No Place Like Home: Santa Maria Style BBQ

Posted: Feb 8, 2010 4:27 PM by Jeanette Trompeter
Updated: Feb 8, 2010 4:27 PM

If you've lived around the Central Coast for any amount of time (and you aren't a vegetarian), you've likely tasted the delicacy of Santa Maria Style Barbecue.

It's the popular menu item at festivals, parties, fund-raisers and brandings to the north and south. But try to find it in another part of the country and it's not so easy. It's definitely a local tradition.

Santa Maria Barbecue always includes certain items, kind of like Thanksgiving meals. In this case, it's usually a 2 to 3 pound cut of meat about three inches thick. It's often tri-tip, dry-rubbed using salt, pepper, and often a little garlic and parsley. It's usually cooked for about 45 minutes, and then sliced up against the grain of the meat to showcase the marbling of the cut.

Tri-tip is a cut of meat at the top of a top sirloin. Old-timers and out-of-towners may call it the "butchers cut" as it was often a cut butchers would take home to use for stew or make ground beef out of.

Brain Stein is a Chef for the Susie Q brand and knows the history of Santa Maria Style well. He says up until the 1950's, top sirloin, or the top block cut of meat, was used for Santa Maria Style Barbecues. Tri-tip made its way into the mix a few decades ago with the help of Santa Marians Bob Shultz and Clarence Minetti. Minetti had a market before he opened the well-known Far Western Tavern.

The roots of the Santa Maria Style Barbecue trace back to about 1850 when Rancheros were branding their cattle and would invite their families, friends and vaqueros to a big celebration when the job was done. Central Coast cowboys continue that tradition today.

You don't have to be a cowboy, though, to enjoy the Santa Maria Style today. You'll see it served up just about everywhere. And you know what's cooking when you smell the distinctive aroma of the red oak wood providing the coals. It also provides a distinctive flavor for the meat.

If it's a true Santa Maria style feast, the meat will be served with a green salad, pinquito beans, and garlic bread. The pinquito bean is grown exclusively in the Santa Maria valley. And the garlic bread is dry grilled, then dipped in sweet butter, garlic, parsley and a little Parmesan cheese.

The meat is served to showcase the natural flavor of the meat. Barbecue sauce has to place on an authentic Santa Maria Style Barbecue table. Salsa is, made from the fresh produce grown locally in the valley.

Dessert centers around the strawberry, a 110-million dollar cash crop for Santa Maria. In face, Santa Maria produces 30 percent of the strawberries sold commercially in the United States.

And if you're looking for a wine to pair it all with, go with a Pinot Noir, or Syrah from the Santa Maria Valley.

You may serve it all up just because it's good. But when you do, you're serving up a little sampling of the heritage and history of the beautiful Santa Maria Valley.

Stein says he's been to all kinds of barbecue competitions, and the Santa Maria Style Barbecue is the best in the world.