Navigating London at rush hour means parting tides of bankers in dark suits. But stepping off the tube at the aptly named Bank station, in the heart of the city\u2019s financial district, I found many of them sitting at the Ned, dirtying their crisp, white shirts and silk ties with Texas barbecue.<\/p>\n
The building, which houses a luxury hotel, several bars and restaurants, and a private members club across the street from the Bank of England, has the Electric Bar & Diner tucked into a corner of its cavernous ground floor. There, two Austin pitmasters, John Bates<\/a>, of InterStellar BBQ, and Ali Clem<\/a>, of La Barbecue, are doing a monthlong residency that ends on October 4.<\/p>\n The restaurant is usually the kind of place where asset managers sip martinis at marble tables behind polished walnut partitions that once shielded clerks cashing payroll drafts. A jazz band plays loud enough to drown out the clatter of flatware and the buzz of financial gossip. It\u2019s a surreal place to eat barbecue, which is exactly why I had to come see it for myself. As a Brit whose experience with brisket is shamefully limited to the dry, oversauced versions occasionally found in local pubs, I desperately needed to taste the real thing.<\/p>\n InterStellar and La Barbecue both collected Michelin stars<\/a> in 2024, when the guide landed in Texas, adding to their international cachet. But neither pitmaster crossed the Atlantic to cater to highfalutin palates. \u201cWe didn\u2019t come all the way to London to make watered-down Texas barbecue,\u201d Clem told me. \u201cHopefully we ruin a few ties. Barbecue is supposed to be a little messy. I think once they get into it, they\u2019ll forget they\u2019re sitting there in suits.\u201d<\/p>\n Watching the diners in the room grapple with their food proved entertaining. Eating with your bare hands is usually restricted to late-night kebabs in England, so tackling a mountain of smoked meat without a fork visibly stressed locals. Many clung to their silver knives, tentatively cutting ribbons of brisket. Braver souls engaged in a cautious two-finger pinch, while the rest, I was pleased to see, went full caveman.<\/p>\n The floor manager assured me that no disasters had occurred yet. \u201cIt is early days,\u201d he said, smiling. As I left, I watched as a junior analyst lost his grip on a fat cube of pork belly, sending it tumbling down the front of his shirt from Charles Tyrwhitt, Britain\u2019s answer to Brooks Brothers. I\u2019d wisely skipped the tie, but on my way home, I discovered a dark fleck of barbecue sauce sitting stubbornly on my collar.\u00a0<\/p>\n Replicating authentic Central Texas barbecue inside a grade I landmark\u2014a status reserved for the UK\u2019s most significant buildings\u2014erected in 1929 took some doing. Strict smoke-emission laws meant that running offset pits on Poultry, the old Wall Street of London, was out of the question. Instead, the cooks are using two custom-built UK Ironbrand<\/a> offsets at an off-site commissary kitchen. They run constantly with split British white oak instead of the post oak Clem and Bates are used to working with. The goal is to cook roughly a thousand pounds of meat daily.<\/p>\n The pitmasters imported USDA Prime briskets from Creekstone Farms and Black Angus beef short ribs from Australia, but they sourced the pork and lamb locally. \u201cGrass-fed British beef is fantastic for steaks,\u201d Bates said, adding, \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing what we do, where you need a little more time, you need more inner muscle fat to help those things become tender.\u201d<\/p>\n Clem knows local butchery doesn\u2019t easily translate to Texas barbecue. She recalled an order she once made of massive Irish cuts. \u201cThey kept the rib meat on the long end of the brisket, so I was having to kind of cut the rib meat off and season it and cook it separately, and then I was shredding it.\u201d<\/p>\n Seasoning posed another hurdle. Coarse kosher salt, the bedrock of Central Texas\u2013style beef, proved nearly impossible to find in a city where cooks lean heavily on flaky sea salt. \u201cSo you figure out the pit, figure out the wood, and make it work,\u201d Clem said. \u201cThat\u2019s barbecue. You learn the fire you\u2019re working with and adjust from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Each reservation requires guests to prepay \u00a375 ($102) per person, and there\u2019s a two-person minimum. The table gets a huge tray of smoked meats, sides, and fixings\u2014a meal which can be easily shared. La Barbecue\u2019s brisket is an optional \u00a350 ($68) add-on, but it shouldn\u2019t be skipped. The fatty slice I pulled was glossy, with rendered fat beneath a stout, peppery bark. Clem\u2019s pork ribs had a sweet glaze that softened the bark, but the bite came off the bone cleanly. Her sausage delivered a heavy hit of jalape\u00f1o heat and melted cheddar.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/austin-pitmasters-london-2.jpg\")
A tray of barbecue at the Ned. Courtesy of the Ned ![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/austin-pitmasters-london-3.jpg\")
Electric Bar & Diner\u2019s glowing interior Courtesy of the Ned <\/p>\n