Sí Baby-Q shows promise with its oriental-inspired dishes

A colorful trailer parked on the patio of Zoé Tong on Barton Springs Road houses a new barbecue joint. Sí Baby-Q opened in early May, serving barbecue dishes as unconventional as its sister (mother?) restaurant’s modern Chinese menu. While the name sounds like a bilingual play on “Yes, Baby,” it’s actually the nickname owner Matthew Hyland uses for his wife, Simone Tong, the restaurant’s chef. They opened Zoé Tong together last year after moving from New York to Austin, where Tong founded Silver Apricot and Hyland launched the Emmy Squared pizza empire.

The couple spent a year looking for the building that now houses Zoé Tong, and they landed on the former location of Uncle Billy’s Brew & Que. They kept the Ole Hickory rotisserie smoker in the kitchen and looked for ways to add smoke to the menu. “I don’t think we’d be doing barbecue if we didn’t have a smoker in-house,” Hyland admitted. Regardless, they embraced the challenge of smoking meat, but they needed help. General manager Travis Vergara had previously worked down the street at Terry Black’s Barbecue. He knew a foreman there, Jonathan Lagos, who could guide Zoé Tong’s crew through using the smoker a few nights a week. Lagos eventually left Terry Black’s to open Sí Baby-Q with Tong and Hyland. So a New York-run Chinese restaurant got into the smoked meat business in Texas’ most competitive barbecue market.

“I was very nervous about being a New Yorker, born and raised in New York, and opening a barbecue restaurant in Texas,” Hyland said. Egyptian-born Kareem El-Gayesh, who runs KG BBQ across town, is proof that Austinites care more about food quality than race. Like KG, Sí Baby-Q thinks outside the box of Texas barbecue, but in some ways it’s frustratingly restrained.

The tender short ribs with a sweet glaze and the peppered sliced ​​brisket were both well executed. The fat from the brisket was well rendered and the bark shined on these ribs, but both types of meat lacked the flavor of the Indonesian long peppercorns listed on the menu as a key ingredient. There was even a jar of conical peppercorns next to the truck window so customers knew what they were ordering. The peppers, whose floral notes and increased heat would have made a nice contrast to traditional black peppercorns, were either applied too lightly or all their spiciness evaporated in the smoking process. What remained was an impressive take on conventional Texas barbecue, so things could have been worse.

The spices in the Dan Dan Frito pie were stronger. Zoé Tong’s kitchen uses brisket trimmings and ground wild boar to prepare the chili-rich sauce that coats the restaurant’s dan dan noodles. Lagos managed to repurpose it as chili in a new version of Frito pie, made with homemade cheese, green onions, cilantro and crumbled cream cheese. Another combination was the Esquites Chinos, which didn’t have enough spice to balance the sweetness of the creamy Zoe sauce.

The SXSE smoked chicken was a firm favourite at the table. Lagos smokes a quarter of a chicken until tender, then douses it in what the team calls Butterworth curry. Butterworth is a major city in the Malaysian state of Penang, where panang curry gets its name. But, confusingly, panang curry is a Thai invention that’s usually quite sweet, so Tong (who grew up partly in Singapore) and Hyland chose a new name for their Malaysian-inspired curry. It’s rich, with coconut milk that’s been cooked until it starts to brown and a blend of Malaysian spices. The chicken is served over rice seasoned with turmeric and saffron, and roasted peanuts, fresh cucumber and ikan bilis are served on the side. Ikan bilis are tiny dried anchovies common in Malaysia, particularly with the national dish of nasi lemak, which inspired the presentation. Hyland said he prefers them to anchovies as a pizza topping.

Hyland isn’t a fan of the cheap white bread served at Texas barbecue restaurants. Instead, Sí Baby-Q serves Malaysian roti canai with every plate; it is called puff roti on the menu. The version I received was dense and oily, not flaky. “Maybe we just didn’t get it right,” Tong said, noting that the roti canai should have been lighter. Better texture on the roti would have improved the lamb gyro, although I enjoyed the juicy shredded lamb and yogurt sauce inside the gyro.

Two versions of the wieners are made on-site. A classic beef version is nicely spiced and made from brisket trimmings. The second wiener will rotate. For now, it’s stuffed with cheese and green chiles from Steelbow Farm in Manor. “I want the wieners to reflect the season,” Hyland said, adding that any fresh produce, like apples, plums or Korean gochugaru chiles, could be the inspiration.

I have to admit that I thought the banana pudding was homemade, but Lagos fooled me with his version. He starts with a vanilla pudding mix, to which he adds sweetened condensed milk and vanilla extract and folds in fresh whipped cream. It’s topped with Nilla wafers and bananas, as usual, and it’s the best banana pudding I’ve ever had from a mix (to my knowledge).

Both Hyland and Tong praise Lagos’ barbecue knowledge, but admit that serving smoked meats is new territory for seasoned restaurateurs. “We want to do a good job at barbecue,” Hyland assured me. Tong echoed his sentiments and said they are committed to getting better every day. “It’s a learning process, and it’s a humbling process,” she said. More than anything, it showed me how well Tong understands Texas barbecue.

Yes baby-Q
1530 Barton Springs Road, Austin
Hours: Sunday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Pit Master: Jonathan Lagos
Method: Oak in a gas rotisserie
Year of opening: 2024