Next time you have a layover in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport , tack on a couple of hours and find your way over to the Hard Eight BBQ in Coppell, Texas. Do whatever it takes – rent a car, hail a taxi, call a cousin – whatever…the brisket, and the experience, is worth the effort!
On our flight back from New Orleans, we had a layover in Dallas. Fortunately, our cousin Lori lives close by, so we arranged a 4-hour layover (any longer than 4 hours and you pay a fortune in air miles) to sneak in some Texas BBQ and see her Texas home. Like we didn’t eat enough in New Orleans, but that’s a whole other story to be told later!
Lori picked us up from the airport and had her daughters Jamie and Jessica and their families that live close by meet us at Hard Eight Pit Bar-B-Q in Coppell, a 10-15 minute drive from the airport (depending on construction!). With 5 little grandsons, this is definitely the place where you feel comfortable bringing the kids. Hard Eight is amazing, from the moment you open your car door in the parking lot, the smoke from the Texas mesquite BBQ pits puts you in its spell!! You start outside under the huge barn roof covering multiple smoking pits, and the line snakes around until you reach the pit master, where pulls the meat off the pit and slices it to order on the spot.
The pit master wields his weapon
This is the real deal, mesquite smoked Texas-style barbecue, cooked low and slow over open (and closed) pits – a cooking method the German settlers brought to the Texas Hill Country over a century ago. These pits are smokin’ 24 hours a day. I’m not sure if it was the humidity from New Orleans and Dallas, the heat, or the smoke, but all of the photos on my iPhone came out in a haze!
At the beginning of the line is a small grill where you can order up a rib eye or sirloin steak, but we were waiting for the meat by the pound! There’s no china or white tablecloths in this establishment, they slice and serve up your meat from the pit to your paper-covered tray!
Mesquite smoked meats cooked low and slow at the Hard Eight
They tried to warn us ahead of time to not ask for too much meat because you really do want to try everything: brisket (gotta have that, we’re in Texas for crying out loud!), “fall-off-tha-bone” ribs, chicken, turkey, sausage that’s mild or HOT, pork chops, and these delectable little chicken nugget popper things that have jalapeno and cheese in the middle and bacon wrapped around the outside, yowza! You can also get corn on the cob and baked potatoes right off the pit. They have two barbecue sauces to choose from, sweet and spicy, and oh yeah, they were good (not that the brisket needs it!).
The long awaited brisked sliced to order
After moving through the line in the 90+ Texas heat, along with the fires from the pits and the smoke, you enter the swinging wooden doors and find the family style air-conditioned dining hall, whew. Great log cabin, cowboy themed setting (we learned that Hard Eight can be defined as the eight seconds of a bull ride), I knew I was back in Texas. Your next lineup is the “fixins” where you can start with sliced white bread to soak up any stray juices, potato salad, jalapeno sweet corn (my favorite), coleslaw of course, roasted cornbread salad or Mac-n-cheese.
And then there’s the dessert lineup, pecan pie, cobblers, “slap-yo’-gran’ma-good” banana puddin’ and more. At the end of the line, they put your tray on the scale and check you out. But that’s not really the end…they have a station with great tasting all-you-can-eat pinto beans with jalapenos and bacon (very dangerous for me, especially when heading back onto an airplane!). Where does a girl begin? I felt like I was on an episode from the Food Network!
The tray is full, and I will be soon
The family style dining is great, you can spread out on the table, spin a yarn with your friendly Texan neighbors (this isn’t uptight California dining!), the kids can run around and be loud (and so could I), it’s not just dinner, it’s an adventure!
We summarily devoured all that we could eat (yes, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, Lori had leftovers), the food was far beyond expectation, and my yelp score would definitely be 5 Stars!!
Don’t Mess with Texas! Especially their brisket!
– Nancy