How an NFL star and an Austin pit master brought their Tex-Mex barbecue to Miami Lakes
The first thing Mel Rodriguez did after barbecuing 20 briskets, 20 pork butts, 80 racks of ribs and 100 pounds of sausage over three days and selling out to a hungry Hialeah crowd in an afternoon was sleep for 24 hours.
The next thing he did was plan to open a restaurant.
“The feedback we got inspired us to go for it,” Rodriguez said.
Going for it meant partnering with Miami native Isaiah McKenzie, a fifth-year NFL player who he knew through a longtime family friend, to open La Traila Barbecue restaurant in Miami Lakes. The restaurant, a year in the making since that June afternoon pop-up at a Hialeah sandwich shop, will open May 29 with Rodriguez’s Tex-Mex take on hardwood-smoked east Texas barbecue.
“What you’re going to see from us is Texas-style barbecue but with my Tex-Mex background,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez, 40, spent the last 20 years in Austin — one of America’s great barbecue cities — where he learned barbecue from his father, who built smokers as a side business. Rodriguez moved to Miami four years ago and starting barbecuing for friends as a hobby, a hobby they told him could easily turn into a business in barbecue-starved Miami.
His father built him a 24-foot hardwood smoker that Rodriguez put on a trailer and drove from Austin to Miami just before the start of the pandemic. Rodriguez, who lives in a downtown condo, had to store the rig in a friend’s backyard. He started at pop-ups around South Florida, including weekends at Unbranded Brewing, a Hialeah brewery with deep Texas roots.
Rodriguez’s ‘cue enticed McKenzie, an American Heritage football star whose cooking was mostly reserved to family cookouts and the football field: He smoked the Miami Dolphins for three touchdowns when his Buffalo Bills came to town in January. But McKenzie, 26, had been looking to open a food truck or restaurant in his hometown.
In the football off season, the two worked the smoker together at pop-ups and watched their following grow. McKenzie tapped into his 73,000 Instagram followers and 20,000 tweeps, and soon he and Rodriguez had been invited to the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, where guests got a preview of their barbecue.
Their collaboration led to a permanent storefront for La Traila. There Rodriguez and McKenzie expand to an all-day menu that includes breakfast tacos and burritos, a staple in Texas, to full plates and sandwiches. Prime-grade brisket is the feature, along with pulled pork, smoked spare ribs and jalapeño sausage. For the vegetarian crowd, there will even be smoked shredded jackfruit that imitates pulled pork and Impossible-meat smoked burgers.
Rodriguez hopes a year working in his pandemic barbecue pit will translate to success as more people continue to venture out again, in search of good food.
“They found us in Hialeah and made us do this,” he joked. “I had to make this huge leap of faith.”
La Traila Barbecue
Address: 8030 NW 154th St., Miami Lakes
Hours: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday-Friday; 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday. Closed Sunday-Monday.
More info: LaTrailaBBQ.com
