoes) and saucy chilaquiles served with smoked meat. The combination hit the right notes.
After I finished my meal, it seemed to me that Ovalle’s culinary skills had finally caught up to those he possesses in the booth. “Mexicans have a lot of tricks up their sleeves when it comes to cooking,” he says. “Put a little bit of this, put a little bit of that, and change the flavor.”
Livi’s Mexicue
6402 N. Bartlett Avenue, Suite 2, Laredo
Phone: 956-552-4944
Hours: Thursday–Sunday 8–3
