The Wandering Que, a Hackensack-based kosher barbecue food truck and pop-up restaurant, will be featured on the new TV show “Shmoozing and Cruising: Tripping on Kosher Americana.”
This program is currently ChaiFlix is a streaming platform specializing in Jewish content. We explore innovative kosher restaurants across America and spotlight a different theme in each half-hour episode, including barbecue, donuts, pizza, Chinese food, and more.
Ali White, 44-year-old pitmaster wandering cue, I started working at a restaurant by chance. A native of El Paso, Texas, he came to New York for college in 1998 after spending a year in Israel.
Later, after graduating and getting married, he lent money to a friend and opened a small restaurant in Washington Heights. But just before the store opened, his friend decided not to move forward with the business, so White quit his job and “jumped behind the counter and never looked back,” he said.
He then expanded into a catering business, purchasing a barbecue trailer to smoke meat over a wood fire and bringing his Texas kosher barbecue to street fairs, music festivals, and other events around the metropolitan area. Ta.
In 2016, White was crowned New York’s Brisket King in a competition among local barbecue pitmasters in New York City.
“Then things really started blowing up,” he said.
After three years of expansion, White opened the smokehouse at 75 Burlews Court in Hackensack with a small barbecue truck and trailer in 2020, just weeks before the coronavirus outbreak. did.
During the pandemic, the business quickly pivoted and expanded its reach to Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and Boston while continuing to deliver food. White said the mobile kitchen, which can be moved anywhere, has made it easier to accommodate backyard weddings and outdoor parties at a time when many indoor venues are closed.
Most of his direct delivery customers are kosher, but White said the customers he serves at concerts and festivals are a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish barbecue fans.
The meat is cooked “low and slow” in a 10,000-pound pit smoker. “There are no tricks or shortcuts in this smoking game,” he said. “We use woods like oak, maple, and fruit trees, and we take a minimalist approach when it comes to flavoring, letting the smoke do all the work.”
Cook white brisket for 14 to 20 hours. The result is “the juiciest, most flavorful meat imaginable,” he said.
White said Jewish barbecue traditions have deep roots. Katz He said “old establishments” such as Deli and Pastrami Queen have been serving smoked meats for decades.
“There used to be countless shops in New York that smoked homemade brisket. But they’ve all but disappeared,” he said. “I came here and reintroduced the same methods that my grandfather would have known when he came to this country.”
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Next week, White plans to smoke more than 400 turkeys for 10 to 12 hours and deliver them to more than a dozen states in time for Thanksgiving.
After that, White would take barbecue even further. He will travel in two trailers to Israel, where he will work with the IDF organization Grilling, serve soldiers at front-line bases and feed thousands of people displaced during the war.
A 4-by-4-by-6-foot smoker in the back of each trailer can cook huge amounts of food at once.
“This allows us to actually serve two or three times as many people as we do,” he said.
White, a father of five, plans to spend Hanukkah in Israel, where he will cook and train people how to use equipment before returning to his family in the United States.
“There are mouths to feed on every side of the world,” he said. “But it’s going to be a great three weeks over there.”
