On April 21, Daniel Delaney took to the Internet to introduce BrisketLab, “A BBQ recipe development series taking place at various pop-up locations all throughout NYC during the summer of 2012.”
The premise was simple: meat-loving men and women could register with BrisketLab to secure in their name a up to one pound of meat, which can be redeemed via “meat token” (a wooden nickel with the BrisketLab logo and a line of text confirming your entitlement to one serving of smoked, Texas-style, meaty goodness.
Delaney sold out of 2,500lbs of meat in a mere 48 hours, attracting much media attention and setting himself up for a grueling summer of barbecue after savory barbecue. Naturally, we leapt at the chance to host the inaugural BrisketLab event on the roof of Gizmodo HQ, and Delaney gladly obliged.
Friday night, it happened. At 7pm we opened our doors to what for a while seemed like a never-ending procession of strangers, all united by a common love of smoked meat. The line leading up to Delaney’s carving station would. not. quit. So, while salivating on the sidelines, we sipped beers from Sixpoint Brewery and listened to some excellent live music being sung by the band Hot Bijouxx. Between the delirium of waiting out the line while brisket scents wafted though the air, and the coma-like post- brisket-and-booze state we all fell into afterwards, it’s hard to recall too much of what went on up there. We rounded out the night nursing our brisket hangovers at a Tiki bar on the Lower East Side. Which somehow seemed absolutely appropriate.
Thanks to Hot Bijouxx for the live music
Thanks you, Sixpoint Brewery, for supplying the beer
And thank you, Daniel Delaney, for fulfilling our wildest brisket fantasies!
