Table for Two
Issue 13 | Autumn 2022
But enough food to feed an army. Andrew and Jodie Johnston are new BBQ magazine columnists, with the couple searching out the best live-fire restaurants around the world. Better start with a table for three, as RUPERT BATES joins them
Rupert Bates with Jodie and Beef Johnston at Brat
It made perfect sense for golfer Andrew ‘Beef’ Johnston and his wife Jodie, looking for somewhere to dine during The Open at Royal Liverpool this summer, to head for Hickory’s smokehouse just down the road in West Kirby.
48 hours later freshly crowned Open champion Brian Harman was in the same restaurant, working through the BBQ menu and drinking from the Claret Jug.
Welcome to Beef and Jodie, BBQ magazine’s new columnists, reviewing fire food restaurants and BBQ joints around the world. This is a marriage made in food heaven, with their first meeting a sliding doors moment, as Beef missed the cut at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
“An old housemate of Jodie had a date with my caddy, so I went out with them for drinks, to drown my disappointment at missing the cut – and Jodie was there,” said Beef.
It was love, or maybe hunger, at first sight, as Beef promised to take Jodie to his favourite restaurants and there were soon off to Hawksmoor in London – home to great, well, beef.
We are talking at Brat, the Basque-inspired, wood-fired restaurant in Shoreditch, east London where fire gods cook under Vulcan himself, Tomos Parry, who also recently opened Mountain in Soho and a restaurant already hailed by The Times critic Giles Coren as ‘the most exciting restaurant to open in England this year’.
Actually, there was more eating than talking at Brat; the food so rapturously received and devoured, I half expected the neighbouring table to tell the waitress: ‘We’ll have what they’re having.’
Padron peppers, spider crab toast and smoked cod roe with leeks to start with. Brief pause between mouthfuls. When did BBQ food first enter your consciousness?
“My earliest memories were at home with my parents throwing baby back ribs, Chinese five spice chicken drumsticks and sausages on the barbecue,” said Jodie.
For Andrew it was on his early travels to the United States.
Conversation stopped again, replaced by gasps of delight as cucumber mackerel and lamb chops arrived. Then came the beef ribs – we’re gonna need a bigger table – and the turbot, with Brat an old English word for turbot.
Don’t tell my cardiologist, but if there was a food for honours system, I’d even put Brat’s bread and burnt onion butter in the House of Lords.
This must have come close to the perfect BBQ meal, but Jodie’s dream line up would include roasted leeks and sweet, spicy and sticky beef short ribs, while Beef would plump for fire-cooked white prawns and a Galician beef chop with fire-roasted peppers and kale.
“At home Beef is in charge of the meat tongs, but I rule the vegetables.”
Home, with their daughter Harley, is on the Algarve in Portugal, just 20 minutes from the Spanish border, hopping back and forth to sample the Iberian fire cooking.
“Just being outside makes us feel so alive, cooking up tasty meals for family and friends,” said Beef.
A food blog – @cheapeatsandsteepeats on Instagram – was born, as they decided to chronicle the great food and drink they found on their global odysseys.
“Having travelled to more than 20 countries over the years, we wanted to spread and appreciate the love and passion that goes into cooking and the incredible work of chefs around the world – be it a Michelin Star restaurant, a hidden gem down a back street, or a battered food truck on the pavement,” said Beef.
Their reviews also take in small independent coffee shops and bakeries, while cocktails and wine feature heavily too, with Jodie partial to a martini and Rosé and Pinot Noir from the wine list. Beef would start with a Riesling, followed by a Cabernet Sauvignon to wash his BBQ food down.
“Every day’s a school day when it comes to learning about food cultures and flavours and we love bringing home those experiences and recreating them,” said Jodie.
Fire is therapy too, nourishing the soul as well as the belly, using all the senses. “For us it is mindfulness, especially when it comes to slow cooks, and so good for mental health and wellbeing.”
Beef, a winner of the Spanish Open in 2016, the same year he finished 8th in the Open at Royal Troon, is currently out with a hand injury, but hoping to return in November. He was summarising for Sky Sports during this year’s Open at Hoylake, proving hugely entertaining and knowledgeable on the morning shows during the tournament. Next stop is a trip to watch the Ryder Cup in Rome, so expect some wood-fired pizza reviews.
Professional golf will take the couple to grazing pastures new around the world, plotting culinary paths as well as ones around the courses.
You suspect Beef’s scorecards will have restaurant recommendations scribbled on them, picking the brains of the local players and caddies, embracing the universal language of BBQ and live-fire cooking.
The first-ever Beefstock golf festival was held in the summer at Beef’s club North Middlesex. And, yes, there was a barbecue.
“I have bigger plans for next year. Let’s get a whole cow going, Asado-style, for a start,” said Beef. Fun is never far away with Beef and Jodie. As the Irish proverb says: ‘Laughter is brightest where food is best.’
“We are delighted to join BBQ magazine as regular columnists. There is nothing better than food hit by fire.”
Smokestak, Shoreditch, East London, England
One of our regular haunts, Smokestak is a rustic, casual barbecue joint with a smoker as the star of the show.
The menu is full of charred, smoked, blackened, crisped pulled meat and vegetable dishes and the brisket consistently has the perfect bark.
As you walk in, the smell of the smoker, the fires working their magic, hits you – so
if you weren’t hungry before, you are now. Try the smoked brisket bun with pickled red chilli.
On our last visit we started with pig tails with sweet and sticky soy molasses, followed by chicken wings, brisket and lamb merguez sausages, accompanied by charred vegetables.
Hickory’s Smokehouse, West Kirby, Merseyside, England
If you fancy some American-style BBQ and hospitality in England and north Wales, Hickory’s is your happy place – authentic and bold, full of fun and flavour, while paying due homage to the southern states that inspired the smokehouse.
We visited the Hickory’s Smokehouse in West Kirby during the Open golf at Hoylake. There are 17 restaurants in total, with the latest Hickory’s recently opening in Derby.
Hickory’s was born from road trips across America’s deep south, meeting Texas pitmasters, eating pulled pork in South Carolina, burnt ends in Kansas City and baby back ribs in Memphis, with smokers brought over from Missouri and Tennessee. Some of the team returned to Texas for another BBQ road trip last year (see p31).
On our night there, we went for the Smokehouse platter, with our favourite the eight-hour smoked beef rib, rubbed in ‘magic dust’. Try the frickles – fried pickles in a crispy Cajun spiced batter – as well as the brisket popcorn bites and take the waiter’s advice on Hickory’s range of six hot sauces, selected after exhaustive tastings, to accompany your meat selection.
Wash the food down with a milkshake or Hickory’s Grape Soda if you’re driving; go for the Peanut Butter Old Fashioned – bourbon, peanut butter, maple and angostura bitters – if you’re not.
Roostiq, Madrid, Spain
This is an Asador restaurant in Madrid, Spain, with a live-fire kitchen at the back behind a glass wall, so you can watch the chefs in action.
It was fascinating observing their techniques, letting the flames from the fires, hot and fierce, hit the steaks, creating the perfect caramelisation. Roostiq, with a second restaurant in Marbella on the Costa del Sol, sources organic ingredients from its own farm in Avila.
One of the stand-out dishes was the Torreznos – thinly sliced pork belly with crackling to die for.
We also had the grilled confit leeks and wood-fired artichokes – soft with a delicate grill flavour, followed by the grilled beef chop with confit sweet peppers to accompany the meat, with the beauty of the food lying in its simplicity.
Other highlights on the menu include wood-fired tenderloin with butter sauce, wood-fired whole turbot and flamed clams. Plenty of pizza too.
Hackney Church Brew Co, Hackney, East London, England
As its name suggests, this is a brewery with a taproom, serving craft beers, but also food from the fire, courtesy of Lagom and chef Elliot Cunningham.
Lagom is a Swedish word, in deference to Elliot’s heritage, meaning: ‘not too much, not too little’. In essence, ‘just the right amount’.
There is supposed to be virtue in moderation, but I am not sure we’ve ever applied it to our eating!
This is a BBQ church to worship at, with Elliot forever experimenting, drawing fresh flavours and profiles from his Hackney fires. His charred vegetables – try the grilled celeriac with salsa verde – are insanely good to accompany the dino beef ribs we shared between us; and sharing, food as well as tables, is a feature of Hackney Church.
The smash burgers are a signature dish and it is no wonder food critic Jay Rayner described Elliot’s food as ‘bold live-fire cooking that throbs uncompromisingly with flavour.’
Oh, and Beef may have tried one or two of the beers.
Southern Soul Barbeque, St Simons Island, Georgia, USA
The golfing legend that is Davis Love III has a stake, or brisket, in Southern Soul, so we knew of its reputation.
Beef actually has a bone to pick with Davis, a Major winner at the 1997 US PGA Championship and the winning Ryder Cup captain in 2016.
One year, Beef played the RSM Classic, a PGA Tour event on the Sea Island course and hosted by Davis, only to miss the cut, which Beef puts down to consuming far too much, sensational food at Southern Soul during the week. A price worth paying for ribs, brisket, pulled pork and smoked chicken wings, not forgetting the BBQ beans as a side.
This is a classic, authentic, US barbecue joint, no pretention and run by amazing, welcoming people. If you’re only there for a day go for the platter. Or maybe make a golfing week of it.
“I will try and get some BBQ magazine restaurant discounts next time I see Davis, or we can play for dinner.”