When the breeze is blowing good behind The Odeon constructing within the CBD, the aroma of roasted meat perfumes the air. It wafts from the smoker behind Satan Moon BBQ at 1188 Girod St. There, juicy briskets emerge darkish and crusty with simply the precise stability between chewiness and tenderness.
Louisiana-born chef Shannon Bingham is aware of his method round smoked meat, and he believes South Louisiana doesn’t get the credit score it deserves for its smoked meat traditions.
“Our meals tradition has smoked meat at its coronary heart,” says the chef, companion and pitmaster, who opened Satan Moon BBQ simply after Mardi Gras, and the adjoining Brewery Saint X on March 28.
If house-made sausage, smoked over a hearth till the pores and skin crackles and snaps, isn’t barbecue, then Bingham doesn’t know what’s. “We simply don’t name it barbecue, like Texas and Tennessee do,” he says.
Creating a way of place for Louisiana’s smoky heritage is likely one of the overarching targets of each Satan Moon, the extra informal eatery, and Brewery Saint X, a sit-down restaurant that serves the identical low-and-slow-cooked barbecue together with house-made craft beers. There’s additionally a full bar with loads of whiskey and bourbon on the cabinets.
Satan Moon’s title was pulled from generations of blues songs, and the menu options many conventional gadgets, starting from barbecue plates to hefty variations of barbecue sandwich classics.
The pulled pork has an edgy chew, and as with all of the sandwiches, it’s served on a potato roll dressed with coleslaw, pickles and sauce. Sandwiches include a alternative of facet, similar to potato salad and coleslaw. Bingham additionally prepares a superb soiled rice, and pink beans and rice, collard greens and mac and cheese all ooze Louisiana taste.
Platters are constructed round brisket, provided lean or fatty, smoke-reddened pork ribs, house-made sausage and fancy-tasting smoked turkey. Platters include two sides. There are three barbecue sauces. The home sauce is flavored with root beer and cane syrup. Creole mustard informs the Carolina-style sauce, and the vinegar sauce has pickled apricots.
Starters embody pimiento cheese with crackers and a smoked onion dip with chips. A $79 social gathering platter rounds up all of the meats and sides and feeds 4 to 6 folks. A current day by day particular was a smoked roast beef po-boy topped with gravy and horseradish cream.
Brewery Saint X is ideal for a carnivore’s date night time, with a menu that invitations sharing. New Orleans-based structure agency Bell Butler designed the intense and welcoming house, and the partitions are coated with classic pictures — black-and-white pictures of family-owned meat shops and native camp events.
Foremost dishes embody roasted Gulf fish with New Orleans-style barbecue sauce, confit beef cheeks with salsa verde and grilled pork collar with pickled mushrooms and mustard jus. There are also sandwiches, salads and snacks like beef fats fries and spicy fried inexperienced tomatoes.
The beer listing may have 16 alternatives, with many German- and British-style drafts. Past beer, friends can anticipate an array of creative house-made bottled cocktails, starting from the classics to artistic and regionally impressed riffs. There are also wines and a powerful choice of nonalcoholic choices.
The Neighborhood Restaurant Group, a hospitality firm based mostly in Washington, D.C., recognized for its beer, is behind each eating places. NRG was based by Baton Rouge native Michael Babin, so Satan Moon and Brewery Saint X mark a homecoming of types for him.
Satan Moon signed up for this spring’s Hogs for the Trigger, an occasion that Bingham has supported going again to his days as a part of the opening crew for Blue Oak BBQ. “There’s an actual household tradition in barbecue,” he says.