Marc Fadel fell in love with smoking meat while competing on his high school barbecue team at the Dan Dipert Career and Technical Center, in Arlington. When it came to naming his business, Fadel knew it needed to reflect the love he wanted to share with others through his food. Habibi Barbecue, his truck in Arlington’s Ghost Food Park, opened last month with a moniker meaning “my love” or “beloved” in Arabic.
I was first introduced to Habibi Barbecue through television. Fadel shared the idea when he was one of several students featured in a documentary series on Texas high school barbecue competitions. BBQ High debuted on the Magnolia Network in August and is now streaming on Max. Through six episodes, the show documented the path of four schools as they made their way to the state championship in Round Rock this year. In addition to the group from Dan Dipert, the cameras followed teams from Granbury High School, Southlake Carroll, and Ben Barber Innovation Academy in Mansfield.
The competition circuit featured on BBQ High is run by High School BBQ Inc., headquartered in Burnet, and it’s not the only one in the state. A competing circuit run by the National High School BBQ Association is headquartered in Smithville. NHSBA held a national championship in Branson, Missouri, in June, where an all-girls team from Madison High School in San Antonio won the title. The state championship for High School BBQ Inc. was held in Round Rock this May. (Spoiler alert: None of the teams featured on BBQ High took home the title. That went to Ingleside High School, near Corpus Christi.)
High school barbecue competitions differ quite a bit from the professional tours in which smoked meats—usually brisket, pork shoulder, pork ribs, and chicken—are about the only things that matter. In high school, the competitions drop the pork shoulder and add categories for beans and desserts. Each team is coached by a school staff member, but the adults can’t perform any of the cooking duties during the competitions. The students arrive to the cook site as early as 4 a.m. to prepare their smokers, which must be wood-burning. The fires can be started with electric or propane, but the smoker can’t rely on either during the competition. Meats are provided on-site to the students, and they have to wait until 6 a.m. to begin any food preparation. Smoked brisket, the final category to be judged, needs to be turned in nine hours after the start.
Fadel was in charge of pork ribs for his team, the Smokin’ Ferrets. He tried several different rubs, and homed in on just the right tenderness. In addition to his barbecue team practices, he found a job at Smoke’N Ash BBQ, in Arlington, to get more experience. “The more I did it, the better I got,” Fadel said. Cameras followed him into the Smoke’N Ash kitchen during the BBQ High series. Other teams received lessons from the likes of Goldee’s Barbecue, in Fort Worth, and Barbs B Q, in Lockhart.
Those familiar with the first season of reality show BBQ Pitmasters, which documented Kansas City Barbeque Society competitions, will find a lot to like about BBQ High. It was also enjoyable to watch the students develop their own barbecue secrets, as did Emery Kirby, a student at Granbury High, who used a blowtorch to get her chicken skin crisp; or Fadel balance the amount of Big Red in his special barbecue sauce recipe.
Fadel refined a version of that sauce for Habibi Barbecue. It works well on his pulled pork sandwich. The ribs he’s serving now look better than what was featured on the show as well. Waiting two months or so after a restaurant opens is standard practice for food critics, but I didn’t visit to judge Fadel’s food. I wanted to see how he was translating what he learned as a high school student into a budding barbecue career.
The eighteen-year-old is still making school his priority, as his parents had hoped on the show. “Do barbecue, but please get a good college degree in case barbecue or the food industry doesn’t work for you, you have something to fall back on,” Fadel said, paraphrasing the compromise he made with his parents. He’s studying construction management Monday through Thursday at the University of Texas at Arlington and serving barbecue Friday evenings and Saturdays. His father, Gus Fadel, financed the trailer and the 250-gallon smoker. Gus was there helping to serve barbecue on a recent Saturday along with Fadel’s brother Michael, his grandmother Adiba, and his girlfriend, Francesca Carrillo. His big Lebanese family has rallied around him.
A taste of Fadel’s smoky brisket shows off his Texas cooking style. It’s a long way from how he describes his first brisket, done in an electric smoker at home. “It came out so chewy and so dry,” he said. “We put it in the crock filled with Sweet Baby Ray’s. It was bad.” Fadel is also highlighting his family’s Lebanese heritage. The cucumber and tomato salad is seasoned with dried mint and sumac. Rather than white bread, pita bread is served with each platter. Batata harra, a Lebanese dish of warm, roasted potatoes, is offered instead of traditional potato salad. And alongside dill pickle chips, you’ll find pink strips of pickled turnips. “It’s a traditional Lebanese pickle,” Fadel said.
“When I was a kid, I used to go to Lebanon,” Fadel told me, but he hasn’t visited since 2018. One of things he remembers about the meals there was that all the dishes were shared with everyone at the table. It’s this type of family-style dining that make barbecue platters in Texas feel so comfortable. Fadel still has friends and family back in Lebanon, a country that Israel is currently attacking. “It’s a very scary time,” Gus said during our conversation.
Fadel admits that serving barbecue to the public is more difficult than entering barbecue competitions. “My back hurts every single Friday,” he said. That’s when he trims, seasons, and loads the meat into the smokers that will be served on Saturday. “Saturday is so easy,” he said. “All I do is slice and put it on a platter.” Fadel said he’s happiest when he gets to see the positive reaction of customers eating his barbecue. Just after my visit, he was particularly happy to serve Brysen Davis, one of his former barbecue teammates featured on the show. Plenty of others have flocked to Habibi Barbecue, and Fadel is already shopping for a bigger smoker. He said the business aspect has been a learning experience, but he’s not serving his barbecue to make a big profit. He told me, “I’m doing this because I love spreading love.”
