Kirbee’s is located at 55 McGuinness Boulevard South, at the corner of Engert Avenue, and is currently open on Friday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., or until they sell out
Best friends Chuck Charnichart and Jonny White are elite-level pitmasters; each runs a highly acclaimed restaurant in Texas; Barb’s BBQ in Lockhart and Goldee’s in Fort Worth, respectively. Charnicart grew up in Brownsville, White in Arlington, and they met while working at a spot in Austin.
(Photo by Scott Lynch)
So it is our amazing fortune that, for their first joint venture (and first foray outside their native state), the duo chose an otherwise unremarkable corner of McGuinness in Greenpoint to set up shop. White moved here last year, Charnichart came this summer, and together they opened Kirbee’s a couple of weeks ago, serving, literally, the best barbecue I’ve ever had in my life.
“We really wanted to open a restaurant in New York City, and this is the coolest space,” White told Brooklyn Magazine. “It has the perfect barbecue look and feel to it. Plus, out of all the spaces I looked at, it was the only one we could afford! Chuck was all in, too, and we signed the lease the same day I saw it.”
Jonny’s plate, $45 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
The menu at Kirbee’s is limited to four set plates of food, the best of which—Jonny’s Plate and Chuck’s Plate—come laden with three meats and two sides, a kind of greatest hits from their respective Texas spots.
The Jonny features a generous three-quarters of a pound of beautiful brisket (craggy bark, ridiculously tender meat, a nice vein of fat running throughout), a hefty, saucy pork rib; and the juiciest, most purely turkey-tasting turkey imaginable. Creamy potato salad and crisp, bright coleslaw both offer a nice counterpoint to all the rich meat, and, like all the plates here, the dish includes house-made pickles, pickled onions, and a lovely, buttery roll.
Chuck’s plate, $45 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Is Chuck’s plate even better? Maybe. You get the same great brisket as above, but the ribs are done in her signature sweet-and-spicy “Molotov” style, and you get a plump, snappy sausage that’s just ridiculously good. There’s also a mound of excellent, earthy charro beans sprinkled with queso fresco on the side, but the clincher here is Charnichart’s green spaghetti, a pile of pasta smothered in a thick, zingy, poblano-forward sauce. Of all the incredible things I tried here on that day, the spaghetti is the one I’m most psyched to go eat again.
“Green spaghetti is everywhere at family gatherings in Texas,” Charnichart said. “You don’t really see it at restaurants though, so it’s pretty great to introduce it to people up here. Everyone back home makes it differently, but this is my mom’s recipe, and it was like, the one.”
Beef rib plate for two, $90 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Slider plate, $30 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Both of these plates are phenomenal, and sharing the pair can easily satisfy three or four people (who will fight over that spaghetti). But if you really want to ball out, get the dino beef rib for two, a peppery, fatty, insanely luscious two-pound slab of cow. Yes, it costs $90, but—like any similarly priced piece of meat at, say, your favorite steakhouse—it’s worth it if you can afford it and, as added incentive, comes with glorious mounds of green spaghetti and coleslaw.
The fourth plate—a pair of sliders made from chopped brisket, slicked with a tangy sauce, on soft, housemade buns—is also delicious but not quite as essential. Get this one on a second or third visit; the other offerings feel more core to Kirbee’s.
Chocolate and banana pudding, $4 each (Photo by Scott Lynch)
You’ll want something sugary after all the salt and smoke, and both puddings—one chocolate, the other banana—do the trick, as does a bottle of sweet tea in this very Brooklyn rendition of a roadside stand, where you order at one window, pay at another, then grab a table inside or post up at one of the stainless steel shelves jutting out over the sidewalk.
And though Charnichart and White both told me that the set-plate format is the best way to feed people fast from such a small kitchen, there have been reports that they will offer an a la carte menu in the future. As White put it, “We just want to cook what we really love, and serve it how we would eat it. We both live in Greenpoint now and love it here. There’s so much great food, so many cool bars. We got extremely lucky.”
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