It's Supposed to be a Low Heat

Bert's BBQ in Austin burned down last week, and there's a pretty interesting story concerning how the dispatcher handled the initial 911 call. Apparently, the dispatcher thought the caller was seeing the white smoke of a large amount of meat being cooked at a very low temperature (what I call "God's Beard"):

Dispatch says, "OK, does it smell like the wood? Or does it smell like something else is on fire?"
Caller says, "No, it smells like wood. There's a lot of it. I was just going across the street, and I could smell it. There's, like, all this, you know, bit of a hazy smoke around here."
Dispatch says, "Well, could they be smoking their briskets?"
Caller says, "No, that's not brisket."

"You could tell something was burning," Perez said. "It's not brisket. It's not sausage that is burning."

At the end of Joel's call, the dispatcher finally sends out firefighters to Bert's Bar-B-Q, some 45 minutes after the first call. And that's huge, considering it would have taken firefighters 45 seconds to get there. After all, the fire station is right down the street.

And the end right there is the most ridiculous part. I lived three blocks away from Bert's for a while, and I walked down to MLK Boulevard a couple times a week to get food. The walk from the fire station to Bert's is less than a minute, or close to it; couldn't someone have gone over and looked?

Anyway, it sucks for them, because the restaurant is pretty much charred inside. I went there once, and the manager was really nice...although as I took my food home, I saw one of the workers looking through the dumpster outside for some reason...ew. As for the 'cue itself, I ate the food there in 2005, and I remember the meaty beef rib and the sausage being pretty tasty, while everything else was standard pretty standard for Texas BBQ. I'd say it probably ranks somewhere in the 11-15 range in Austin--nothing memorable, but still pretty good.

I think I'm gonna use the smoker this weekend and make some beef.