In the realm of regional American barbecue styles, almost every southern state seems well represented for their local specialties. From Texas brisket to Kentucky’s mutton, vinegary pulled pork in North Carolina, to Alabama’s chicken with white sauce, it seems as though every southern locale has its unique spin on the business of smoked, meaty delights. Well, everywhere except for Louisiana, which surprisingly appears to have evaded all attempts at being lumped in with any particular barbecue identity.
For Shannon Bingham, chef and pitmaster of the recently opened Devil Moon BBQ in the CBD, the lack of any defined Louisiana barbecue style doesn’t indicate the state’s lack of devotion to the delicate art of smoking. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“For me, growing up in Louisiana, having a family that’s been in south Louisiana that goes several generations back, you think about the things that make our food so special, that makes it taste so deep and layered, and so much of that is smoke,” Bingham said. “We have all these crucial elements to our cuisine: tasso, andouille, boudin, all these things that come out of the smoker. We haven’t ever and probably will never call that stuff ‘barbecue,’ but inherently what we’re doing isn’t different traditionally than stuff that happened in Texas or North Carolina or Tennessee. We’ve just never branded it that way.”
What you’ll find at Devil Moon, other than a bright, contemporary dining room that shares its space with Brewery Saint X, is a style of barbecue that incorporates both traditional American BBQ techniques as well as culinary methods and ingredients heralded by south Louisianians for generations. It is the best of both worlds. Pulled pork, ribs and burnt ends nestle comfortably next to chaurice and boudin, dirty rice and meaty white beans. It’s the kind of natural synthesis that makes perfect sense to any lover of both Cajun cuisine and classic barbecue flavors alike.
It’s clear that Bingham and his crew take great pride and care in bringing all these flavors to the table. Take, for instance, the cracklins, a simple treat usually enjoyed in greasy paper bags purchased at gas stations in and around southwest Louisiana. “Cracklins to me are a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ kind of food. ” Bingham said. “We follow real standard cracklin’ cooking procedure, with one exception: the first thing we do is that we smoke the bellies just enough to get that perfume on them. But from there it’s the straight Cajun gratton-style.” And that chaurice? “It’s probably the most important thing we do with our ‘south Louisiana BBQ angle’ is to really nail the sausages,” he said. His version does just that, using 100% pork shoulder, tons of fresh, local vegetables and a labor-intensive two-step smoking process. The effort does not go unnoticed when you snap into that hot casing and experience pure Louisiana carnivorous bliss.
While most of the menu at Devil Moon relies on traditional ingredients and techniques, that doesn’t mean it’s lacking a few surprises. Instead of relying on tried-and-true smoked chicken, Bingham instead opts for perfectly smoky, buttery turkey breasts for outstanding BBQ sandwiches, as well as sauced up on a platter. You’ll also find smoked pastrami, the preparation of which takes four days and results in a jaw-droppingly tasty barbecue meat that would be just as at home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as it is in downtown New Orleans.
More than anything – perhaps more than even getting to run a barbecue restaurant in an air-conditioned space – Bingham appreciates the creative “fluidity” that running a BBQ counter in downtown New Orleans offers. ““We’re getting a lot of feedback daily from our regulars, and it allows us to try new things, and just be a real fluid restaurant in a way that fine dining or seasonal restaurants are, and that’s generally not a thing you see in counter-service barbecue restaurants. For us, it’s great. We’re never in a rut in the kitchen.”
About the Chef
A New Orleans native who grew up in the Bywater, Shannon Bingham got his first culinary job at The Joint when he was in high school. While studying journalism at Loyola, Bingham befriended Chef Sue Zemanick and convinced her to let him spend his weekends staging in the kitchen at Gautreau’s. But the siren song of the barbecue pit eventually pulled him back to pulled pork, and after stints working for Zemanick and Donald Link, the young chef found himself at Blue Oak, where he spent five years refining his techniques and BBQ education. In time, this led to a small pop-up in the St. Roch Market, which sadly didn’t survive COVID, but it did lead to his being tapped as pitmaster for Devil Moon, which opened in the spring of 2023. So far, it’s been a highly positive experience for the young chef. “We’ve felt really welcome so far in the neighborhood,” he said. “Now we’re starting to have people beyond this little CBD/Warehouse bubble come visit us, and it’s really nice to see. We feel like every week we see new faces, and people are leaving happy, and that makes me happy.”
