Trailer Park Barbecue Builds a Cult Following in Dallas: Highland Park Foodies Cannot Get Enough of This Budding Barbecue Celebrity

Louie King, a new “trailer park” barbecue joint in Lower Greenville, is drawing meat fanatics seven days a week at 1916 Greenville Avenue. Will Fleischman, award-winning pitmaster and Smoking Meat cookbook author, is manning the pit.

The “white trash barbecue” concept comes from the minds behind neighboring Feed Company, ABV Establishment, and Leela’s.

“It’s Highland Park food with trailer park sensibility,” Fleischman tells PaperCity. “It was partner Patrick Bruce’s dream to have a lo-fi, scratch-and-dent kind of barbecue.”

Before joining the Louie King project, Fleischman spent two years at Lockhart Smokehouse in Plano. Prior to that, he went to culinary school and lived and worked in Shanghai, China before finding his way to Lockhart in Bishop Arts.

Coming from Wisconsin — which is definitely not on the list of top barbecue states — Fleischman says that he learned the craft of barbecuing as he went.

Now something of a Texas barbecue celebrity, Fleischman has been spotted on television episodes of BBQ Pitmasters, Bizarre Foods America and Chuck’s Eat the Street. He also published Smoking Meat, his own 250-page cookbook, that he finished in just nine weeks.

The menu at Louie King is not of any one particular barbecue tradition.

“It’s broader than any one style,” Fleischman says.

On the mouth-watering roster of meats is Akaushi brisket, St. Louis spare ribs, pork loin that’s uniquely shaved with a meat slicer. And Fleischman’s favorite: pulled rabbit sliders.

“We’re also the only people serving Pittsburg, Texas-style hot links that have been cooked,” he says.

All meat is fired up on a custom-built pit that only uses post oak wood. And with barbecue, sides are just as important as the meat. Fleischman says that their “target is to take standard barbecue items and take them up a few notches.”

White Trash Champagne?

Hand-crafted sides, such as potato salad with baby red potatoes, chives, cheddar cheese and sherry wine vinaigrette and mac & cheese with smoked and pureed garlic cloves and cavatelli pasta are a push toward this goal. There are also charro beans and something Fleischman calls “Memaw’s Freezer Slaw.” It’s his Italian great-grandmother’s coleslaw that is actually frozen and then thawed before served.

To wash all that barbecue goodness down, Louie King offers “cheap, trashy beers” — think PBR, Lone Star — which are available for $2 each. Within the next month, the new barbecue joint will introduce a pre-fixe brunch plate that includes a jalapeño-and-cheddar Belgian waffle and a “white trash mimosa.”

The drink is a mixture of Hawaiian punch and Andre Champagne, Fleischman notes is as white trash as Champagne can get.

Louie King is open daily from 11 am until their food sells out.