Esaul and Grecia Ramos can’t yet tell you how they did in the finale of Food Network’s “Pitmasters” television show. They can tell you that it was hard, that it pushed them to their limits and that it was incredibly fun.
The couple that owns San Antonio’s 2M Smokehouse officially made it to the final round of the grueling televised barbecue competition, which airs Monday night.
The show pitted nine teams of chefs against each other through eight challenges over 11 days. They made surf and turf meals, a backyard barbecue, a whole hog and even had a challenge where they cooked entirely in underground chambers with hot coals.
The cooks were long, Esaul Ramos said, with some lasting for 12 hours at a time, and forced the couple to build their own pits.
“It’s very mental, it’s very physical, it tests your creativity to the max,” he said.
The San Antonio business owners will face Canadian chefs Connie DeSousa and John Jackson in the final challenge for a chance to win up to $50,000 in prize money.
But after years of working together at their award-winning restaurant on the city’s Southeast Side, Grecia Ramos said they were ready for the challenge.
“We actually got to just enjoy it,” she said.
Grecia Ramos said creativity became a key part of their success. She’s a trained pastry chef and she found herself baking dishes in whole new ways. She’s now made a baklava cheesecake in a smoker, cooked an ube pudding underground and made a sweet tamal on an open fire.
That creativity was what made the competition so challenging and ultimately so fulfilling, Esaul Ramos added. He can’t disclose how it ended, but says the final challenge, a five-course meal cooked over a whole day, was both the most creative and his personal favorite.
“Being able to dig deeper into our wheelhouse and working with what’s available in the refrigerator and in the pantry and cooking in different ways, that was exciting to us,” he said.
They expect to bring some of that new flair to 2M Smokehouse.
“You’re probably going to see a change at 2M in terms of what we’re bringing to our menu coming up,” Grecia Ramos said, hinting at more specials and more unique dishes in the near future.
The couple is hosting a watch party for that final episode at 8 p.m. Monday at McIntyre’s in Southtown.
