Meet The Women Redefining Barbecue In Texas

These Lone Star trailblazers are setting Texas barbecue on fire.

“There are a lot of strong women in the barbecue world,” says Sawyer Lewis of LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in Austin. “They’re making big things happen and being taken seriously.”

These innovators can be found shoveling coals in smoky pit houses, serving guests out front, and running the day-to-day operations behind the scenes. They’re teaching others the secrets of barbecue and live-fire cooking online, on television and at in-person events too. Much of this energy can be found in Texas, a place that’s long been a bastion of Southern ’cue traditions. Here are just a few members of this new generation of Lone Star State women who are shaking things up and shaping the future of the industry.

Sawyer Lewis

LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue

“People are usually surprised to see that I’m a woman,” says Sawyer Lewis, who’s the “Lewis” in Austin’s LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue. “I kind of have a gender-neutral name, so I get a lot of emails saying, ‘Hey, dude; thanks, man; or Mr. Lewis...’ ” Others assume she’s the wife of her business partner, Evan LeRoy. “A lot of women in the industry are also married to the pitmaster,” she explains. “That always throws people off.”

Defying expectations is nothing new for Lewis, though. She came to the role from the world of fine dining and was general manager of Contigo, an Austin restaurant with a Texas-themed “ranch-to-table” menu featuring ox-tongue sliders and rabbit dumplings. While working at Contigo, she struck up a friendship with LeRoy, who was pitmaster at Freedmen’s Bar, and the two decided to open a place of their own.

They launched in April 2017 as a mobile barbecue truck and soon parked permanently at Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden just southwest of downtown Austin. Branding their offering “New School Barbecue,” they never felt bound by the classic “Texas trinity” of brisket, ribs, and sausage. The menu highlights rarities like smoked beef cheeks and pulled whole hog with house-made kimchi, hash, and rice on the side. “The bridge from Contigo to what we do now is not actually too far,” explains Lewis. “Our food is farm to table. All of our meats are locally sourced and sustainable, and that’s something we’re really proud of.”

Now, the business has grown far beyond the original truck. They’ve steadily built a large catering operation, launched a series of in-person and online cooking classes called New School BBQ University, and shipped their sauces and rubs all over the world. “We each wear a lot of hats,” Lewis says. Early on, they divided the responsibilities, with LeRoy focused on the cooking and Lewis on everything else—scheduling, payroll, ordering, running the catering operation, and staging special events. LeRoy and Lewis is really a family business, with Lewis’ husband, Nathan, managing the consumer products and LeRoy’s wife, Lindsey, handling the public relations.

Lewis admits that in the barbecue world, pitmasters are “still the rock stars... People want to see the pit and watch the guy cooking and slicing the brisket.” But she says there’s a lot more to running this business successfully than managing the fires. “I hope that operators start to get a little bit more attention,” she says. “It’s not necessarily the most glorious, sexy work, but it’s important.”

Lewis has been wearing even more hats since her first child, a son named Beckett, was born in September 2022. “I’m going through such a big life transition,” she says. “I’m very much a workaholic and put off having a child because I knew it would be a huge compromise for my career.” That’s a common reality for women in the food-and-beverage industry. “In a lot of restaurants, there is not any sort of maternity leave,” she says. Owning the operation doesn’t solve the problem. “We were kind of surviving on a weekly basis, so I really needed to wait.... This is probably the first time in the history of our business when we could afford for me to be away,” Lewis says. “Being gone for six weeks—in most environments, it’s not really tolerated. That isn’t a natural part of our industry.... As a woman, there are a lot of things yet to overcome, and I’m still overcoming them every day.”

She and LeRoy have big plans for the future too—namely, opening up a brick-and-mortar place. She’s excited about being able to add a full beverage program as well as a pastry operation with a wider array of desserts, breads, and some breakfast items. That’s some New School Barbecue for sure.

leroyandlewis.com, 121 Pickle Rd, Austin, TX 78704

Chuck Charnichart

Barbs-B-Q

When Chuck Charnichart moved to Austin in 2016, she had never tasted Texas smoked brisket. “I didn’t even know that there was a Texas-style brisket,” she says. Newly enrolled at the University of Texas (UT), she answered a Craigslist ad for a position at Franklin Barbecue. She had no idea that its owner, Aaron Franklin, was an internationally famous pitmaster. The pay was better than at other restaurants, so she took the job.

Seven years later, she is on her way to becoming a culinary celebrity herself. She recently teamed up with two friends to launch an ambitious operation called Barbs-B-Q, and she chose to establish it in Lockhart, which is the capital of Central Texas barbecue. Charnichart’s journey began at Franklin, but that was in the front of the house—not in the pit room. “It didn’t feel like a place where I belonged,” Charnichart says. She did, however, strike up a friendship with Jonny White, one of the youngest cooks. “I think he was 22 at the time, and seeing him work the pits made me realize maybe I could do it too,” she recalls. However, despite her eagerness, she says her requests to get in the pit were denied.

In fact, Charnichart’s cooking ambitions had to wait until she graduated from UT in 2020. During the pandemic, she moved to Dallas to live with her sister and reconnected with White, who had recently opened a new restaurant in Fort Worth called Goldee’s Barbecue with four of his friends, all veterans of acclaimed joints. White wanted Charnichart to join them, but the business was not exactly thriving. “They were cooking maybe three or four briskets a day, and it was very slow,” Charnichart recalls. Out of the blue, an old colleague from Franklin called with a three-month consulting gig helping open an American-style barbecue restaurant in Egypt. White and Charnichart jumped at the chance. “It was a very challenging, intense experience,” she remembers.

When they returned to the U.S. in early 2021, business was still slow at Goldee’s. But that changed in October, when Texas Monthly ran its newest list of the Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints, with Goldee’s in the first slot. The next year was a whirlwind, with smokers filled to capacity and customers lining up hours before the doors opened.

Charnichart was often the one overseeing the pits. “They would call me the head pitmaster, but we all knew how to do everything,” she says. “We switched positions on and off every six months.”

Not too long after returning to Goldee’s, she staged the first of what would become a series of Barbs-B-Q pop-ups, taking over the restaurant for a day with a menu of family recipes and a few clever spins on the usual Texas ’cue. “Both of my parents are from Mexico,” says Charnichart, who grew up in Brownsville. “Every weekend, they would have a cookout. It would be mainly chicken—pollo asado—plus beef finger ribs, jalapeño poppers, and some really good sides.”

Those tasty sides are now prominent features on the Barbs-B-Q menu. They include a dish called “green spaghetti,” tender noodles in a creamy sauce that’s tinged with cilantro and roasted poblanos. Texas traditions like brisket and ribs are served alongside cacti de gallo (marinated green cactus, avocado, and tomato) and her Lapsang Beet Barbecue Sauce. “I don’t add any sugar,” she says. “The sweetness comes from pears, beets, and honey.... The Lapsang tea gives smokiness.”

In May, Charnichart and her two partners (Alexis Tovias and Haley Conlin) opened a Barbs-B-Q restaurant in Lockhart. She describes this venture as her attempt “to create the safe space in which we can just do the thing we love without all the ugly stuff that happens at many spots.” They’re focusing on what really matters: cooking great food and serving it to hungry customers.

barbsbq.com, 102 E Market St, Lockhart, TX 78644

Kelli Nevarez

LaVaca BBQ

One fall afternoon in 2019, former teacher Kelli Nevarez told her first-grade students, “Let’s go outside. I have a surprise for y’all.” The children lined up along the fence and watched wide-eyed as workers hoisted a giant turquoise fiberglass cow atop the sign at a new restaurant called LaVaca BBQ.

The couple who opened the place are Kelli’s parents, Christine and Lupe Nevarez, and barbecue has long been a part of their lives. “We’re a big Mexican family,” Kelli explains, “and so for gatherings with relatives, church events, and anything like that, my father was always asked to make the barbecue. ”Eventually, he entered a few competitions, and before long, Kelli and her siblings were traveling with him. “I don’t know if we were more of a bother or not,” Kelli says, “but we would be ‘helping.’ ”

When Christine retired from her teaching career, she and Lupe started a weekend barbecue trailer. (“So she wasn’t bored,” Kelli explains.) After a few years, they decided to get a brick-and-mortar spot, and it all clicked when they found a building for lease in Port Lavaca, around the corner from the school where Kelli was teaching. LaVaca BBQ opened on November 16, 2019. At first, Christine was running the show during the day and Lupe was cooking after hours because he is still employed as an engineer in Bay City. Kelli would grade papers at the restaurant after work while keeping an eye on the food and took full shifts on the weekends handling the pits and slicing meats. Then COVID-19 hit. Lupe was considered an essential worker at his plant and was soon buried in projects.

By summer, Kelli and her mother were largely running the place by themselves. “She came up with all these amazing ideas like the smoked tamales and other sides that she was making from scratch every day,” Kelli says. As the new school year approached, Kelli knew something had to give. “I decided I didn’t want to be half-hearted,” she says. “I couldn’t do part of the day with the kids and the rest here at the restaurant.” Before the summer ended, she had quit teaching to become a full-time pitmaster. Her father welcomed the transition. “Once he saw people’s reactions to my food, he stepped back,” Kelli says. “He was like, ‘No, you’ve got it. You’re good.’ ”

Four years later, LaVaca BBQ has earned a reputation as one of the top joints in the state. The menu includes standards such as brisket, turkey, ribs, and sausage but adds a few Tex-Mex twists like pork belly tacos on blue corn tortillas with mango- habanero slaw. The Nevarezes now have a second restaurant located in Victoria, a half hour up the road, and Kelli cooks the meats for both on the two 1,000-gallon offset smokers that were designed and fabricated by her father. With a teacher turned pit-master at the helm, LaVaca BBQ is just getting started.

lavacabbq.com, 532 N Virginia St, Port Lavaca, TX 77979

Jess Pryles

Hardcore Carnivore

A live-fire expert, a social media influencer, and now a certified meat scientist, Jess Pryles has an obsession with barbecue that started with a single bite. During a U.S. vacation 15 years ago, the Melbourne, Australia-raised Pryles tacked on a last-minute stop in Austin. Her first taste of Texas barbecue—a beef rib with superbly smoky bark—was at the now-departed Artz Rib House. Pryles says that by the time she boarded the plane for home, she had “fallen in love with Texas.”

She returned for multiweek eating tours and then flew back to Melbourne to reproduce the creations in her own backyard. In 2010, Pryles started a blog to chronicle her journeys and publish recipes. Along the way, she cofounded the Australasian Barbecue Alliance and landed a spot as a judge on a Down-Under TV show called Aussie Barbecue Heroes. At first, she was writing for her fellow Australians, but before long, she was spending two months a year in Austin and amassing a large following in Texas.

In 2015, she moved to the Lone Star State and doubled down on her passion. She published her first book, Hardcore Carnivore, in 2018 and launched a line of seasonings. Now, Hardcore Carnivore blends are distributed all over the world.

Pryles steadily built industry relationships with the likes of the Texas Beef Council and Kingsford charcoal, for which she is a full-time barbecue ambassador. “That’s one of my biggest sources of pride,” she says. “As someone who’s an immigrant and female, I think it speaks to how hard I’ve worked.”

She’s still evolving and learning. In December 2022, Pryles graduated from the Meat Science Program at Iowa State University. “There’s a lot of stuff about barbecue that’s just, ‘When it’s ready, it’s ready...’ It’s by feel. It’s a craft,” she says. “But I did like the aspects of things like doneness in steaks being measurable and understanding beef grades.”

There’s another motivation for getting formal credentials. “I had learned so much stuff that I wasn’t really getting the credit for,” she says. “Unfortunately, we women have to work a little bit harder sometimes and insist on things.”

Now, Pryles’ digital reach extends far beyond her website to include more than 165,000 Instagram followers and over 56,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel. But she prefers to be an influencer in the actual world through cooking demos and festival and conference appearances. “I’m still fascinated and inspired by what I do,” Pryles says. “And I really couldn’t ask for a better situation.”

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