Robbie Richter, the pit master at the six-month-old Hill Country barbecue restaurant in Manhattan, over the past several years had been competing several times a year in national and regional barbecuing contests, often besting industry notables or coming close to winning the most prestigious events.
Though he’s a lifelong New Yorker, Richter specializes only in the authentic, long-smoked barbecuing traditions of the Texas hill country outside of Austin, a part of the country he had never visited until the restaurant began to materialize. He imports the regional species of wood used in Texas’ hill country.
The self-taught Richter learned his trade on a backyard kettle grill that paved a path to a home-based catering company.
If that’s not enough of an unconventional pathway to success, throw in the fact that both Richter and the owner of the two-level, 250-seat restaurant—Marc Glosserman, 33, a former telecom executive turned restaurateur whose family roots are from Texas’ hill country—are newcomers to the industry with no commercial experience.
The two have been enjoying a stream of critical accolades in the press, from celebrities, celebrity restaurateurs and word-of-mouth street buzz since their June opening.
Former mayor Ed Koch, model and talk show host Tyra Banks, boxing promoter Don King, Giants line-backer Michael Strahan, Myriad Restaurant Group president Drew Nieporent and many others known and lesser known have used a white, wax crayon to pen words of encouragement and praise on the sides of the three massive black smoke ovens Richter uses to turn out the pork, beef and chicken from their separate smokers.
Even Danny Meyer—who ushered in a new era of real barbecue in a city critics said had sparse representations of it until he opened Blue Smoke in 2001—signed congratulations on one of the smokers.
But it’s celebrity chef Mario Batali’s script that Richter likes best.
“My new home away from home,” Batali wrote. “Now where’s my room?”
So how does a lifelong New Yorker become an expert at cooking Texas-style barbecue?
When I was a kid, we use to vacation in Southern Florida during the holiday season and always visited this one place. I just loved eating there and wanted to know how to cook like that. So I would grill in the backyard, even in my teens. Then, about 15 years ago, my brother bought a house in Queens with a backyard, and he had this neighbor who was constantly barbecuing, no matter the weather. That’s when I learned the real difference between barbecuing and grilling: barbecuing can take 20 hours; grilling can take 20 minutes.
When did you begin entering competitions?
CHEF’S TIPS To assure that meat is easy to bite off the bone, but chewy, remove the membrane from the backside of spare ribs. Encourage guests not to use barbecue sauce. If meat is smoked right, sauce is unnecessary.
My brother, some friends and I began barbecuing for a couple of years, and the neighbors would come around and loved what we were doing. So we thought: “Let’s see how far we can take this. How good are we?” So we entered our first competition, I believe, in 2000. I’m not even certain how we heard about it—maybe the radio, maybe neighbors told us to try—but it was local. We didn’t win it, but we got the bug, and four or five months later, we entered another one.
How do these competitions work exactly?
Well, it varies to some degree, but you generally have to do pork, a brisket, beef ribs and chicken, and there are usually six judges. We had a team name, too: Urban Barbecue. Later, we became Bobby’s Luau because we always cooked in the competitions in Hawaiian-print shirts. Then we became Big Island BBQ, since we were living on Long Island by then. Then in 2002, we started a catering company with a mobile smoking rig, and that’s when the word really got around about us. Now, of course, we compete as Hill Country.
What were you doing before all this?
I was a medical administrator who managed my father’s and brother’s medical practice in Long Island. They are both internists, but my brother is also a pediatrician.
How and when did you meet your partner, Marc Glosserman?
BIOGRAPHY Title: pit master, Hill Country, New YorkBirthplace: New YorkBirth date: May 25, 1963Education: self-taughtCareer highlights: competing in numerous regional and national barbecuing contests including the Annual Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue contest in 2005; taking first place of 477 competitors cooking chicken at the Kansas City Royal Open Barbecue Competition; running a home-based barbecue catering company with mobile truck rig
There’s a backstory to that, but basically some guy who had moved to New York wrote on the food blog Chowhound that he had a Jones for Texas-style barbecue and was looking for someone to cook it for a picnic he was having. We had a [mobile] smoker rig by then and told him we’d do it. There was a dude acting as a go-between to organize everything, and it turned out [this third party] was a friend of Marc’s. Coincidentally, this picnic was on the same day as Danny Meyer’s first Union Square barbecue event [now an annual national event]. Anyway, Marc’s friend knew he had Texas roots and told him he had tasted the best Texas ribs at this picnic and should meet me.
What do you attribute the good reviews and strong traffic to?
Well, I’m not putting anyone down because I know how hard this business is. But I think what makes us different is that we choose to specialize in one regional type of barbecue. Look around the city, most of the major barbecue joints are trying to be all things for everybody. You can find St. Louis-style, Memphis, Midwest, dry and wet, all under one roof.
Why is that a bad thing?
It’s not really. We just opt to do one thing. First off, there’s no Texas-style barbecuing done here because of the hurdles you have to cross with your smokers and the city’s regulations that the chimney has to be taller than the neighboring building, which, in our case, meant we had to build a 12-story chimney. The other thing is, you don’t need sauce with Texas-style ribs. But if you must have it, we have one with our own label called, “If You Must Have It.”