Waking up early for brisket is a Texas tradition, but one family is using northern Mexican cooking techniques learned from their grandfather to make whole lamb barbacoa in pits overnight, and the result is lines at sunrise and a bite like none other in the state.

>> [music] >> Today we're at El Grandpa Barbacoa, where one family cooks tradition every weekend.

[music] >> [music] >> Hey, man.

So good to see [music] you, bro.

Oh my god.

Thanks for coming.

>> No, I appreciate you having us out.

Obviously, I've had your food many times before and [music] I loved it, but I have never seen the day before.

>> Man, sometimes it feels [music] like we're building a house.

It takes so much to get to what we're actually trying to create.

You're going to get to [music] see.

>> I know for a fact that effort is worth it, so I'm just happy that I get to see that effort.

>> Let's do it.

So, David, what you got to do is put them vertical.

>> The first step is to roast the maguey leaves, the agave plant that wraps around the lamb.

>> We're going to roast the maguey leaves in here.

This is the maguey plant, and now what we got to do, we're going to put them a little bit on top, and then we're going to throw them in the fire, and we're going to do one by one.

I think we got about 70 plants.

>> Are you doing one by one?

Literally every >> One by one.

>> Wow.

>> Once you start hearing the pops, the last step is to put them in the fire.

>> We're releasing that juice.

>> Pop pop pop pop pop.

>> Woo.

This smells incredible.

>> Good job, David.

You're doing on your own now.

This is my dad, Javier.

He learned from my grandpa.

That's why he's called El Grandpa.

He started doing barbacoa since he was a little boy.

>> What does barbacoa mean to you?

>> Man, barbacoa to me means legacy.

It means family.

It's a lot of tradition, you know.

>> In the summer, the temperatures in the trailer can reach well into the hundreds, but Emilio and his dad work through the heat.

>> Barbacoa is a cooking technique.

It's not really a type of meat.

This is my personal hot take, you know, >> [music] >> but barbacoa without this plant is like barbecue without the smoke.

It's never going to taste the [music] same.

We only marinate with salt, a little bit of garlic, but all the flavor is going to come from the plant.

>> And then tomorrow, 15 hours later, we're going to emerge a butterfly of delicious lamb.

>> Before the sunrise lines, the pits need to be filled with wood fire and sealed for a slow overnight cook.

>> It's good to be out of the heat finally.

I don't know how you do that every weekend, but I'm sure your customers [music] and I definitely appreciate the effort you guys put in.

Tomorrow is going to be your 2-year [music] anniversary.

>> We are so stoked.

This is very cool cuz we have a big spinning community.

Everybody comes here and it just feels like family, you know.

Man, I'm so [music] proud.

>> I know that when people come early, for example, you guys are are giving out tacos to those people.

[music] And that's exactly what family does, you know.

>> I think that just makes us very unique that we're like, you know, we're not here for the profit.

[music] We're not here to like make millions.

We're really here to create like a family environment that people feel welcome.

And I just want to honor my dad for that.

He really [music] taught me that.

>> For those willing to wake before the sun and arrive at 7:30, a free taco pulled straight out of the pit is their reward.

>> Today is also a great day to see guys.

Thank you guys for being here.

This is our 2-year anniversary and we just want to welcome you guys with a free taco.

Any first timers?

>> Yes.

>> Okay.

Sweet.

>> When my family made kebabs on Easter, my uncle would sneak me a piece off the grill and El Grandpa serving tacos out of the pit feels just as familiar.

>> [laughter] >> My time has come.

This is the the lamb barbacoa already out of the pit.

The The bite that people get if they come before 8:00 a.m.

>> Is this the shoulder?

>> So tender.

So much fat.

>> You want to go ahead and next?

>> Basically, what we just did is that we took out all the lambs that they cooked overnight for 15 hours.

The meat [music] fell completely apart.

Now we're getting to the consommé.

That's where we cook our beef head and our beef tongue.

It's kind of hard to get it >> Oh my god.

Oh my god.

>> The size of this beef head is alarming in a good way.

In a good way.

The whole season [laughter] we've been filming this, I've never been so surprised by anything.

>> For me, something that's fascinating about this restaurant is it wasn't planned.

>> Man, we were never trying to make a business.

I'm in college working at this Mexican restaurant and [music] my dad just wants barbacoa.

I remember like the first time that he had it, he was like >> [laughter] >> It wasn't bad, but it was not the barbacoa that we know what barbacoa is, you know.

Everybody in my family knows how to do barbacoa.

My grandpa, he learned that recipe and [music] he passed it to his kids.

My dad started doing barbacoa since he was seven.

I just told my dad like let's make it happen.

We built the pit and then we made the barbacoa.

>> Who came?

>> It was just like a friends and family.

From there, we just started posting on Facebook saying, "Hey, we have barbacoa.

Like this is what we do."

It was basically like a street food in the middle of nowhere.

But what happened is that the health department came.

So then [music] since that day, we had to shut down.

>> To ensure safety codes were met, they spent 6 months building the pits you see now.

>> We're like so grateful for this country and I know like always want to follow the rules.

We had to build a trailer 6 months later and we were able to open.

That same [music] day that we opened like lines, you know, and my dad just saw the line of people and he just started crying.

Like it was such a moment that I'm just going to always remember [music] it.

>> [singing] >> To celebrate their 2-year anniversary, a mariachi band was hired.

Their voices an extra topping for the meal.

>> [music] [applause] >> A few hours after opening, five whole lambs had been devoured.

So it was time to open the second pit.

>> Can I do the honors?

>> Let's do it.

>> [music] >> So the first thing that we got to do is remove the maguey plant.

So then we have the ribs on top.

We got the spine right here.

>> Oh my god, that is crazy.

>> You can pull out the bones one by one, just like this.

Like butter.

Mantequilla.

This a neck piece?

>> Wow.

>> The leg.

This is the thickest.

Let me find the shoulder.

Last piece, we have the whole head.

There you have it.

We have one whole lamb in here and we have four more.

So this is our lamb belly without the stomach.

What we do here is that we wrap it in banana leaves.

Underneath, we have this our beef cheek.

>> Now that the leaves are gone, what remains >> left in this pot is the consommé.

So all the juice of the meat and all the juice of the plant [music] is going to go into the consommé.

It's basically a mix of flavors.

It has rice, garbanzo beans, onions, chile morita, chile guajillo, and the beef head and the beef tongues.

And it's just, how do I say this in español?

Una fiesta de sabores.

>> Party of flavors or consommé?

>> Yes.

>> The pit is a perpetual flavor machine.

The heat from the coals boils the consommé [music] which steams the lamb and renders the fat which drips into the consommé to fuel the cycle yet again.

>> [music] >> Getting to see every part of the lamb just made me more excited to try each cut in the tacos.

>> So, we have our taco samplers.

Out of all of these, what would you say I should start with?

>> Brother, you got to start with our star, with the barbacoa taco.

>> With the two salsas.

>> Okay, and this is what I need to see, the technique.

Normally, you'd have to pay extra for this, but today I got to I got to lucky.

I'm going to dunk.

>> I'm going to dunk with you.

>> The lamb head, and again, I can't resist the the consommé dip.

>> The lamb head definitely has like more texture.

You have eye, brain, the cheek.

It will punch It will punch you.

>> I'm going to go with the tongue.

>> He was saying the texture is very even on this one, very soft, which is true.

Okay, I'm going to get into the beef cheek.

I've actually had a good amount of times cuz it's pretty popular now in some of the newer Texas barbecue spots.

Yeah, I can't resist to put everything in the consommé because it's adding so much flavor, salinity.

>> So, man, something that we do [music] and we really take a lot of pride in is when we make the consommé, we don't add extra water to it.

If we sell out, we sell out and we're not going to like water [music] down our consommé, you know?

>> I mean, this consommé you won't have it anywhere, like not even in Mexico because we're combining those flavors of the beef head and the the beef tongue and the [music] lamb.

And for me, it's part of the whole experience.

Like, if you come for barbacoa, you need to come for the consommé as well.

>> This is a lamb sausage.

It's wrapped in cheese as well.

>> Yeah, we do a queso costra.

>> This is crazy.

This [music] looks like a Mexican hot dog over.

>> Yes.

[laughter] >> The lamb belly.

>> The lamb belly, [music] we call this one.

>> So, the lamb belly is basically ground inside of the lamb.

The tripe, the heart, liver.

We combine it with [music] red jalapenos or chile manzano, epazote, which is like a special herb.

>> So, which one was your favorite?

>> Lamb barbacoa was was my favorite.

This guy, too.

I'm going to eat the rest of this even when the camera's gone.

>> You [music] were the first one of your family that came to the US.

When did you come to the US and what were you doing?

>> I came to the US uh when I was 16.

I [music] came to play football.

That was like my dream.

>> American football.

I just want to make that clear to everybody.

[music] >> So, yeah, man.

I came to play football.

I came by myself.

And then my family, after like 6 months, they were like, "Well, we want to [music] support you."

They just left everything.

My dad and my mom, you know, it was like there were times that they were like, "We can't [music] do it no more, you know?"

Like, "We don't speak the language.

We don't have family.

We don't have friends."

You know, my dad always had this [music] like social aspect.

And once he came here, it was like a big piece of his personality kind of like left.

When we created [music] this, it's like it's very authentic.

We greet mostly [music] everyone in Spanish.

All our menus in Spanish.

Like, we we own our culture.

>> A lot of your customers probably, you know, some of them immigrants, maybe their [music] parents immigrants.

So, for them it probably feels like a bit of home as well.

>> It just feels like family, you know?

All of our reviews, they're good for the food, but they're like [music] I like I feel so welcome.

>> When one father didn't feel at home in his new country, his son encouraged him to cook their family's meal.

Now, they work together to share their grandfather's tradition with a new generation.

>> There's this saying in Mexico is that el que persevera alcanza.

[music] And basically it means that the one that perseveres is the one that is going to reach.

I'm just so so grateful that my family decided [music] to stay.