When Brandon Cruz finally found the potential smoker for his future restaurant, back in 2007, it was on one of the worst days of his life. Driving by the Jack in the Box in Wharton, he spotted a truck and trailer loaded with old propane tanks. Cruz offered the driver $175 cash for a sleek 380-gallon tank he could turn into a smoker. The driver refused, saying it could fetch $300 at the scrapyard. Just then, the driver noticed a flat tire on his trailer and asked Cruz if he had a jack big enough to help. “For a hundred and twenty-five dollars I have a jack,” Cruz told him, and the driver agreed to part with the tank at Cruz’s reduced price.
Cruz was elated, and he dropped the tank at the house of a friend, a local pit builder, who could convert it into a smoker. As he drove away, he saw his stepfather, Damon Lackey, driving by in his Suburban. Lackey turned a corner to head home, and when Cruz looked down the street after him, he saw the rear end of the Suburban sticking out of a ditch. Alarmed, Cruz approached the SUV and found Lackey suffering a heart attack. He called 911, broke the window of the locked vehicle, and pulled Lackey out to perform CPR. Cruz couldn’t revive him, and neither could the paramedics who arrived shortly after.
A decade later, Cruz and his wife, Shelly, were planning to use the barbecue skills they’d gained on the competition trail to open their own place. When it came time to name it, Cruz thought back to his last conversation with Lackey, two weeks before his death. Cruz had dropped off a smoked chicken for Lackey and his mother. Lackey called him afterward to tell him it was the best chicken he’d ever eaten. “One day you’re going to bring real Texas barbecue to the world,” Cruz remembers Lackey telling him, so the Cruzes decided to name Damon’s Real Texas BBQ in honor of him.
Cruz was born and raised in Wharton, about an hour southwest of Houston, but he fell in love with northern New Mexico through his trips with Shelly to the Taos area. In 2019, friends there encouraged him to open a joint in their barbecue-starved land. The Cruzes held pop-ups in Wharton to save up for a restaurant in New Mexico. But when the COVID pandemic hit, in 2020, their plans changed. Cruz’s other career as a bail bondsman dried up: Most defendants awaiting trial in Wharton were released during the pandemic and didn’t require bonds. If he and Shelly didn’t start serving barbecue regularly, they wouldn’t have any income. They began selling more frequently from their backyard to make ends meet.
In 2021 a friend sold them a snow cone stand. It was more than a shack—there was space for a kitchen and a pit room, and the large wooden deck had a canopy to keep it shaded. They bought a new smoker to add to the 380-gallon offset. After painting the pink buildings black and adding the Damon’s logo, they opened for real in May 2022.
The couple has kept the business going through two lean years. Their barbecue hasn’t received coverage from the local press, and Cruz has tried to fill the gap with social media videos explaining the cooking processes and describing the daily specials. Still, there have been more than a few days on which Damon’s brought in less than $500 in sales. “In the past two years, you don’t know how many times we were so close to not being able to open the next week,” Cruz said. “The thing that I’ve prayed for more than anything is to be seen,” he added. “Just give me the opportunity to present our food.”
The barbecue speaks for itself. The St. Louis–cut ribs get a heavy rub that’s salty and spicy, along with a sweet glaze. The meat was tender enough to pull right from the bone. Cruz uses Prime-grade Angus briskets, and he puts a black bark on them with pecan-wood smoke. Beneath the bark was a melting fat cap and juicy, tender beef. It was the best brisket I’ve eaten from among the many small-town joints in the area. On Fridays, Cruz chops the brisket to fill and top the cheesy enchiladas on special.
To learn sausage making, Cruz asked to shadow a friend who makes venison sausage for local hunters and smokes it in his smokehouse. After helping with many batches, Cruz now makes his own sausages for the restaurant. “I still use the same recipe he taught me,” he said. For the original link, that’s a beef-and-pork blend using REO seasonings from Huntsville. It was finely ground, with less fat than I prefer, but I liked the seasonings, smoke, and snappy casings.
While cooking for competitions, Cruz developed a mop sauce by simmering lime juice, onions, margarine, and Italian dressing together in water. He uses it on just the poultry. I didn’t try the chicken, but the sauce brought a unique zest to the juicy smoked turkey breast. On the competition trail, the Cruzes also had to learn how to enliven leftover barbecue. That’s how they developed recipes for the aforementioned enchiladas, pulled pork egg rolls, and nachos that trade out tortilla chips for thinly sliced fried potatoes called ribbon fries that are more often found at county fairs. “Barbecue can be more than just traditional stuff,” Cruz said.
Carb lovers will swoon over the side options. Mac and cheese, cheesy potato casserole, and diced potatoes fried with onions and bacon are all available, along with the ribbon fries. The creamed corn was rich, with a bit of spice. My favorite was a vegetable—roughly chopped cabbage sautéed in bacon and onions—which I desperately needed in the middle of a two-day barbecue crawl.
I almost skipped dessert, but at the ordering window, Shelly implored me to get the bread pudding. “I had to beg Brandon’s mom for that recipe,” she said. The bread pudding was also Lackey’s favorite—he prioritized it over his dinner. “He would aways eat that bread pudding before anything else,” Cruz said. His mother initially ignored Shelly’s many requests for the recipe, but on Christmas Day 2021, she gifted Shelly a laminated copy.
“Everything on the menu is our story,” Cruz told me. He’s not trying to mimic anyone else’s barbecue. When Damon’s opened, Cruz said he stressed too much about customers telling him how he and Shelly should be doing things. He decided to focus more on the story they wanted to tell with their food. “I’m going to quit worrying about it, and put it over to God to start handling it,” he told himself, and he said both the business and his quality of life have improved since then. The Cruzes agreed that they wouldn’t add another case of briskets to their weekly order unless they sold out three days in a row—this week, they’ll add that extra case. And Cruz said they haven’t given up on their dream of adding a location in New Mexico. “If we can make it in Texas,” he told me, “we can make it anywhere.”
Damon’s Real Texas BBQ
807 N. Alabama Road, Wharton
Phone: 979-532-4227
Hours: Thursday–Saturday 11–8; Sunday 9–8
Pitmaster: Brandon Cruz
Method: Pecan in an offset smoker
Year opened: 2022
