For better and worse, Churchrow Tejas BBQ is not Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ. Churchrow’s kitchen is helmed by Miguel Vidal, the former owner, chef, and pitmaster of Valentina’s, a groundbreaking joint that imploded suddenly and spectacularly in 2024. While Vidal’s talent is undeniable, Churchrow’s pit room hasn’t yet achieved the level of consistency I came to expect at Valentina’s. Both Vidal and Churchrow’s owner, Simon Madera, know there is still work to do, and they are relying on each other to realize their ultimate vision for the six-month-old restaurant.
Over four visits, I’ve witnessed mistakes and improvements at Churchrow. I’ve also seen a different Vidal than I knew at Valentina’s. “The version [of Vidal] that we have is really good,” Madera said. When he hired Vidal nine months ago, Madera took a chance on a broken and humbled man trying to piece his life back together after bankruptcy and drug addiction. Now, Vidal says his goal is “getting back to being someone who can be trusted.” He knows he let people down when Valentina’s went bankrupt after the restaurant moved from South Austin to Buda. He also has a family to support. When I interviewed him in August 2024, after the closure, he told me, “I know that my superpower is cooking, and that’s the only one I have right now.” He’s able to use it again thanks to an opportunity that fell into Madera’s lap.
The building that houses Churchrow, in Austin’s Crestview neighborhood, was renovated when barbecue joint Black Gold opened there in late 2024. (It closed nine months later.) That meant Madera inherited a couple lightly used thousand-gallon Cen-Tex offset smokers, along with a dining room with leather-backed chairs and fancy lighting that screamed fine dining instead of smoked meat. The building’s owner invested in Madera’s other restaurant, Taco Flats, and asked Madera if he would operate a new barbecue joint there. He reluctantly agreed. The timeline was tight. “Renovations were just lipstick,” Madera said. He needed a pitmaster. After talks stalled with a few local joints about potential partnerships, Madera made a surprising call.
Madera opened the first location of his Taco Flats chain in Austin in 2014, a year after Vidal and his wife, Modesty, opened Valentina’s as a food trailer. Madera knew Vidal from when they both attended St. Edward’s University, in Austin. He loved the tacos from Valentina’s even more than his own. “Miguel was the reason I felt like I needed to step up my game,” Madera said. He brought in his mom—who owns restaurants in Mission and Edinburg, his hometown—to teach his cooks how to make tortillas, picadillo, rice, beans, and carne guisada.
Neriz Medina, Miguel Vidal, and Steven Foster in the Churchrow pit room. Photograph by Daniel Vaughn 
Smoked chicken skewer. Photograph by Daniel Vaughn
Madera’s other ventures drew him closer to the barbecue world. He opened a smoked-meat taco shop, Carne Lenta, in the space that previously housed Micklethwait Craft Meats, in Smithville. Carne Lenta closed in 2024. His East Austin bar, La Holly, was once the site of Kellee’s Place, where the late John Mueller was known to grab a few beers. Mueller ran his barbecue trailer just behind the bar, and now there’s a Taco Flats truck parked where Mueller’s pit used to be. When Madera had the chance to open his own barbecue joint, he wondered if Vidal’s history made him motivated.
“If we get Miguel back on the horse—and we can do it—it’s going to be good for him and good for us,” he told me of his thinking at the time. His wife and business partner, Hobie Sasser, was more skeptical, but she eventually came around. Vidal had taken on several jobs to make a living after Valentina’s, including coaching youth soccer and installing HVAC equipment. He had just finished up an installation at the Driskill Hotel when Madera called. He needed more work, so he accepted Madera’s offer. “At first I think he just wanted a job,” Madera said, “but now I think he’s into it.”
Vidal was standing in the open kitchen at Churchrow when I walked in last month. Outside his line of sight, I placed my order at the register by the door, then peeked around the stack of butcher paper–lined trays to say hello. His crew was working the smokers visible through the pit-room window behind him, and he had meat on the block in front of him. He looked up with a nervous smile, posed for a photo, and got back to work.
The ordering system causes an unfortunate bottleneck. What was a side door at Black Gold is now the main entrance at Churchrow, thus there’s not a whole lot of room for people to line up inside. On each visit I was first presented with an extensive, two-sided menu. When another customer walked in behind me, I felt the pressure to complete my order quickly rather than study my options. When I wanted to take my time, Madera suggested I sit and order from the full-service bar..
I was at Churchrow for barbecue, particularly the barbecue tacos, but I started with the smoky chicken skewer. Four big pieces of boneless thigh were coated in agave barbecue sauce and topped with pico de gallo and rajas (sauteed strips of poblano and onions). It rested on a plate swiped with a habanero-mustard glaze. The chicken was juicy, well-seasoned, and big enough to be an entrée.
I also ordered smoked mollejas from the starters section of the menu. These are beef sweetbreads that Vidal smokes in a pan to collect all the fat and juices. They’re cooled overnight, then placed in a pot along with the collected liquid on a low simmer to heat for service. I enjoyed an excellent version last month. Another customer messaged me saying his order from several months before was badly overcooked, so I asked Vidal about the difference.
“They were being overfried,” he said. “There wasn’t a recipe at first . . . I just cooked them.” According to his own admission, part of the problem at Valentina’s was his impulse to just do things himself if his staff didn’t learn immediately. He said he often yelled at them when they did tasks incorrectly. I went back last week to see if my mollejas experience was an anomaly. Vidal wasn’t in the kitchen, but they came out perfectly once again. I did as he suggested and palmed a fresh flour tortilla over the mollejas, plated alongside tomatillo salsa, fire-roasted salsa roja, rajas, and a house-made escabeche of pickled jalapeños, carrots, onions, and garlic. I swirled the tortilla to mix the ingredients, then pinched it together and took a big bite. It was the best bite I had during all my visits.
Smoked mollejas with a duo of salsas.Photograph by Daniel Vaughn
Neriz Medina, the pitmaster who prepared my meal during that last visit, worked with Vidal at Valentina’s and followed him here. Steven Foster also works the smokers, which are rarely cool given that the restaurant offers lunch and dinner seven days a week. He also smoked the best brisket I had there. It was a thick and fatty slice, with a heavy dose of mesquite smoke, and came inside the La Valentina taco with a layer of smooth, lime-heavy guacamole and salsa roja on a flour tortilla. More than any other bite, this one brought me back to the old Valentina’s food truck. (For the record, I didn’t try my other old favorite, Valentina’s signature Real Deal Holyfield breakfast taco, available only on Saturdays and Sundays.)
The flour tortillas have caused some stress. Madera came with a recipe developed from his mother’s methods. Vidal arrived with his own recipe that was beloved and celebrated at his previous joint. I would prefer Vidal’s, or at least my memory of them, but they’ve reached a compromise and use a recipe that mixes elements of both. They’re made fresh throughout the day. The ones I was served during my last two visits were far superior to the earlier versions I tried. Vidal told me politely that he’s sick of talking about his old tortillas. “A part of me wants to leave some stuff at Valentina’s that was for Valentina’s,” he said.
The barbecue sampler platter is called the Holy Roller. The smoked sausage is made in-house, and slices of it were satisfying, though the habanero-and-Oaxaca-cheese link was far more impressive in the Sur-Tejas taco. A pile of pulled pork was juicy, smoky, and nicely seasoned. The pork ribs have gone from tolerable to decent, but they haven’t yet been great. The same can be said for the lean brisket. Ask for fatty slices or chopped, like it is in the Brisket a la Mexicana taco, mixed with salsa roja and pico de gallo.
The base of the steak-tampiqueña plate is a perfectly executed chicken-verde enchilada. On top, you’ll find slices of smoked fajita—seared too hard on the flat top making them tough—joined by sauteed poblanos, red bell peppers, and onions. Fluffy rice and rich pinto beans come on the side, along with some escabeche and tortillas. The fajita beef was far superior in a taco on a different trip. I also enjoyed the Tejanita taco with slices of smoked and grilled chicken thigh.
A bowl of fideo showed great promise. The smoked picadillo in a salty tomato-and-chili broth was homey, and the blistered serrano on the side brought some heat. Shredded Oaxaca cheese and thin slices of ripe avocado made it attractive. It all looked great until I dug down for the noodles. The hallmark of fideo is vermicelli toasted in oil before the liquid is added. It adds a distinct nuttiness that mine was missing, as these noodles were clearly untoasted. I alerted Vidal, and he calmly promised to address it. That was quite a change in demeanor from the final days of Valentina’s, when he brought a cook into the dining room to scold him in front of me for an issue he saw with my fideo.
A feast at Churchrow. Photograph by Daniel Vaughn 
Smoked fajita taco on a flour tortilla. Photograph by Daniel Vaughn
You needn’t feel pressure to know what you want for dessert right away—a QR code on the table allows you to order a sweet treat and drinks whenever you want. I tried a dense yet satisfying crème au chocolate, tinged with orange liqueur and topped with crushed pecans and whipped cream, and a slice of carrot cake with a thick layer of cream cheese icing, a recipe from Vidal’s mother. Both arrived straight from the fridge, so allow them to warm up a bit before consuming, if your patience allows it. But the best dessert was the sweet corn cake, which featured whole kernels in the batter. It came topped with whipped mascarpone, drizzled with smoked-raspberry sauce, and sprinkled with lime zest. It was a delight.
After six months, Churchrow feels like it’s still in its soft-opening phase but sometimes delivers like an old standby. I know some barbecue diehards will never visit because of how Vidal left his employees and creditors in a lurch in Buda. It seems like he is trying to be accountable and atone for the past. Madera is counting on him to do that too. “If he falls off, I don’t have a contingency plan,” he said. I’d also be disappointed. But I don’t begrudge Vidal for trying to make a living using his cooking talent. “If I was going to give up on this,” Vidal said, “I might as well give up on life.” He said the job has made him want to be a better version of himself. “I’m clearheaded,” he told me, adding that when he finishes a conversation, “I’m not walking away paranoid wondering if they knew I was f—ed up.”
For those who do visit Churchrow hoping for the Valentina’s experience, you won’t get it. “It’s a different restaurant,” Madera said. “There are some things [about Valentina’s] we pay homage to, but we’re Churchrow.” Vidal echoed him, saying, “It’s a new era, a new time, and a new partnership, so it’s not going to be the same.” And in all the truly important ways, that’s a change for the better.
Churchrow Tejas BBQ
1521 W. Anderson Lane, Austin
Hours: Sunday 10–8, Monday 11–9, Wednesday–Saturday 11–10
Phone: 512-284-8247
Pitmaster: Miguel Vidal
Method: Mesquite in an offset smoker
Year opened: 2025
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