A New Austin Barbecue Pop-Up Brings Together Texas and Louisiana Flavors With Brisket Po’ Boys and Smoked Ham

A New Austin Barbecue Pop-Up Brings Together Texas and Louisiana Flavors With Brisket Po’ Boys and Smoked Ham

Interstellar BBQ general manager Holden Fulco is embarking on Parish Barbecue.

Through Parish, Fulco aims to “play off of the flavors and cultural history of where I’m from,” as he tells Eater, which is Shreveport, Louisiana. Yes, there will be the Texas trinity — brisket, ribs, and sausage — but also, his brisket will “have a little big of a different flavor profile.” And he’s also looking to offer different formats of those expected meats. That’s leading to the brisket debris po’ boys that will be available at the first event (see below).

Fulco will also lean into pork dishes, including smoked sliced ham and pork steaks. And he wants to play around with game meats, including duck (he teases a pulled duck with crispy duck skin and plum barbecue sauce for a future event, as well as duck gumbo). He will utilize Louisianan products and ingredients not typically seen in many Texas barbecue places, like Creole mustard and cane syrup from Louisiana brand Steen’s. He also plans on making his own Tabasco hot sauce.

A thing that Fulco learned at Interstellar is the importance of “fresh vibrant acidic sides,” which “go well with barbecue,” as he explains. The coleslaw will be vinegar-based, and there will be pickled okra and tomato salad, as well as sweet potato items.

And for desserts — he doesn’t consider himself a pastry chef — he’s working on pecan pie brownies and a strawberry-based homage to longtime Shreveport restaurant Strawn’s famous icebox pies.

“I knew I wanted to go into barbecue and was obsessed with it,” Fulco tells Eater. “[I] just wanted to work for as many people as I could and learn as much as I could,” he tells Eater.

Fulco attended Louisiana Tech University to earn his business degree, which is when he realized he was enamored with smoked meats after working at a barbecue restaurant during school. And, when his parents moved to Houston, he also went there after graduation to live with them. That’s where he worked Pinkerton’s Barbecue for a bit.

And then came Austin, because that’s where he felt like he could really learn, or as he put it, “Obviously, it’s kind of the barbecue capital — no offense to Lockhart.” He moved and worked at Franklin Barbecue, where he worked in various front- and back-of-house roles. Eventually, he made the move over to Interstellar — with a pause in the middle to help Pinkerton’s open its San Antonio location.

At Interstellar, Fulco went from cooking, cutting, prepping, to general managing. All the while, he knew he wanted to make barbecue on his own. “I wanted to combine Central Texas barbecue with the foods I grew up on — Louisianan and Cajun — because it’s what I love and it always felt like a natural combination to me,” he says.

Fulco learned more about barbecue pop-ups while helping out a friend too. He assisted friend and pitmaster Kareem El-Ghayesh with his Texan-Egyptian barbecue spot KG BBQ during its pop-up days.

Fulco does want to eventually open a food truck or a physical restaurant. That’s when he’d want to offer whole hog barbecue done up in a southern Louisiana style — aka cochon de lait — where the animal is roasted in a vertical spit. He plans on adding ingredients like lemon, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and garlic.

While Fulco runs his Parish pop-ups, he’s going to remain the general manager of Interstellar through the end of the year at least. He notes how supportive the staff and owner John Bates have been with his endeavors.

Parish’s first pop-up on March 30 will have two sandwiches. There’s the smoked brisket debris po’ boy, where the sandwich comes with brisket in a debris gravy, plus Creole mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles on French bread. Then there’s the vegetarian blackened vegetable muffuletta, which consists of a veggie mixture of eggplants, zucchini, red peppers, confit tomatoes, and an olive salad, plus smoked provolone, also on French bread. Both will be accompanied by a bag of Zapp’s potato chips.

It takes place during the alfresco event Hyde Park Storytelling. And Fulco will be serving out of Batch’s currently vacant food truck. He’s got another scheduled pop-up also at Batch for Saturday, April 13, with details to come later. And then Fulco is tentatively planning follow-up events somewhere in Leander at the forthcoming beer garden Shady Brew Garden and Taylor beer garden the Loose Screw.