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STICKIN’WITH IT Bowie’s doing barbecue the same way for 34 years
t looks like an old-timer’s cabin, or a frontier outpost, a place for cowboys and buffalo hunters and railroad men, like it should be standing beside a lonesome trail somewhere near the Brazos River, nearly 200 years ago. The wood floorboards creak underfoot, and hand-hewn logs hold up the ceiling. A worn-down wagon wheel hangs from the main beam on rusty chains, its mason jar lamps providing the main room’s only electric light. Hanging on the plank walls are saddles and bridles, axes and black iron, varmint traps and stuffed birds, tin cans and stoneware jugs, scratched-out washboards and a great set of moose horns. It would be easy to imagine, after dark, the ghosts of hunters and trappers and cattlemen there, enjoying resurrection with midnight gambling and knife fights and cheap whiskey. But there are no ghosts at Bowie Barbeque, and it is not in Old-West Texas. It does not serve whiskey, either. “We honor the Lord by closing on Sundays,” said Peter Kinsey, who has managed the restaurant for 10 years. “He blesses us every other day of the week.” Bowie Barbeque, which everybody calls just “Bowie’s,” is now in its 35th year of serving western beef brisket and eastern pork from a cafeteria-style lunch line where burnt ends scatter across cutting boards and pure butter greases the turning wheels of the toaster. It offers meat by the pound for big eaters and affordable lunch plates for everyone else, and by using the same ingredients and the same procedures for three decades, has attracted a loyal following of regional barbecue lovers in a state not really known for barbecue. “That’s why I’m so good — I’m boring,” Kinsey said. “The worst thing about good barbecue is it’s boring as heck. You find out what works and you do the same thing every time. That’s why some barbecue places go under, they get tired of it, cut corners and don’t do what they’re supposed to do. There’s value in paying attention and doing it the same way, every time.”
A day at Bowie’s — the same day, every day — begins at 6 a.m. That’s when Kinsey flips on the lights and begins making tea and setting up tables. At 7:30 a.m., ribs and chicken go into the Ole Hickory pit, a gas-fired mechanical smoker that uses an electric motor and chain gears to slowly rotate a hundred pounds of meat in hot darkness while split pecan wood smolders in the burner. Kinsey does paperwork, the least-fun part of running a barbecue joint, until around 9 a.m., when he loads in the remainder of yesterday’s ribs reheating. These are always the best ribs, made that way by an extra night of cooling in foil with flavors setting up. The doors open at 11 a.m. By this time, the Texas-style brisket has been slow-cooking in the monster for 18 hours since being laid in the previous afternoon. Now, it comes off the rack and goes on the serving line. The main crowd hits around noon, and it does not take long to reach maximum occupancy of 75 diners. The rush dies down around 2 p.m. A few folks trickle in during the afternoons, and the dinner rush fires back up from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Kinsey’s crew cleans up, wipes down and closes shop by 10 p.m. It has been that way since Bowie’s was built in 1983. The joint was founded by Brookhaven businessman Mike Land, then an advertising representative from Minden, Louisiana, with a client list of restaurants. His team built the Stark’s Family Restaurant locations in Brookhaven and Hazlehurst — the Brookhaven location eventually became Dairy Queen, but Stark’s in Hazlehurst still serves big crowds every day. “We wanted to raise our kids here, and the restaurant business was our way of getting back to Brookhaven,” Land said. Land and his wife, Brookhaven’s Vicki Arrington Land, used Bowie’s as their anchor, and he was involved heavily until 1991, when he became a professional accountant and started Land Consulting.
Story & photos by Adam Northam
BROOKHAVEN MAGAZINE 25