(Left) Wood-Fired: John Lewis imports mesquite for the Rancho Lewis pit and grills, delivering a smokier flavor true to his native El Paso. (Right) His signature beef back ribs.
Written by Robert F. Moss
Photographs by Peter Frank Edwards
Barbecue fans attending the King BBQ pop-ups last fall at Edmund’s Oast Brewery could stroll across the open patio and sample another fresh arrival on Charleston’s barbecue scene: the mesquite-cooked beef back ribs at Rancho Lewis.
The restaurant opened in May 2022 in the former Workshop space at Pacific Box and Crate, and it’s not a barbecue joint, per se. “It’s the food of El Paso,” John Lewis explains, “whether it’s a Mexican restaurant or this and that—that’s how the restaurants are there. It’s a mix of everything that happens there.”
Barbecue is one of those things, but it’s different from the slow-smoked meats found in Lockhart and Austin, Texas. Lewis characterizes it as, “cooking over open fire stuff, like they would do on the cattle drives. What I grew up knowing as barbecue in El Paso was kind of exactly that. A little bit more direct heat—closer to something like Rodney Scott’s doing.”
The restaurant’s pit and wood-burning grills are fired not with local oak or hickory but with mesquite. “That’s what’s out there [in El Paso],” Lewis says. “So it’s definitely gonna be smokier.” The cuts of meat “lend themselves to a little bit of a faster cook” and get a crisp, charred bark from “a finish over extreme direct heat when it’s ordered.”
When most barbecue aficionados think of smoked beef ribs, they probably envision the hefty beef plate ribs that have become icons of Central Texas barbecue in recent years. The ribs at Rancho Lewis are a different cut. “That’s off-the-loin meat,” Lewis says, “so beef back ribs—that’s steak.” That means they can be cooked at a higher temperature over direct heat and deliver the same beefy punch as a rib eye.
The beef back ribs, Lewis reports, have been a hit, and he’s now working to add more El Paso-style cuts to the Rancho Lewis menu, including beef cheeks and barbacoa. “I’m trying to represent El Paso,” he explains, “That’s something they do all along the border.”
Rancho Lewis
1503 King St.
rancholewischs.com
WATCH - See the Rancho Lewis grill in action
