The pitmaster of one of Austin’s best and exciting barbecue restaurants is going to be publishing a new cookbook. Evan LeRoy of new-school barbecue restaurant and food truck LeRoy & Lewis is writing New School Barbecue, which will publish sometime in 2026 under book distribution company Abrams Books.

The new book will include LeRoy’s techniques and recipes for cooking and smoking meats and vegetables with his new-school approaches pulling in techniques, ingredients, and flavors from around the world. The book will specifically include cauliflower and brisket, among other items. There will also be care taken to given information for all levels of cooks and pitmasters from beginners to experts.

This is LeRoy’s first cookbook, but not his first time sharing his cooking and smoking knowledge with the public. LeRoy & Lewis has a YouTube channel and Patreon membership service where he and the team share recipes and techniques. There’s also the New School BBQ University programs, with the next set of classes set for January 2025.

New School Barbecue is being co-written by Paula Forbes. She’s a noted cookbook author — she wrote the Austin Cookbook in 2018, collecting recipes from beloved restaurants and food trucks in the city; and most recently, she also co-wrote Cured: Cooking With Ferments, Pickles, Preserves, & More with San Antonio chef Steve McHugh, which published earlier this summer. She’s also the editor and writer of International Association of Culinary Professionals award-winning cookbook newsletter Stained Page News. And then she’s also an acclaimed food writer, as well as the founding editor of Eater Austin.

The Publishers Marketplace deal report announcing New School Barbecue dated on June 17 notes that the sale is a pre-empt, which means that the book deal was made early in the process because it’s a wanted title. Behind the deal is literary agent David Hale Smith, a member of literary agency InkWell Management. He also works with Jordan Mackay (who, among other books, co-authored all of Aaron Franklin’s cookbooks: Franklin Barbecue, Franklin Steak, and Franklin Smoke) and Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn.

LeRoy’s Austin barbecue career started as the founding pitmaster of now-closed restaurant and whiskey bar Freedmen’s in 2012. He left in 2016 with the goal of opening his own business. That ended up being the food truck version of LeRoy & Lewis, with co-owners Sawyer Lewis and Nathan Lewis (rounded out by Evan’s wife Lindsey LeRoy) in 2017. It won the Eater Austin Eater Award for best new food truck that same year. The four always had the goal of opening a physical restaurant, which finally happened earlier this February in Garrison Park.

As Austin continues to rise to prominence on the national stage, so too does its presence on lists like Forbes’ Fortune 500. 

The last decade has seen the city’s tech environment continue to flourish, garnering the nickname “Silicon Valley of the South.” As a result, Austin now is home to three tech companies in the Fortune 500. 

Here are the three Austin-Area companies that featured on the list of revenue giants, plus a look at how other Texas metros performed on the 2024 edition of the Fortune 500.

Austin-Area features three tech titans in Fortune 500

Austin icon Dell Technologies, now headquartered in Round Rock, slotted in at 48 on the Fortune 500. In the last year, Dell posted a revenue of $88 billion.

Perhaps the most notable Austin HQ’d company, Tesla, was also the highest-ranked company on the Fortune 500. The most valuable car company in the world produced a revenue of $96.7 billion in 2023, this is an 18.8% increase from the prior year. 

Lastly, computer software company, Oracle, placed 89th on the list after generating a revenue of $49.9 billion in 2023 — $7 more than the company earned in 2022. The Austin transplant, which moved to the city in 2020, has posted record number in almost every year since moving to Texas’ capital.

While Oracle is currently located in Austin, it announced in April that it plans to move its headquarters to Nashville.

Texas metros boast a strong showing in Fortune 500

This year Texas was dethroned as the top state on the list. The Lone Star state’s West Coast rival, California, was featured 57 times in the 2024 edition of the Fortune 500. This is the first time since 2014 that the Golden State has topped the list, according to Fortune. Texas and New York tie for second, both with 52 companies.

Houston was a stand-out city for Texas as it featured the third most Fortune 500 companies on the list, with 21 entries, led by oil giants like Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips. San Antonio was featured just twice on the list, but it contributed one of Texas’ highest-ranked companies — Valero Energy. 

The Dallas-Fort Worth area was a big winner on the list. Despite multiple years of rocky headlines related to mass flight cancelations, Southwest Airlines found itself in the top 200. In Fort Worth, another airline featured as American Airlines, one of the highest-rated airlines in the country, came in at 86. 

The DFW as a whole featured 10 total companies, nine of which Dallas contributed. 

Fortune 500: Top 20 Texas companies

Below are the top Texas companies that made the Fortune 500 list and their rank:

• 7: Exxon Mobil
• 9: McKesson
• 26: Phillips 66
• 29: Valero Energy
• 32: AT&T
• 40: Tesla
• 48: Dell Technologies
• 51: Energy Transfer
• 54: Sysco
• 59: Caterpillar
• 68: ConocoPhillips
• 86: American Airlines Group
• 89: Oracle
• 90: Enterprise Products Partners
• 92: Plains GP Holdings
• 103: USAA
• 120: D.R. Hortom
• 137: HF Sinclair
• 138: CBRE Group
• 147: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Beck Andrew Salgado covers trending topics in the Austin business ecosystem for the American-Statesman. To share additional tips or insights with Salgado, email Bsalgado@gannett.com.