Capital Q - For Homesick Texans, Capital Q is BBQ Heaven

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For Homesick Texans, Capital Q is BBQ Heaven

The Hill - January 31, 2001
By Albert Eisele

It’s in Chinatown, but it sounds, smells and tastes like the Lone Star State.

Capital Q
707 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 347-8396

Hours:
11am-8pm, Mon-Fri
11:30 am –8 pm, Sat.
Closed Sunday

Prices:
Inexpensive: sandwiches and tacos,
$4.25-$5.95; plates, $5.25-$24.95;
side dishes, $2.00-$4.00; bulk meats,
$10.00-$12.00 pound

Food 8 Service 6 Ambiance 5 Price/Value 9

Ratings: Based on a one-to-ten scale for food, service, ambiance and price/value; up to 5 domes awarded on the basis of reviewer’s judgment.

The Chinese lettering on the sign out front translate literally into “Texas State Fire Bakery,” but for Washington’s legion of transplanted Texans, including those who are accompanying President George W. Bush, Capital Q means only one thing: the best, most authentic Texas barbeque this side of the Rio Grande.

Want proof of owner Nick Fontana’s boast that his beef brisket, cooked to plastic fork-cutting tenderness in 225-degree heat for hours in a smoke-filled pit and slathered with his house-made sauces, is better than anything else homesick Texans can find in the nation’s capital?

Or that his barbecued pork ribs, smoked turkey, chicken or Texas sausage from the Southside Market in Elgin are so good that customers will stand in line for as long as it takes and then eat standing up if necessary, as it often is in this crowded, funky-hole-in-the-wall restaurant that was opened only three years ago?

Ask almost any member of the Texas congressional delegation or staffer or native Texan who’s ever tasted real Texas barbecue, and they’ll tell you it doesn’t get any better than this, especially if you have a side order of black beans and rice, collard greens or Texas caviar – otherwise known as black-eyed peas – and wash it down with a bottle or two of Shiner Bock or Lone Star beer.

In fact, the ultimate proof that Capital Q is the barbecue place of choice for real Texans was demonstrated last August when House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) ordered 4,000 pounds of beef brisket from Capital Q for the big Texas bash he threw at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Fontana also catered Armey’s Christmas party and the Inaugural party of Rep. Charles Stenholm (D-Texas).

“Nobody has better brisket than we do,” Fontana, a 37-year-old native of Port Arthur and graduate of University of Texas, said last week. He even jokes with Texas Aggies that his barbecue is better than anything they can find in College Station, and he hasn’t gotten many arguments from them.

About the only Texan in Washington who hasn’t eaten here yet is President George W. Bush himself, but Fontana expects that oversight to be corrected soon. “We invited him to come by when he was governor, but he couldn’t work it in his schedule,” he said. “But we’re pretty much counting on seeing him one of these days since we’re halfway between the White House and the Capitol.”

Fontana, who once worked as a bellman at the Stephen S. Austin Hotel in downtown Austin, isn’t exactly a newcomer to Washington. He came here in 1989 to help open the Westfields Conference Center in Loudon County, VA, before going to work in Georgetown as the maitre’d and manager at 1789.

In December 1997, Fontana fulfilled his dream of opening his own restaurant. “I wanted to do my own thing, and thought Texas barbecue was a good niche market,” he said as he prepared for a happy hour invasion of “Texas Exes,” University of Texas alums. He found the place in Chinatown and liked its central location, and the fact that there was a lot of new development in the area around the MCI Center.

He filled his restaurant with Texas memorabilia, including old maps, saddles, Texas Longhorn signs and a massive Longhorn steer’s head, and opened for business, but not before negotiating with the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which only reluctantly agreed to let him use the depiction of a cow skull on his sign because it signified death.

Word quickly spread among Texas expatriates about the restaurant, even though Fontana said he had to educate the local residents that, in Texas, barbecue means beef brisket. “We make all our own sauces, and they’re not sweet and vinegary like you get in North Carolina.”

Fontana, who was an all-Texas star for his 1980 state championship high school team – he scored twice in East Huntsville’s 19-0 victory over Paris – developed most of his recipes from family and friends. He even included a very un-Texan plate of Portobello mushroom and a Chinese Cowboy Platter (your choice of meat over rice.)

But his mainstay dishes are the wonderful brisket, pork ribs, smoked turkey, pulled chicken, and the Texas sausage, all cooked slowly over red oak and hickory and carved while customers stand in line. Fontana recently told an Austin newspaper columnist that the latter was initially his best-selling item until he convinced Washingtonians that brisket is best.

“Brisket’s not an item out here that people know what it is,” he said. “And people out here don’t understand pink. They don’t understand pink ribs and pink chicken. They don’t understand the smoke turns the meat pink.”

I stopped in with two colleagues last week and we sampled all of the meats, along with sides of Texas caviar, black beans and rice, smoked home fries and cole slaw. I shared every dish and was impressed, especially when The Hill’s photo editor, Tom Butler, a native of San Angelo, Texas, pronounced our meals as good as anything he had back home.

Nearby, lawyer Randy Young, a telecom engineer for the D.C. law firm of Keller and Heckman who lived in Houston for 12 years, was enjoying a plate of brisket and ribs, while John Norris, who has his own law firm on the same block and has been coming since the restaurant opened, said the barbecue “is the best in D.C.” He recommends buying the $30 meal tickets, which gives you your choice of five meals.

“It’s getting a lot more crowded,” he said. “You’ve got to stand in line these day.”

Maybe that’s why Fontana is already thinking about expanding. In fact, he’s in the process of refinancing his restaurant and hopes to open a branch on Capitol Hill by the end of the year, and then Dupont Circle and the Ballston area of Arlington, VA, next year.

That should make all the Texas expatriates happy, and it’s good news for anybody else who’s just learning what real Texas barbecue should be.

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