Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill

Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill (https://www.brisketsbbq.com/) is a literal shack in quiet Oviedo, Florida, slightly off the beaten path but well worth the schlep.  I met some of the nicest, sweetest people — a true family operation — serving some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had in the Orlando area. 
Needless to say, just discovering a new barbecue joint is pretty exciting, especially since I work odd hours now and rarely get out to eat during the work week.  Briskets opens at 10 AM, and since I don’t start work until noon (the joys of working on Pacific time), I made sure to be there right when it opened to bring home plenty of delicious takeout.  My wife and I got several meals out of this barbecue bounty from Briskets.

You order inside the small shack, where you can see everything ready to be portioned and served.  Briskets serves two kinds of house-made smoked sausages, wrapped in natural casings for that perfect snappiness that causes momentary happiness.  Did I try them both?  Have you ever read this food blog before?  What do YOU think?!?!

Sides are on display: elbow macaroni in the front left with creamy smoked cheddar cheese sauce behind it for mac and cheese, green beans topped with crumbled bacon in the back right, and in front of that, awe-inspiring cornbread casserole.  (More on these soon enough.)

Here we have smoked corn and the best baked beans I’ve ever had in the back (more on dem beans in a bit), and something else next to sweet potato casserole in the front right — possibly loaded mashed potatoes topped with cheese and bacon?  I did not try that one, so apologies. 

These are savory brisket and cheese hand pies, with a nice, flaky crust.  Of course I had to try one!  I don’t have a picture of it cut open, but it was really good, like everything else from Briskets.  They also offer pulled pork hand pies sometimes, but not on the day I visited.  I would have preferred that, because pulled pork was one of the only meats I did not bring home, but the brisket pie was excellent.  (I didn’t detect any cheese inside the pie with the shredded brisket, but it came with an additional ramekin of the smoked cheddar cheese sauce for dippin’, so maybe that’s where the cheese comes in.)

This was the highlight, the glorious beef rib, something my wife and I have both craved for far too long.  Charismatic barbecue boss Chuck Cobb blessed  Central Florida with Git-N-Messy BBQ before passing away in early 2022.  In in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, back in the spring and summer of 2020, when Chuck served his barbecue out of a convenience store in Winter Park, I brought home many flawless beef ribs that each lasted us multiple meals.  They were one of the only highlights of those weeks and months of isolation, fear, and uncertainty.  Finding out Briskets served wonderful beef ribs of their own was my main impetus for visiting it in the first place.  There is so much meat, you won’t believe it if you’ve never had one.  If you’ve had “kinda big” pork spareribs, forget it.  Those don’t even compare.   While this is not the cheapest item on Briskets’ menu, one rib is more than enough for a meal, even for Chris Rock in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka.  The beef is so tender and juicy with lots of marbling from fat and a nice outer bark made from rubbed spices, and the rib easily pulls off the Brobdingnagian, brontosaurus-sized bone in one piece.  Briskets serves their beef rib with whole smoked jalapeño peppers and a mound of really good bread and butter pickle slices, all atop three slices of white bread that soaked in all those juices and flavors.  We both loved this beef rib, and I loved everything else that came with it.

Beyond that, I selected a Texas three-meat plate, which came in those great plastic containers that are dishwasher-safe and microwave-safe, with a clear lid that snaps on.  I wish more restaurants would use those.

For our meats, I selected brisket (you have to try the namesake meat!), pork spareribs (excellent in their own right, just don’t expect them to equal the beef rib in size), and the smoked sausage.  I mentioned there were two kinds of smoked sausage on the day I went: Texas beef sausage and jalapeño cheddar sausage.  I would have had a hard time choosing, but they were kind enough to let me try both together as one of my meat choices!  Of course, both were excellent, and that snappy bite you get from the natural casing really elevates them above and beyond most other sausages.The brisket also had some nice marbling — not too lean nor too fatty — and was very tender and packed with flavor from smoking it low and slow.  The pork spareribs had a slight sweetness from the sticky glaze to counterbalance their salty smokiness.  Every single one of the meats amazed and astonished, but that’s not all!  The Texas three-meat platter came with two sides, and because this was my first visit, I brought home a couple of others, too.

Here is the macaroni and cheese.  The smoked cheese sauce ladled on right before packing it up in the to-go container really sets it apart.  I think adding something else to it might put it over the top, like diced pimentos or other peppers for some acidity to balance out the smoky richness, or a seasoned bread crumb topping for a bit of crunch with all that silky smoothness.

I loved the creamy potato salad, which had a slight crunch from bits of celery(?) and tanginess from yellow mustard.  Yes, this was a Southern-style potato salad, and it was damn fine.  My constant readers, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, may be noticing that I try to sample potato salad and macaroni salad wherever they are available, and this one did not disappoint.

These are Bob’s country beans, and they were the most perfect, most glorious, and most beautiful barbecue baked beans I’ve ever had in my life.  Just from one glance, you can see they aren’t your typical brown baked beans, swimming in a sweet, sticky sauce.  There are multiple varieties of beans at play here, and my wife and I could not identify all the different shapes, colors, and sizes.  I took to Facebook to ask what kinds of beans were included, and someone from Briskets (Bob himself?) told me “it took oh maybe half my life to figure that particular recipe out I’m not too quick to share it if that makes sense.  I’ve had a lot of people make a lot of guesses of what’s in there and none have gotten it yet.”  I get it, and I appreciate that.  Unless you are Penn and Teller, most magicians don’t reveal how their tricks work either, and I am perfectly happy to be caught up in the mystery of it all.   

I chose this sweet potato casserole for my wife specifically, although I ended up eating most of it after she first tried some.  (She doesn’t dig on leftovers quite as much as I do.)  It was your typical Thanksgiving style — very rich and sweet from butter, brown sugar, and pecans, but no marshmallow topping here.

And this was the magnificent cornbread casserole, which was topped with a drizzle of honey.  It was sweet — not savory at all — to the point of it practically being a dessert, and so rich and satisfying.  This was a huge hit with both of us.  

I also had to get some banana pudding for us to share back at home.  It was creamy and cool and refreshing, and I strongly recommend it.  Banana pudding goes so well with barbecue, Nashville hot chicken (it might have saved my tongue at the legendary Hattie B’s in Nashville), and so many other Southern meals.  This one was no exception.

While I have every intention of returning to Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill and becoming a regular, I feel like I definitely tried enough menu items on my first visit to write a comprehensive review.  This is still a new business (and did I mention it’s a small, family-owned business?), and I want word of mouth to echo from computers and phones, resonate from the rooftops, and spread throughout the Orlando area.  We are two weeks out from Christmas, and Briskets is even offering a special Christmas menu for feeding huge parties.  In the cooler months ahead, you may want to trek out to Oviedo and enjoy your food al fresco, at those picnic tables they provide, before the humidity becomes unbearable (in March).  But Floridians love good barbecue year-round — I know I do — and at this moment, I can’t think of any better barbecue around here.  Trust me, you need to discover this place for yourselves before everyone else in town does, because long lines of loyal customers are inevitable.  Why not join me in becoming a loyal customer before the lines get out of hand?  You won’t regret it!