OUR REVIEW OF JASPER'S

The father who raised both Kent Rathbun of Abacus in Dallas and his brother Kevin of Nava and Rathbun’s in Atlanta to be famous chefs belonged to the greatest barbecue fan club that ever existed, the brotherhood of touring jazz and blues musicians.

From Louis Armstrong to B.B. King to Wynton Marsalis, the arrival routine for such artists has changed not one bit: find the gig, find the hotel, find some barbecue. Inspired by what he tasted in his travels, as well as by what he tasted at home in Kansas City, Rathbun’s father perfected his own skills to the point of asking to cook for his buddies in hotel kitchens on the road. Back home, he made sure his sons knew their way around not only a smoky backyard pit but the classics of Kansas City’s barbecue scene, especially the legendary Arthur Bryant’s.

The single most intriguing thing about Rathbun’s concept for Jasper’s, beyond its subtitle “Gourmet Backyard Cuisine,” is the absence of a true smoker in the kitchen. At the original location up in Plano, as well as in expansions to the Woodlands and then to the Austin area, Rathbun has not only installed the “next best thing” but has, in a sense, carried barbecue even farther back to its roots. The smoker-grill he’s designed for Jasper’s starts out each day as a rotisserie, with chicken, turkey, back baby pork ribs and even rainbow trout turning slowly high above a fire of oak and hickory. At this point, the grill man pushes the burning wood and glowing coals forward under a grate, adding more wood as the evening progresses, to create a high-heat grill for finishing smoked meats as well as cooking flat iron steaks. There’s no time-honored 18 or 20 hours of cooking beef brisket at Jasper’s, but there is the tradition and the taste, delivered by a man who remembers the boy who loved nothing better.

A perfect example of what a chef-artist does with old-fashioned barbecue is what Rathbun does with his baby back ribs – even before he dishes them up with New Age/Old World “creamy baked potato salad.” You have to start, he says, with a great product – which is chefspeak for “expensive meat.” Each rack gets rubbed with olive oil and then with a spice blend created for the occasion, then allowed to marinate with those flavors for 12 hours or more. These racks are then cooked over a low fire until medium-well done, being flipped often and basted with a citrus barbecue sauce. Once they reach that desired status in life, they are transferred to a pan, covered with aluminum foil and chilled. When ordered, the racks are cut into “bricks” of three ribs each and finished on the by-now super-hot grill.

As though in response, Rathbun’s version of traditional Texas potato salad starts out as a baked potato, then gets cubed and flash-fried, then mixed with sour cream and spices where the mayo normally would be. Even to a potato salad lover – or indeed to a baked potato lover, or to a French fry lover – Kent Rathbun’s spin on this classic is an epiphany.

One of the joys of Jasper’s, seldom seen in other, far simpler Texas barbecue joints, is first-rate appetizers, soups and salads. Best starters include the prosciutto-wrapped shrimp and grits, direct from the Carolinas by way of polenta-crazed northern Italy, the jumbo lump crab cakes made a textural wonderland by tomatillo-poblano cream and jicama-tortilla slaw, and (for blue cheese fans) a freshly-fried order of perfect potato chips doused with creamy-crumbly Maytag blue. The best soup is the grilled chicken masa, a bit like Tex-Mex “tortilla soup” that’s died and gone to heaven, while the single best salad wanders far from Texas barbecue. It features red chili-seared ahi tuna, with rice noodles and a heat-infused Thai vinaigrette.

Happily, desserts at Jasper’s come as “minis,” not so much so you can eat less as so you can eat more of them. Customer favorites based on childhood memories include the banana parfait with homemade “Nilla” wafers (the pudding whipped till air-light, garnished with banana slices and a sprinkle of crushed vanilla wafers), the Rocky Road ice cream sandwich with chocolate and caramel sauces and “gooey marshmallow cream,” and Rick’s Rockin’ Chocolate Cake. Rathbun is threatening to work up a new dessert based on those old-time campfire s’mores. After tasting all that’s come before, we’ve decided to take him very seriously.