I
recently had the opportunity to sit down
with Colin Barker and Scott Randall, two
of the pit masters at TT’s Old Iron Brewery.
Neither of them had been working in kitch-
ens before, but they couldn’t resist the op-
portunity to create this barbeque magic with
Chef Chad White.
The great thing about doing barbeque in
Spokane is that “We don’t have any barbe-
que traditions to uphold. We can cook Texas
brisket and Kansas City ribs and North Caro-
lina pork. We don’t have the rules that some
other cities do,” Colin said. At TT’s, they
live by the motto “Let’s do what we do really
well, every day.” Well, it’s safe to say that
Colin, Scott, and the team have succeeded.
They are incredibly passionate about what
they do. People go to Austin, Texas just for
the bbq, but the TT’s team hears every single
week, “This is the best barbeque I’ve had
outside of Texas” — OR, “This is the best
I’ve had, period.”
How did each of you end up working at
TT’s?
Colin: Chad and I have become friends over
the years. I talked to him about 12 months
before he planned to open TT’s and he need-
ed someone to handle the barbeque side of
the business. I told Chad that I only wanted
to do it if they were going to do it right. We
started by doing a little recipe testing before
opening but ended up just kind of jumping
into things and running with it because ev-
erything moved so fast. I worked as a pastor
before becoming full time at TT’s in October
2019.
Scott: My grandpa was a butcher and he
taught me how to barbeque. Before working
at TT’s, I was doing private catering events
here and there on the side. I met Colin at Fal-
co’s Barbeque Fest a couple years ago, and
we became great friends. Colin asked me to
join him at TT’s and I flirted with the idea,
then eventually joined in July 2019. Colin
said, “It didn’t feel like we were really open
until Scott was here.”
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
What is your education/culinary background?
They both agreed that working at TT’s has been their culinary school. They have
also learned a lot from Youtube and cookbooks, but mostly from intentional time
spent working.
The biggest learning curve for them was realizing that they can cook a brisket at
home and follow all the steps and it will turn out perfectly. But, in the height of
the summer when they are cooking 20 briskets a day at TT’s, it’s a whole differ-
ent ballgame.
Colin arrives at TT’s at 3:30 am to get things going most days. They both don’t
mind working the early shift because it means they get more time at home with
their families.