Les Rhodes Jr.'s barbecue went viral. Now you can try it in Utah.

Talking face-to-face with social media influencer, grill master and “Oxtail King” Les Rhodes Jr. is like stepping into one of his Instagram or TikTok videos.

As he speaks in a deep voice about what happens in the barbecue pits behind his South Salt Lake cafeteria, he wears a white cowboy hat, red sneakers and a red T-shirt that reads “Paintin' 'Em Red,” a reference to the deep red his meat turns when smoked.

After stopping at a particular smoker, called Big Red, he lifts the lid, lets out a cloud of hot, meat-scented air, and carefully sprays the red pork pieces (which will become pulled pork) inside with a solution of apple cider vinegar and water. This is supposed to tenderize the meat and keep it juicy.

Then he goes to another pit, nicknamed “Candi Red,” and opens the doors to reveal rows of smoking brisket, rotating over and over again as if it were in a rotisserie oven.

The secret to true Texas flavor, Rhodes explained, is the wood that fuels the fires in the pits. No charcoal is used, no gas – just wood, specifically hickory and pecan.

“This is how you get the best flavor when smoking meat,” he said, holding up a log. “And that's exactly what we use.”

The only thing missing from this “video” is his typical farewell greeting: “And I’m out.”

Les Rhodes Jr.'s social media videos of him smoking meat — particularly oxtail, which is so tantalizing and delicious you can almost taste it — have made him famous. He has nearly 1 million followers on Instagram and TikTok. One of his most recent videos, a slow-motion close-up of a sliced ​​brisket, has been viewed more than 10,000 times on TikTok in less than a week.

When he's not touring with Candi Red and hosting impromptu barbecue events around the country—in places like Tampa, Houston and Atlanta, where he's selling $100 tickets that include a plate of barbecue—he's busy smoking meat to supply his restaurant in Utah.

Officially opening in April, Les BBQ Sandwiches at 12059 S. State St., Suite 80, in Draper is Rhodes' first permanent restaurant. The menu features barbecue specialties such as pulled pork, chicken, brisket, the oxtails he's known for, baked beans, mac and cheese and more.

From Texas to Utah

“Cooking was never on my agenda. It just happened,” Rhodes said in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. Originally from Texas, Rhodes remembers his stepfather cooking every Sunday, turning on the blues and a football game while grilling meat over coals.

Rhodes didn't learn his grilling skills until much later in life. As an adult, he became a bodybuilder and personal trainer and spent 15 years drilling oil and gas wells, he said, once even drilling into a volcano in the Caribbean.

He came to Utah with his wife and four sons in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, and they stayed with his wife's father, who lived in Tooele.

At the time, Rhodes was still drilling for oil and gas, flying to Texas every 14 days and then, after changing companies, driving six hours to work in Wyoming, he said. In 2018, he left the oil and gas industry and started working for Rio Tinto in Utah, where he worked for 3½ years, he said.

Rhodes started smoking meat in 2019, he said, after learning the basics of smoking brisket on YouTube. He set up a smoker in his front yard in Tooele and gave barbecue samples to his neighbors on holidays, he said.

“I was only doing a few catering jobs at the time, but my neighbors bought the food,” Rhodes said. “Yeah, nobody ever complained about the smoke. They never complained. And I smoked meat every day, every day, with a big pit.”

In June 2021, Rhodes quit his job at Rio Tinto and relied on barbecue to pay the bills, selling food at festivals and other events. That winter, business slowed, and even though he sold his barbecue wholesale to local restaurants, the bills piled up, he said.

One day, he was walking through a store to buy meat and came across some whole oxtails. “I've eaten oxtails in my life, not every day, but I've eaten them before,” Rhodes said. “I looked at them and said, 'Man, that would be something I could smoke on a fire pit just to see what it looks like.'”

He bought about three bags of meat, took it home and smoked it. When he grilled the oxtails, they were “beautiful,” he said. He asked his wife to make a video of the meat, “and that video went viral, it got millions of views,” he said. “People wanted those oxtails.”

“And after that, I just kept the fire burning,” he continued. “And now here we are, almost two years in. I just post videos and sell food to keep the fire burning inside them.”

A loyal following

The oxtails come from bulls and are cut into a single piece of meat the size of your arm. But Rhodes cuts the long tails straight into a series of smaller pieces, so each piece is about the size of a softball.

When the juicy “softballs,” as Rhodes calls them, come out of the smoker, they consist of a ring of fatty fat and meat surrounding a slice of bone. You can poke them with a fork to get to the tender meat, or just pick them up with your hands and pull them apart. And of course, they're a rich, deep red color.

Rhodes takes great pride in the appearance of the meat.

“I just started smoking this meat and I just got to the point where I perfected the fire to get that red color and that look to the meat and that's what attracts people,” he said. “That's what made us famous.”

Rhodes built his social media following over a few years, he said, before doing his first pop-up tour last December. He said he is now so well known that he can tour anywhere and loyal fans come for barbecue dinners.

However, “I never intended to say, 'You know what, I want to sell barbecue so I can be famous,'” he said. “That was never my thing. I was just trying to give us a way to survive.”

Now Rhodes is focused on building an audience in Utah, “because we have a store here and that will be the foundation,” he said.

And it seems to be working. He interrupted the interview to talk to a loyal fan who was picking up an order and wanted to meet him.

Rhodes said people still come from far away to try his barbecue. He said his restaurant is becoming a “destination” for tourists who have seen him on social media. “They jump off the plane, go eat, get back on the plane and fly away,” he said. “And that just blows my mind.”

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