"It's a real honor. It makes us feel really good,” said Todd David on a quiet Monday midday at Cattleack Barbeque, the restaurant he and his wife started four years ago in a business park in north Dallas.
"What I tried to duplicate was the backyard barbeque scene,” he said.
And in those four short years his unassuming backyard scene, in an unlikely location, has been voted by Texas Monthly as the best BBQ in all of Dallas, third in the entire state of Texas.
If you’re looking for that backyard scene and a staff of seven people prepping collard greens, sausage, brisket, and ribs in top of the line smokers, five days a week you will be sorely disappointed in your search. Because even though it's been voted the best, it's only open on Thursday and Friday from 10:30 to 2. And also the first Saturday of each and every month when they smoke an entire pig.
"Really because that's all my wife and I want to be open,” David said. Todd David retired after thirty years running a disaster cleanup business. He and his wife started Cattleack as a hobby.
"I'm looking to have fun in the next thirty years. I worked real hard for the first thirty years,” he said. “Plus it takes us all a week to get ready for it,” he said of the two days, for a total of 7 hours, they are open each week.
“I've got great tools. I've got great staff. I bring in great food. We tie all that together, make it from scratch and we end up with a good product."
Cattleack has one more popular, if not temporary, competitive wrinkle. They don’t have a liquor license.
“So we give the beer away,” Todd David said with a laugh. "When people dine in, they're entitled to have a free beer with lunch. Lone Star beer of course,” he said.
But as for their limited hours, 7 hours a week at Cattleack is all you’re going to get, at least for now.
"Right now there's nothing else on the horizon to go any more days. But I won't tell you that's in concrete.”
Those decisions dependent of course on how soon the Cattleack faithful begin lining up for each very popular, and now award-winning, Thursday and Friday morning.