What it is
Little Miss BBQ is a counter in a warehouse strip on University Drive, south of the airport and north of the 143 freeway, where a line forms every morning it is open and the meat runs out every afternoon. Scott and Bekke Holmes opened it in 2014 after Scott had spent years cooking Central Texas style barbecue as a competition hobby, and they did it the Texas way from the start: offset smokers, brisket as the point, everything sold by the pound and sliced on butcher paper in front of you, white bread and pickles on the side, sauce available and irrelevant. The Valley had not seen barbecue like it, and the line that formed in the first weeks has not gone away.
The brisket is the thing, with a black pepper bark and the fatty end rendered to the point where it falls apart under a plastic knife. The pork ribs and the house sausage are the other two items that disappear first; the turkey and the pulled pork are good and nobody is in line for them. The sides are Texas sides, grits and beans and potato salad, and the patio is a covered slab with picnic tables and a view of the warehouse across the street. None of this is a complaint.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale does not have this, and our what to eat note admits it. Bootleggers is the local smokehouse and a fine dinner; Little Miss is the place that set the standard the rest of the state has been chasing for a decade, and it is eighteen minutes from Old Town, next to the airport, which makes it the ideal last lunch before a flight.
The practical version
Eighteen minutes from Old Town by the 101 and the 202. Tuesday through Saturday from eleven until the meat is gone, usually early afternoon; closed Sunday and Monday. Get in line by 10:40. Order by the pound, eat on the patio, and do not expect to be in and out in under an hour. Cards and cash, no reservations, no call-ahead for the counter.
When to go
Tuesday or Wednesday at opening. The line is shortest, the brisket has just come off, and the staff have time to talk. Thursday and Friday are busier; Saturday is the pilgrimage day, when the line is long by ten and the brisket can be gone by one. The restaurant is closed Sunday and Monday, which catches out visitors every week.
In the cool months the wait is pleasant and the patio is the right place to eat. In summer the line is in partial shade, the staff hand out water, and the sensible move is to arrive before the doors open rather than after. There is no indoor dining room to speak of; this is a counter with a patio.
What to order
- Brisket, moist. The fatty end, by the half pound per two people. The lean is good; the moist is why you came.
- Pork ribs. A rack for the table.
- Sausage. The house links, and the jalapeño-cheddar version when it is on.
- Sides. The grits and the beans. The potato salad if you need a third.
- Not the sandwich. The meat on paper is the point; a bun hides it.
Our mesquite grilling lexicon entry explains the local wood tradition the steakhouses use; this is a different thing, low and slow over hardwood in the Texas manner, and the two are not in competition.
With kids
A patio, picnic tables, meat on paper and white bread: children are fine here, and the line is the only hardship. Bring something for them to do during it. The S’edav Va’aki Museum, five minutes north, is the afternoon.
The story
Scott Holmes smoked meat on weekends and competed on the barbecue circuit, and the story he tells is that the competition style, sauced and sweet and built for judges, was not the food he wanted to eat. What he wanted was the Central Texas tradition of the Hill Country meat markets: salt and pepper, post oak smoke, brisket sliced to order and sold by weight on butcher paper. He and Bekke found a small building in an industrial strip on University Drive, a location chosen for the rent and the zoning rather than the foot traffic, built the smokers and opened in 2014. The Valley’s food press noticed within weeks; the national barbecue writers followed, and within a few years Little Miss BBQ was on every list of the best barbecue outside Texas.
The restaurant has grown carefully. It added a second location in north-central Phoenix, kept the original exactly as it was, and never moved to a dinner service or a Sunday, because the model depends on cooking a fixed amount of meat overnight and selling it until it is gone. The line is not a marketing device; it is what happens when the supply is fixed and the demand is not.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s barbecue history runs through the cowboy steakhouses, where mesquite and the grill are the tradition, and through a handful of smokehouses that have come and gone; the city has never produced a line like this one. Little Miss BBQ is where Scottsdale’s cooks go on their day off, and it is the honest answer when a visitor asks where the barbecue is. Our airport note lists it as the stop between a morning flight and check-in, which, with the sell-out hours, is the one time of day it reliably works.
Getting there
From Old Town, the 101 south to the 202 west, exit 44th Street or 40th Street, south to University Drive, then into the warehouse strip on the north side of the street; the smokers and the line are visible from the road. About eighteen minutes with no traffic. From the Camelback corridor, 44th Street south all the way, past Papago Park and the S’edav Va’aki mound at Washington. The light rail’s 44th Street and Washington station is a mile north and a hot walk; drive.