Texas BBQ set in Glens Falls

By Zander Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer

Slickfin Brewing and Carnivore Brothers BBQ are partnering to open Texas-style barbecue joint “Fire Mission Smokehouse & Taproom” at the corner of Glen and Park Streets, former site of Go Play With Your Food in downtown Glens Falls. It’s set to open on Oct. 23.

Kris and Heather March own Slickfin, which they opened in March 2019. It will continue to brew and operate on Broadway in Fort Edward. Fire Mission will be a Slickfin taproom.

Justin Prescott has operated Carnivore Brothers BBQ food truck for three years. He built a fan base through events like the Shirt Factory Food Truck Corral, and at breweries like Slickfin and Dancing Grain.

All three partners are military veterans — Heather and Kris were in the Marine Corps. Justin was in the Army.

“Justin was a forward observer in the army. Basically, calling in fire and stuff,” Kris said. Hence the name, “Fire Mission.”

Justin calls barbecue his lifetime passion. “I grew up around it,” he said, in a small town, just east of Dallas.

He said he will sell the meat by the pound in traditional Texas fashion, with customers ordering at a counter where proteins are cut fresh and weighed out.

He said Texas-style is unique — and not a common form of barbecue locally.

“I think most people are familiar with Carolina barbecue, the vinegar-based or mustard-based barbecue,” Justin said. “But Texas style is more just dry rub, salt, pepper, garlic. The wood does the work.”

“We do have sauces,” he said. “I have found that that’s what people expect when they see barbecue.”

But Justin’s view is: “If I smoke a brisket for, like, 20 hours, I don’t want you to smother it in sauce. I want you to taste the meat. We try to tell people, try the meat first before you put any sauce on it. If you still want sauce, go ahead. No skin off my back.”

Justin’s favorite item: “Beef ribs. They’re huge” — pound-and-a-half to two pounds each. “You think about the ribs on a cow compared to like the ribs on a pig, that’s how much bigger they are.”

He said, “People think that brisket is king of barbecue, and for a lot of people, it’s more about the difficulty of cooking it than anything else, because brisket’s two different cuts of beef. So it’s harder to get both cuts right — point and flat — just right. So it is more challenging. So that’s why they say it’s the king of barbecue. If you cook a brisket really good, then you know what you’re doing.”

Kris says the barbecue is “something for the local populace where they can go with their family and a couple kids and keep it relatively easier on their wallet. That’s a nice thing we’re bringing to downtown. Portions are absolutely gigantic, so the price that you’re spending, it might seem high, but if it feeds you for two days, it’s not so bad.”

They aim to stay open later than most.

“We’ve heard a lot of people say there’s not really anything to eat after hockey games because everything’s shut down,” Kris said. “We’re hoping to catch the dinner crowd and be open later” — until 10 or 1 p.m., four to five days a week.

As for brews, they plan to start with eight beers on tap, plus a selection of Slickfin’s cans. “We might bump that up to 10, 12, 16 taps,” Kris added.

As a farm brewery, he said they’ll have a full bar, “selling all New York State beer, wine, spirits.”

Heather is originally from Fort Ann.

Kris says, “I retired from the Marine Corps in 2016 in San Diego, and we had a two-year-old at the time. [Heather] was like, ‘Hey, let’s leave California and go back to upstate New York. I’ve been following you around for 15 years or whatever it’s been. So I think it’s time you follow me.’ And I was like, okay. We just packed up and we moved to Fort Ann where she grew up.”

Justin said he got out of the Army in 2011, went back to Texas for college, then in 2014, spent a summer with his dad and family who lived in this area “and I kind of just stayed.”

“We were tubing and hunting and fishing over the next six months or so, and I was like, I don’t want to leave.”

In Texas, he says, “We’ve got, like, two seasons — rainy season and hot season. Here, I got to see the change of seasons…

“A few years later I was like, there’s no barbecue. There’s a big gap in the market. I was cooking for family and friends and stuff in my backyard,” he said. “Everybody said, ‘Why don’t you make a run at this?…We don’t get food like this up here.”

Justin says, “I didn’t want to at first, but then COVID happened, and I was thinking, maybe I should go into business for myself, and I started that three years ago, and it’s just been growing ever since.”

Justin served barbecue at Slickfin regularly, and they all grew close — but this plan came together quickly.

“It was a Friday morning when Go Play With Your Food posted they were closing,” Heather said. “I called right away, and it just happened to fall right into place.”

“At the same time, Justin called us and said, ‘Hey, did you guys see that listing?’” Kris said. “It was very organic.”

“We hadn’t been thinking about this for four or five years. We’ve been talking about how cool it would be to have a place in Glens Falls, but it was just talk at that point — until this space opened up and then we all just kind of jumped on board.”

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