Bringing Texas-style BBQ to Sisters

If slow-cooked, wood-smoked barbecue is your thing, Slick's Que Co. will tend to your hankering. Slick's has opened in downtown Sisters, at 240 E. Cascade Ave., sharing the parking lot with the Shell gas station.

Slick's uses top-quality meats - Angus brisket, pork butts, turkey and sausages from Myers Sausage Company in Elgin, Texas. Pork baby back ribs are available on Friday nights. Sides of coleslaw, potato salad and baked beans are made fresh daily. Menu items, which include barbecue sandwiches, plates, lunch and dinner kits, are available to eat in or take out and are reasonably priced.

The restaurant keeps somewhat unusual hours: Thursday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. until the food runs out. Owner and pit master Roy Slicker admits the hours take some getting used to, but are not all that uncommon in the barbecue world.

Slicker contends that barbecue is Thursday through Sunday food. It fits right in with the weekend and allows family time, too. The Slicker family - Roy, Kim and their daughters, Madison, Remington and Flynn - can all be found helping at Slick's.

Barbecue is big business in the Southeast and Southwest regions of America. Slick's is real Texas-style barbecue, served on paper with white bread, baked beans and a choice of salad. The rubs and sauces, all original recipes, have been referred to as St. Louis-Texi-Memph style. While the flavors might not be strictly Northwest, the attitude behind barbecue fits right in.

"It's about family," said Slicker. "It brings people together in a relaxed environment...There's something about barbecue that just speaks from the soul, it connects people more than any other food in America."

At Slick's, that connection starts when you walk through the door and stick your hands into the hospital-grade hand washer. It's mounted in a shiny, new water trough on the wall to the left of the door.

The quirky ambience continues with the music - the play list of KFAT, a very old California radio station. Numerous photos of Texas barbecue joints adorn the walls, chronicling the Slicker's whirlwind trip through Texas last spring break. The family visited 17 barbecues in five days, sampling food at each one and making friends wherever they went. One of the most noticeable things about the photographs is the lack of pretension in the buildings. Some of the most award-wining barbecue restaurants look downright nondescript.

Because Slicker hates to waste food, he ended up erring on the short side the first weekend Slick's was open. He assured The Nugget that he has ample capacity to feed all the barbecue lovers who come through the doors, but still cautions customers to come early rather than fashionably late.

The brisket and pork butt take over 18 hours of cooking at a secret temperature, using apple and another secret wood. Secrets are big in the world of barbecue, with many pit masters tweaking the temperature gauges of their smokers so the true temperature isn't divulged. The key, said Slicker, is low and slow.

Slicker credits the Sisters Business Attraction and Retention Team (SBART) and the Sisters City Council and Planning Commission with getting Slick's Que Co. up and running quickly. The location was originally zoned for a mini-mart, and the city council stuck to its promise of business development by expediting zone changes, with SBART acting as a link. The whole process was completed in under a month, proving that Sisters can be a friendly place for new business.