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Between the Lines: Barbacoa, Selena & South Texas Soul

If you’ve never had Barbacoa, let me paint the picture.

It’s Sunday morning. The sun’s barely up. Your tío or your dad swings by the carnicería and picks up a steaming foil-wrapped bundle of beef cheek meat, slow-cooked to fall-apart tenderness, fatty in all the best ways, and deeply seasoned with salt, garlic, and love. The kind of thing you eat with fresh tortillas, a squeeze of lime, maybe some chopped onion and cilantro if you’re feeling fancy.

Then you wash it down with a cold can of Big Red, a bright red, bubblegum-sweet soda that tastes like cream soda collided with cotton candy. It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be. Big Red is loud joy in a can. And if you're from South Texas, you know it as gospel: Barbacoa and Big Red go together like peanut butter and jelly. Like Selena and Corpus Christi. Like San Antonio and the Riverwalk.

For those who didn’t grow up around it, Barbacoa might look intense. It’s not brisket. It’s not pulled pork. It’s something deeper, ancestral, a dish rooted in Mexican tradition and lovingly adopted by generations of Tejanos. And Big Red? You probably won’t find it in a Manhattan bodega or at your local Whole Foods. But if you’re ever lucky enough to taste that pairing together, Barbacoa in one hand, Big Red in the other, you’ll understand a little more about what it feels like to be from South Texas.