Red Beard at the ready

In the few months since their slow rollout, the guys at Red Beard Barbecue have put together what must be the most ambitious, locally sourced, well-made menu in southeast Kansas.

Pulled pork with ancho barbecue sauce and homemade pickles. Fry-bread tacos with smoked chicken and house chorizo. A beef and broccoli bowl with prime brisket au jus, kimchi, and fried rice. Beer-battered chicken breast with sweet chili mayo. Beef-fat fries. Orange-Agave-glazed brussels sprouts. The “Ode to Joe” — a token of deference to a favorite sandwich at the legendary barbecue joint Joe’s Kansas City — composed of smoked prime brisket, Swiss cheese, fried onion strings, and house barbecue sauce. Pulled pork tacos with brie bacon bechamel, fig marmalade, and toasted pine nuts. A Korean tofu dish — for the vegan in your life. Mac ‘n’ cheese. Breakfast burritos. Angus burgers. Popcorn chicken. Creme brûlée.

And nothing on the menu is more than $10 (though you do have the option to purchase smoked meat by the pound or take home a full slab of ribs).

Combining culinary sophistication with a total lack of pretension, Red Beard Barbecue is quietly achieving a reputation as the place to eat for farmers, hipsters, factory line workers, area physicians, and anyone else who prizes big-city cuisine at a small-town price.

But you have to have heard of it first, and the owners of Red Beard Barbecue — who have spent the past few months building their food truck, which will be their mainstay once it’s up and running — haven’t made a huge push to be known, instead allowing the quiet momentum produced by word of mouth to generate a sufficient buzz.

The two-man outfit currently has a website and an Instagram account and a Facebook page, where they apprise customers of their ever-changing menu, and they recently purchased a nice roadside banner — Red Beard BBQ! — but one night not too long ago someone stole it. What kind of person would steal a humble sign advertising great barbecue?

Anyway, Red Beard Barbecue is currently open Fridays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. They also offer catering to individuals and businesses and allow for carry-out orders throughout the week. Whether you’re calling an order in — say, tacos for one or 20 breakfast burritos for the office — or looking to swallow a cheeseburger at a back booth some Saturday afternoon, you can find Red Beard Barbecue at 315 S. Main Street, in Gas, at the SEK Stockyard Diner. Incidentally, that is also the name of their most popular item on the menu, “The Stockyard,” a pulled pork burger with applewood bacon, American cheese, and house barbecue sauce (a sauce made with bourbon, six kinds of peppers, and citrus).

INTERVIEWING Hiram Raby, the co-founder of Red Beard Barbecue, one is relieved of the burden of having to ask the question: “So, how did you come up with the name?”

The answer in Raby’s case is obvious, and it is crawling down his chin in the form of a beard the color of autumn leaves. For not since Moses convinced the Lord to drop bread and meat from the sky upon the heads of the wandering Israelites has a guy with a giant beard been so associated with the promise of delicious food.

But even Moses — while a good egg and a total genius with a stone tablet  — didn’t know the first thing about smoking meat or making homemade pickles. At least not like these guys. But then again Moses didn’t have an Austin Honaker.

Honaker, the creative spirit and culinary Einstein behind the operation, has a long background in food, working his way up the chef’s ladder from lowly prep cook in Kansas City to head of a large-scale kitchen. Plus, before moving to Iola, Honaker was the owner-operator of a popular KC-based taco truck.

And Raby, who brings to the operation his passion for smoking meat, is the only reason Red Beard Barbecue is in the Iola area at all. More than a decade ago, the now 32-year-old Raby received a scholarship to play soccer at Allen Community College. He returned to ACC as the assistant women’s soccer coach some years later, and has made his home in Iola ever since. His wife is the billing supervisor at The Family Physicians clinic, in Iola, and the pair have two young children.

Besides the administrative responsibilities that trail the opening of any new restaurant, Raby is also responsible for one of the most unique items on the largely Honaker-designed menu: the fry bread for Red Beard’s signature fry-bread tacos.

Raby’s grandmother is a full-blooded Potawatomi Indian living on the Potawatomi reservation in Jackson County, and he learned to make the authentic flatbread at her elbow. And so, by combining Raby’s traditional fry-bread wrap with Honaker’s gastronomic filler, Red Beard arrived at one of their most inventive dishes to date (and the favorite menu item of both owners).