At Buffalo's Southern Junction, Texas Traditions Meet Indian Influence
Pitmaster Ryan Fernandez has something fresh to say about barbecue at his critically acclaimed restaurant
Welcome to the weekend! Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:
Cover Story: At Buffalo’s Southern Junction, a pitmaster draws on his Indian background to add unexpected flavors to classic Texas barbecue.
February’s Featured Field Guide: Ready to plan your trip to Buffalo? This month’s featured Field Guide is a two-day itinerary to the city that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, and more. Paid subscribers get our Buffalo Field guide as well as access to our full library of city guides for free, along with access to our new Google Map!
The Order: The crispy oysters at Kindred in Davidson, North Carolina are a must-try dish.
Weekend Reading:
looks back at the explosion of food culture in the late aughts, heads to Pennsylvania, covers Michelin’s expansion in Florida, plus shares details on the next season of Top Chef.
Tex-ish Traditions
BUFFALO, NY — While I’m an equal opportunity barbecue eater, Texas barbecue is my favorite. I’ve lined up at Franklin Barbecue and La Barbecue in Austin, made the pilgrimage to Lockhart to have brisket and sausage at Smitty’s and Kreuz Market, and ordered trays of tacos at CorkScrew BBQ in Houston well before it received a Michelin star. But while I’ve enjoyed a lot of great Texas barbecue over the years, the best I’ve had recently wasn’t in Texas at all.
Buffalo, New York, is home to Southern Junction. It’s where pitmaster Ryan Fernandez is serving his “Tex-ish” ‘cue, which pulls in influences from his native India.
“My goal is to have our Texas classics and other stuff that we call ‘Tex-ish’,” Fernandez tells me. “You’ll never hear me call this a Texas barbecue joint; I’ll always call it ‘Tex-ish’ since it’s not authentic but it’s pretty close to it.”
If you’ve eaten at any barbecue joints in Texas, you know what you’re getting — slabs of fatty brisket, spare ribs, and spicy hot links, plus sides like beans and coleslaw. You’ll find these at Southern Junction. But you’ll also find dip dip chicken, a smoked half chicken doused with spiced coconut oil and curry leaves; brisket biryani; and barbacurry, braised beef shoulder mixed with caramelized onions and garam masala. It’s a menu that speaks to deep Texas traditions while reflecting Fernandez’s life story.
Fernandez grew up in Kerala, India, before moving to Plano in ninth grade. He lived between Dallas, Lubbock, and Austin before arriving in Buffalo eight years ago to join his mother and sister. He had been working in tech when the cooking bug bit. “Barbecue had been something I was doing on the side for years and I never really thought about it as a full-time career until 12 years into my other line of work, when I was like, I gotta get out of the office,” he says. When barbecuing with neighbors in Dallas, he lit upon his formula. “We cooked a brisket one weekend and completely overcooked it,” he recalls. “I said, ‘I’ll make a curry and chop it up and put it in.’ We all ate it, and were like, we need to do this more often.”
Fernandez began working at restaurants, including Buffalo’s Lloyd Taco Factory and the now-closed Aro Bar de Tapas, learning the formal cooking and managerial skills needed to run a restaurant. He kept smoking meats, and in 2020, opened a take-out joint that saw him through Covid shutdowns.
“One of my first customers called me and was like, ‘There's a restaurant for sale. We're interested in the rest of the building but if you want to lease the restaurant space from us, go take a look.’” When he saw the space, Southern Junction’s current location, he was sold. “It was truly built out for a meat-heavy program and had all the facilities we needed,” Fernandez says. “I was like this is a no brainer.”
The restaurant opened in 2023 and since then, Fernandez has received numerous accolades. He was nominated for the James Beard Emerging Chef award in 2024 and is up for the Best Chef: New York award this year. He was also named to barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn’s list of the best Texas barbecue outside of Texas for Texas Monthly.
“Daniel Vaughn came into town last summer and I almost passed out when I saw him standing in line,” Fernandez says. “After he ate, he told me, “A lot of times when I go to barbecue places that do what you’re doing, the sauce or flavors are a way to mask food that wasn’t smoked well. But I can tell by the way you’re cooking that barbecue comes first and everything else comes second.’ I try to keep it as authentic to Texas as possible and play around a little.”
There are two ways to approach a visit to Southern Junction. You can walk through the alleyway marked by a sign reading “Bar-B-Q Enter Here,” enter through a door that nods to Texas’ lone star flag, and join the line to order at the counter. But if you don’t mind sitting at the bar (we never do) head through the wooden door along the street, grab a stool, and place your barbecue order with one of the bartenders — along with a cocktail or a pint of Shiner. Why wait in line when you could be sipping a jaggery-sweetened Michter’s old fashioned?
Our tray arrived piled with brisket, smoked chicken, a housemade Texas hot link, brisket biryani, cabbage-carrot slaw with coconut-ginger dressing and spiced peanuts, coconut curry and hot barbecue sauces, plus two “Texas Twinkies.” They’re based on a dish Fernandez loves at Dallas’ Hutchins BBQ — giant jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and brisket, wrapped in bacon, smoked, and glazed.
The smoked “dip dip” chicken is a star. Fernandez’s young niece once saw him dipping the bird and the name stuck. “Any barbecue place in Texas is going to have a half chicken,” he says. “The flavoring is spiced coconut oil and there’s a dish, Kerala fried chicken, which has a very similar flavor profile.” Fernandez’s coconut oil includes curry leaves, onions, garlic, ginger, and a house garam masala blend.
On the flip side, the brisket “is as traditional as I get,” Fernandez says. “If I cook brisket any other way someone from home is going to call me and go, What is that? What did you just do there? Stop doing that.” But you can still eat this textbook brisket in the Tex-ish manner. “In Texas, a foldie is a slice of bread with a piece of meat on it and you fold it over,” Fernandez explains. “Though we make white bread in house, we also get Malaysian-style parathas in, and we use that for a foldie with coconut curry sauce.” That sauce is based on one Fernandez’s mother makes. “It’s a much milder version that I adapted to work with barbecue,” he says. “It’s got a little more cream, but the base recipe is a Kerala dish. You find coconut curry sauce in all these little dives in Kerala where it’s paired with seafood.”
When you eat here, it’s clear how the smoked meats and Indian flavors complement each other. But there’s more to the relationship between the two cuisines. “A lot of Indian cooking is stuff that cooks low and slow,” Fernandez says. “In Kerala, we did a lot of outdoor cooking at home over open fire.” Kerala translates to “Land of Coconuts” and all parts of the tree were used in cooking. “The old husks or the dried leaves get used to cook on a wood stove and that flavors your food,” Fernandez explains. “Also, in Texas, the food is spice-heavy and there’s a lot of Mexican influence. If you look at South Indian flavors, the main spices are coriander, cumin, cardamom, and clove. In Texas, you’re using a lot of cumin, coriander, cilantro. So it’s a very similar spice base for both.”
My visit to Southern Junction in December marked the first time I’ve eaten Texas barbecue while it was snowing. Buffalo winters are cold, but those tending the fires don’t seem to mind. The offset smokers, which use local cherrywood, are in the restaurant’s side yard. We watched as a pitmaster braved the elements without a jacket as the snow fell. “We’re going to need to put a roof over it this year,” Fernandez laughs. “Because we have fire boxes in the area by the pits, it stays warm enough when we’re working.”
The smokers have no problem in the frigid Buffalo weather. Fernandez had them all built locally and they’re designed to withstand the temperatures. He works with a local welder who built him a 15-foot, 1,000-gallon smoker. “The firebox is a different size and heavily insulated,” he explains. “The length and width of the stack are optimized to give us a better draw throughout. But the rest is pure craftsmanship. It’s welded so there are no leaks in that smoker. To get something that big running at 250 degrees constant for 12 hours in this weather, that's a feat.”
Once it warms up, Fernandez will be adding a direct heat pit, which will allow him to smoke different items. “It’s an old-school Texas way of cooking that you don’t really find outside Texas Hill Country or far West Texas,” he says. “It looks like a whole hog cooker but it has more distance between the coals and the grate. You’re slow smoking over direct coals, which completely changes the flavor profile of what you’re cooking.” That profile lends itself well to items like pork steaks, wings, and vegetables. “I want to do stuff you don’t commonly find in a barbecue joint,” Fernandez says. “I mean, why not?”
365 Connecticut St, Buffalo, NY | @southernjunction716
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Crispy Oysters at Kindred
DAVIDSON, N.C. — Joe and Katy Kindred’s lovely restaurant, Kindred, is located about 30 minutes outside Charlotte and worth the trip for dinner. While a meal here comes with many highlights, from milk bread to pastas, the signature crispy oysters are probably at the top. Inspired by Buffalo wings, the dish features plump North Carolina oysters, which are battered with buttermilk and seasoned flour then fried until lightly crisp. They come served atop a dill yogurt ranch with a drizzle of Calabrian chile oil for some heat and a micro-celery garnish to finish it off. They’re perfect with a glass of sparkling wine.
131 N Main St, Davidson, NC | @kindredrestaurant
OREGON
When Eater Portland Came To Town: Mike Thelin, writing for his newsletter
, takes us back to the early days of Eater and the explosive growth in food culture that was happening in Portland, Oregon (and around the country) at that time. “For those who weren’t there, it’s impossible to fully describe the excitement of the age,” Thelin writes. “Just about everything we now know, love, and understand about American food culture was being invented and reinvented—but back then, it all felt new and under the radar.”PENNSYLVANIA
Saturday Night in Lancaster: Writing for his newsletter, Last Call,
heads to Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a “low-key, lone-wolf getaway.” He hits the town to visit the Horse Inn, check out the Pony Club, and explore Hi-Fi Izakaya.FLORIDA
Michelin Guide Expands its Reach: “The Florida Guide will encompass the entire state in 2026, according to Michelin, bringing the Guide to cities such as Jacksonville, St. Augustine, the Florida Panhandle, and the Florida Keys,” writes Laine Doss for the Broken Palate newsletter. “The Keys is especially ripe for several Michelin nods including the much-loved Louie’s Backyard in Key West and Jeremy Ford’s newly opened restaurant Salt + Ash at the Hawk’s Cay Resort in Duck Key.”
PLUS
Top Chef Season 22: Top Chef returns in March and
shared the new trailer for season 22 in her newsletter, The Mouthful. The upcoming season was shot in Canada, but we’ll be cheering for South Carolina’s Shuai Wang (Jackrabbit Filly, King BBQ) along with Chicago’s Zubair Mohajir (Lilac Tiger, Coach House, Mirra), César Murillo (North Pond), and Bailey Sullivan (Monteverde). Can’t wait!— Compiled by Kenney Marlatt
Want more? Chat with us on Substack, download our Field Guides, check out our archives, or follow us on Instagram @americanweekender. We’ll be back next week.
Once again, extremely hungry after reading this (and all!) of your posts. 😋
Loved reading this, and the most beautiful photos to boot!