Slab Barbecue

Smoke kept in motion

Burt Bakman tends smoke as chef and owner at Slab Barbecue in Los Angeles, keeping the meat, sauce, and bread legible rather than ornamental. The work has the memory of Trudy's Underground Barbecue behind it, the pop-up where Bakman learned the direct pressure of barbecue service: fire watched closely, meat moved by feel, and the next handoff never far away. At Slab, that discipline has a public counter and a steadier room, but the method still comes from a pitmaster's patience. Brisket, pork, sausage, sauce, and bread carry the restaurant's grammar. Bakman does not treat those elements as fixed doctrine. He has said, “We change it up, we find some kind of a spice, we’ll introduce it, we’ll try something here that we like. We’re not married to one thing.” That sentence matters here because Slab is not trying to preserve barbecue under glass. It works from recognizable forms, then lets Los Angeles press on them.

Sandwiches as working forms

The clearest read on the kitchen is the sandwich board. The Oooh is built with chopped brisket, onion, cilantro, and barbecue sauce on a brioche bun, a construction that keeps smoke and freshness in the same bite without turning either into decoration. The O.G. Brisket sandwich moves with less garnish in the description, giving the cut itself more room. Tony Montana sits beside them as another named form in Bakman's vocabulary. Read together, the sandwiches show a program that uses barbecue language with deliberate specificity: smoke first, sauce in proportion, bread as structure rather than afterthought. Slab also keeps the order-by-the-pound model of barbecue service, with proteins and sides chosen in the open rhythm of the counter. Creamy mac and cheese, baked beans, and burnt ends belong to that table, not as a separate performance but as the necessary second register of the meal. The point is not novelty. The point is whether each item can stand on its own and still feel cut from the same fire.

The room on West Third Street

On West Third Street, the room has the casual tension of a barbecue house that must move quickly without rushing the thing that brought people there. Trays come forward plainly. The counter does not ask the food to behave like a tasting menu, and the pass keeps the work close to the hand. This is useful for Bakman's cooking because the style depends on visibility: the cut face of brisket, the gloss of sauce, the way bread receives smoke and fat without collapsing into them. Slab's Los Angeles setting matters in that same practical way. Bakman has made the case directly: “There’s no reason why California cannot become its own barbecue region.” Inside the restaurant, that argument is not theoretical. It arrives as The Oooh, with chopped brisket, onion, cilantro, barbecue sauce, and brioche doing the work.