Jordan Wright’s barbecue, particularly his brisket, has drawn attention.
There are people who can tell you in minute detail the difference between Texas-style barbecue and Kansas City-style barbecue and Memphis-style barbecue and Carolina-style barbecue. I am not one of those people.
But Jordan Wright of Fayetteville is, and that’s what counts. And he’s quick to emphasize that within those four main accepted styles, “tons of variation” exist. “It’s like a color wheel,” he said. And Wright knows all the colors.
Six years ago, Wright, 36, began offering Arkansans his Texas-style barbecue, first from a food truck and then, in October 2017, in his first brick-and-mortar location, in a small white house in Johnson in northwest Arkansas.
Wright opened his second location, in downtown Bentonville, in 2020, and his third, in Rogers just last month.
Soon, it will be Little Rock’s turn. Wright and T.J. Lefler paid more than $1.8 million for an 11,150-SF office-warehouse at 1311 Rebsamen Park Road in the Riverdale area. It’s the Quonset hut-like building that old-timers will remember as once housing the Wine Cellar, but that most recently served as the headquarters of another homegrown Arkansas restaurant company, Yellow Rocket Concepts, parent of restaurants like Big Orange, Local Lime and Lost Forty Brewing.
Wright hopes to open his Little Rock Wright’s Barbecue by next summer. Some of the big space, about 4,000 SF, will be used for offices. About 4,500 SF will comprise the kitchen and restaurant, which will seat about 68. Outdoor seating is planned, enough for perhaps another 40 diners.
The Little Rock Wright’s will employ 20-25 workers, Wright said.
The hours of operation will be similar to those of the other locations, 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and the menu will be the same: brisket, pork, chicken, sausage, turkey, ribs and bacon burnt ends, with, of course, sides like smoked beans, coleslaw and potato salad, among others.
Wright has gotten a lot of attention for his barbecue, including from Daniel Vaughn, the “barbecue editor” (yes, it’s a thing and a glorious thing) at Texas Monthly. Vaughn is the author of “The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue” and the coauthor of “Whole Hog BBQ: The Gospel of Carolina Barbecue.”
In 2019, Vaughn wrote an article in Texas Monthly about Wright’s barbecue business and called his brisket “the best brisket I’ve ever found in Arkansas.”
Wright, who left a corporate job at Tyson Foods Inc. to start Wright’s Barbecue, embarked on his barbecue odyssey for the love of brisket. He’d been cooking in the backyard, cooking for friends, catering tailgates and parties and traveling to Texas where he ate “really good brisket. I decided I wanted to get really better at brisket.”
His central Texas brisket is the style of barbecue that originated in the area around Lockhart and Taylor, Texas, with Wright citing barbecue restaurants like City Market, Smitty’s Market, Black’s Barbecue and Louie Mueller Barbecue. “These are institutions in the central Texas realm,” he said, “those places where German immigrants set up sausage-making and started smoking meats back in the 1900s, late 1800s.”
His meat is smoked using a wood-fired offset fire box, with the smoke flowing from one side of the smoking tank to the other to the chimney. “It’s cooked indirectly for long periods of time.”
“The difference-maker,” he said, “is how we take care of the meat, how we source our ingredients and quality food and put out incredible barbecue that would be considered best in class in any state, in any market, regardless whether it’s Texas, Kansas City or Memphis.”
Business has been good, Wright said, with sales doubling between 2019, the pre-pandemic year, and now.
Although he partnered with Lefler on the purchase of the Little Rock location of Wright’s, Wright is the sole owner of Wright’s Barbecue. As for whether he plans other locations, that “depends on the right opportunity.”
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