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Some of the nation’s most accomplished pitmasters are veterans. Here are three of the very best:
Feges BBQ, Houston, Texas
For Patrick Feges, the road to barbecue began in Ramadi, Iraq, when he was severely wounded in a mortar attack in November 2004.
While recovering from his injuries and being medically discharged from the Army, “a fellow soldier gifted me his old smoker,” Feges told AARP Experience Counts. He fell in love with cooking on the Brinkmann smoker and decided to go to culinary school in Austin.
He and his wife Erin, a former executive chef and sommelier, opened Feges BBQ together in 2018. Feges, who is self-taught as a barbecuer, is known as the “whole hog guy.” He said: “At the 2015 Houston BBQ Festival, I cooked my first whole hog. I've been doing them ever since. As far as I know, right now we are one of two barbecue restaurants in Texas that serve whole hog every day.”
Feges makes a point of sharing his success, offering free meals every Friday to all veterans, now serving up about 70 free meals per week. And he’s not the only pitmaster giving back.
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Veterans BBQ Camp, Mount Juliet, Tennessee
As a Marine, Frank Magana oversaw convoy security through dangerous routes in Iraq, clearing roadside bombs in Fallujah and elsewhere in Anbar province. “After I came back from my second tour, I couldn’t relax. You train yourself overseas to always be alert, and I couldn’t let go of that,” he told AARP Experience Counts.
“I wanted to be around people again, but I didn’t feel that comfortable out in public. So, I found a way to have them come to me instead by doing barbecues at my house.”
After lots of positive feedback, he invested in a food truck, The Hearty Hog, which ended up winning “best in the county” in the Nashville area for three years in a row.
“One day I was like, ‘I’m going to teach veterans how to barbecue,’” he recalled. “It helped me to get back to my extroverted, past self, so I thought it might help others as well.”
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