Texas BBQ, with a foreign flavor

Lee Cowan is sampling some hot trends in barbecue with flavors from lands far from our shores. She is perhaps one of the lesser-known ancient Egyptian goddesses. Her name is Hesat. Depicted as a cow, she was worshiped as the goddess of nourishment. So perhaps it's not that much of a surprise that a cow goddess in barbecue would eventually meet. Oh, man. This is KG Barbecue in Austin, Texas. The rice bowl is a great introduction. Where pitmaster Kareem El-Gayesh has blended the flavors of ancient Egypt with an age-old cowboy tradition. It's a combo I've never heard of before. Yeah. Yeah, I've never seen pomegranate seeds on barbecue. His presentation is as unique as the taste. Each dish looks like a landscape painted with the vibrant colors of the Middle East. Meats of all sorts, including lamb and kofta sausages, are seasoned with cumin, coriander, and turmeric. My goal was to present something that looks familiar, but then you go and try it, and it's an explosion of flavors. Kareem first came to Texas from Cairo on a whim. I mean, I know Western movies, I know cowboys, I know country music. He never tasted Texas barbecue, but when he did, recreating it for himself became his life's work. Sounds like you became a little obsessed with figuring out how to do it. Just a little bit, yeah. Just a little bit. He was a finance executive back in Cairo, where in his spare time, he would go searching for a cut of brisket to try his hand at his newfound love. I would go with the cow chart, you know, on my phone. This is where the brisket is, can you cut it? 10 years after his very first taste of Texas barbecue, Kareem opened his own food truck, and within months, his Egyptian-style barbecue had earned a nomination for a prestigious James Beard Award. Don't ask me how. I think it's beautiful. I think it's like a work of art. I can't wait to eat this. I really think a lot of the immigrants who are coming to Texas specifically see barbecue as a way, like a palette, to bring the flavors of their culture to the forefront. That's Daniel Vaughn, the highly influential barbecue editor for Texas Monthly. We got crispy pig skin right here. We found him at the magazine's annual barbecue fest in Lockhart this month. Oh, that's the good sound right there. Hovering around a whole pig being prepared by Don Nguyen, who, along with his brother Theo, started a Vietnamese-style pop-up in Houston called Koi Barbecue. What I'm kind of doing on top is just a little fried onion oil. This dish, for example, offers pork shoulder on a bed of vermicelli noodles, then flavored with a Vietnamese fish sauce. This is spot-on right here. You ever tasted anything like this? No. That's unique. I see people who sort of rail against the idea of all these changes in Texas barbecue, but when you sit them down with that plate in front of them, they're rarely arguing about whether it's good or not, right? They're certainly lining up at this Asian-style Texas smokehouse called Kamuri Tatsuya, also in Austin. Chef Tatsu Aikawa is Tokyo-born, but he's Texas-raised, so he doesn't see his barbecue as some kind of trendy fusion. To him, it's just as natural as pairing salt and pepper. What I make, it just comes through me, you know, as an experience. That's why I don't like the used word, fusion. You know what I mean? I think, to me, it's deeper than that. He, too, has been racking up awards for items like his barbecue bento box. Diners can take brisket, put it on a bed of rice and garlic, wrap it in nori, and then just eat it like a hand roll. Then there's this hugely popular ramen dish, where barbecue brisket is served atop thick, slurp-worthy noodles, accompanied with a pork bone broth for dipping. It kind of creates this thickness, where it kind of coats the whole noodle. Texas barbecue is almost perfect, you know, to its form, and I respect it. So, to me, I'm just creating vehicle to showcase and highlight. I'm not trying to alter what it is. These are about maybe six, seven hours in. Neither is Kareem Elgayesh. I'm just someone that followed my brain, you know? I'm like, this is what I want to do, so I'm just going to do it. Followed your heart, I guess. Yeah, followed my heart, too. Exactly, followed my heart. He just got his U.S. citizenship this year, and so now he proudly wears an American flag on his barbecue apron, right next to his Egyptian pendant. A Texan by way of Cairo, who just put a few more notches in the nation's barbecue belt. I love introducing people to Egypt and its food and its culture, and it's a great way to do it through Texas barbecue.