This New Austin Barbecue Truck Infuses Eastern Flair Into Its Dishes

A colorful food trailer parked on the patio of Zoé Tong, on Barton Springs Road, houses a new barbecue joint. Sí Baby-Q opened in early May, serving barbecue dishes as unconventional as the modern Chinese menu inside its sister (mother?) restaurant. While the name seems like a bilingual play on “Yes, baby,” it’s actually the nickname owner Matthew Hyland uses for his wife, Simone Tong, the restaurant’s chef. They opened Zoé Tong together last year after moving to Austin from New York, where Tong founded Silver Apricot and from where Hyland launched the Emmy Squared pizza empire.

The couple spent a year searching for the building that now houses Zoé Tong, and they landed on the former location of Uncle Billy’s Brew & Que. They kept the Ole Hickory rotisserie smoker in the kitchen and searched for ways to add smoke to the menu. “I don’t think we’d be doing barbecue if we hadn’t had the smoker in-house,” Hyland admitted. Regardless, they took on the challenge of smoking meats, but they needed help. General manager Travis Vergara had previously worked down the street at Terry Black’s Barbecue. He knew a pitmaster there, Jonathan Lagos, who could guide the Zoé Tong crew on using the smoker a few nights a week. Lagos eventually left Terry Black’s to open Sí Baby-Q with Tong and Hyland, which is how a Chinese restaurant run by New Yorkers fell into the smoked meat business in the most competitive barbecue market in Texas.

“I was very concerned about being a New Yorker, born and raised, and opening a barbecue place in Texas,” Hyland said. The Egyptian-born Kareem El-Gayesh of KG BBQ across town is proof that Austinites care more about quality of food than pedigree. In similar fashion to KG, Sí Baby-Q colors outside the lines of Texas barbecue, but in some ways it is frustratingly restrained.

Tender spareribs with a sweet glaze and peppery sliced brisket were both well executed. The fat cap on the brisket was well rendered, and the bark glistened on those ribs, but both types of meat were missing the flavor of the Indonesian long peppercorns mentioned on the menu as a key ingredient. There was even a display jar of the conical peppercorns next to the truck’s window so customers would know what they were ordering. The peppers, whose floral notes and increased heat would have made a nice contrast to traditional black peppercorns, were either too lightly applied or had all of their pungency evaporated in the smoking process. What’s left was an impressive version of conventional Texas barbecue, so things could have been worse.

The spice on the Dan Dan Frito Pie was more potent. The Zoé Tong kitchen uses brisket trim and ground wild boar to make the chile-rich sauce that coats the restaurant’s dan dan noodles. Lagos has successfully repurposed it as the chili in a new twist on the Frito pie, layered with house-made queso, scallions, cilantro, and crumbled queso fresco. Another mash-up was the Esquites Chinos, which didn’t have enough spice to balance the sweetness of the creamy Zoé sauce.

The SXSE Smoked Chicken was the resounding favorite at the table. Lagos smokes a chicken quarter until tender, then douses it in what the team calls Butterworth curry. Butterworth is a major town in Malaysia’s Penang state, from which panang curry gets its name. But, confusingly, panang curry is a Thai invention that’s usually quite sweet, so Tong (who partially grew up in Singapore) and Hyland chose a new name for their Malaysian-inspired curry. It’s rich, with coconut milk that has been cooked down until it starts to brown and a mixture of Malaysian spices. The chicken is served over rice seasoned with turmeric and saffron, and toasted peanuts, fresh cucumber, and ikan bilis are served on the side. Ikan bilis are tiny dried anchovies common in Malaysia, especially with the national dish of nasi lemak, which inspired the presentation. Hyland said he prefers them to anchovies as a pizza topping.

Hyland isn’t a fan of the cheap white bread served at Texas barbecue joints. Instead, Sí Baby-Q serves Malaysian roti canai with every plate; it’s called flaky roti on the menu. The version I received was dense and oily, not flaky. “Maybe we just didn’t get it right,” Tong said, noting that roti canai should be lighter. A better texture on the roti would have improved the lamb gyro, though I did enjoy the juicy pulled lamb and the yogurt sauce inside the gyro.

Two versions of smoked sausage are made in-house. A classic beef version is nicely spiced and made from brisket trimmings. The second sausage will rotate. Right now it’s stuffed with cheese and green chiles from Steelbow Farm, in Manor. “I want the sausages to reflect the season,” Hyland said, adding that whatever produce is fresh, such as apples, plums, or Korean gochugaru peppers, could be the inspiration.

One confession I have to make is that I thought the banana pudding was made from scratch, but Lagos fooled me with his version. It starts with a vanilla-flavored pudding mix, to which he adds sweetened condensed milk and vanilla extract and folds in fresh whipped cream. It’s layered with Nilla wafers and bananas, as usual, and is the best banana pudding I’ve eaten from a mix (that I know of ).

Both Hyland and Tong praise Lagos’s barbecue knowledge but admit that serving smoked meats is new territory for the seasoned restaurateurs. “We want to do right by barbecue,” Hyland assured me. Tong echoed his sentiments and said they’re committed to getting better every day. “It’s a learning process, and it’s a humbling process,” she said. More than anything, that told me how well Tong understands Texas barbecue.

Sí Baby-Q
1530 Barton Springs Road, Austin
Hours: Sunday and Thursday 11–7, Friday–Saturday 11–8
Pitmaster: Jonathan Lagos
Method: Oak in a gas-fired rotisserie
Year opened: 2024