In 2017, pitmaster Bob Heffernan learned some devastating news: He had lung cancer, and his oncologist estimated he had seven months left to live.
When Bob was released after a one-month hospital stay, he got to work teaching his son, Evan, everything he knew about barbecue.
Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor for Texas Monthly, wrote about the Heffernans after visiting the family’s new truck in Cypress.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us a little bit more about Bob and Evan and Heffernan Bar-B-Que.
Daniel Vaughn: Yeah, the Heffernans, I mean, talk about just perseverance. You had Evan Hefferen, who was in college at the time where he learned this diagnosis from his father and had a decision to make. Was he going to continue on with his college career or take over the family business?
But he had to make that decision knowing that if he didn’t come in and learn from his father, then the family businesses was probably just gonna go away after his father passed away.
Had Heffernan Bar-B-Que been in business for a long time before?
It had been in business for a long time, but it was more focused on catering, bringing their trucks to different events – ball games and farmers markets, things like that. So it looks a little different than it did back then.
What about Bob? Had Bob had a particular interest in barbecue and wanted to pass it along? Was that really important to him beyond the business itself?
Yeah, it really was. And, you know, Evan admits that he wasn’t really interested in cooking barbecue and didn’t really know how to cook barbecue at that point. His dad and family convinced him that this was the right thing to do, and he decided to do it.
And you know sitting there with his dad, who at the time didn’t have really the energy to do the cooking and was really just there guiding Evan, basically to take over Bob’s dream.
Bob’s dream was to have this successful barbecue business, and he’d built it up to a certain point, but he was hoping it would continue on, and it has.
Well, how has it continued on? Tell us about Heffernan Bar-B-Que under Evan. How’s he styled the business?
When he started out, it was really just replicating exactly what his father did. And really a lot of that was creating barbecue that was made mostly for sandwiches, tacos, things like that – you know, chopped brisket and pulled pork.
And he really wanted to change things up and make it more of a modern barbecue joint with just perfectly done spare ribs and sliced brisket and different specials. Making his own sausage was something that he’s added to the menu as well.
He wanted to create that big, beautiful barbecue tray that you see so many photos of. And to do that, it really took changing a lot of the cooking methods and things that his dad had taught him.
And that too was, you know, sometimes cause some painful conversations in the family that he was really trying to change things up from the way his dad has done it, but he was doing that really to allow the business to thrive.
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It’s not just the barbecue, though. How are the sides there?
Yeah, well, so Bob’s wife is Jeannie, and after he passed away, she was really the rock there that helped kept the business going along with Evan. And she makes the sides. Evan’s aunt, Jennifer, makes the desserts.
And the sides, they have a lot of family history to them as well, with a really simple potato salad, but just that really comforting flavor of a potato salad. And these red beans and rice; pinto beans are sort of the norm for Texas barbecue, but they wanted to bring some Louisiana flavor into it, brought out grandma’s red bean recipe and serves it over rice.
And then Jennifer, his aunt, makes this blueberry and lemon tart. It’s kind of hard to describe because unlike a tart that’s usually kind of thin, it’s really thick, got some heft to it, but surrounded by this paper-thin graham cracker crust. It really was the sort of perfect complement to the heavy barbecue – again, that lightness of the lemon, blueberry.
I never got a chance to check out Heffernan’s work before Evan came on board, but it sure sounds like Evan has sort of elevated this business by leaning into family a little bit more.
Yeah, he really has. And you know, it certainly took the family to support him and to encourage him.
The sausage making is one of those prime examples where when I went to the truck, he served this French onion soup sausage. It was like caramelized onions and shredded cheese. And that was the first batch he’d served to the public ever.
And I showed up that day, and he was a little nervous to give it to me, but it was fantastic. And it was just one of three sausages that were on the menu, something that he really just started doing a couple of months ago.
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You said that Evan was planning on going to college. Did he just abandon that and do this full time?
Yeah, he did. He allowed his dad to be his teacher and teach him everything about the barbecue business that he knew and everything about the big old steel pit that his dad had built in the back of that barbecue trailer.
How’s he feeling about that decision now?
I think he loves it. I mean, just hearing him talk about barbecue and talk about the attention that they’ve got recently.
He got a visit from Aaron Franklin, who was a person who he’d really looked up to and used a lot of his cookbooks. But to have Aaron Franklin come to the truck and try the food and basically tell them that “you are on the right track and you’re making great barbecue that people need to be told about.”
Sounds to me like Dad would have been proud.
Yeah, absolutely. It was funny, at the end of our conversation, he said, you know, that if his dad saw the barbecue now, he might’ve encouraged Evan to just go open his own place, because it is so different.
But he said he thinks his dad would be really proud of what he’s done with the business and how the business is thriving these days.
