“Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to shake your soul up and force you to recognize what you were put on the planet to do.”
Adam Perry Lang is taking a short break from his demanding barbecue routine that begins when he lights up his double-barrel Texas pit smoker built by Aaron Franklin, nicknamed “Shotgun Willie.” It’s 8 a.m. and while the rest of the city is preparing to get their work day started, Lang has already labored for six hours.
Lang is taking a moment to reflect on how exactly he landed at the current iteration of his APL Barbecue Pop-Up, operating from a former taquería in a strip mall that shares its parking lot with a 7-11, in the deepest reaches of unincorporated eastside Pasadena. It will be yet another day of selling out of his cherry wood-smoked sweet and sticky pork ribs, applewood-smoked honey, basil, and garlic chicken, hickory-smoked pork shoulder, and his famous, colossal, pecan-smoked beef ribs in a mere two to three hours.
“Maybe barbecue is what I should have been doing all along.”
For the last three weeks, smoked meat-seeking souls from all around the city and Southern California have made their way to this sleepy stretch of Rosemead Boulevard to partake in an age-old tradition of patiently waiting for their tray of buttery, melt-in-your mouth meat that tastes like smoke. Many customers bring lawn chairs for a convivial affair that, on weekends, can demand wait times of at least two hours. Despite L.A.'s barbecue scene growing in the last few years, earning respect from the rest of the country’s barbecue capitals along the way, waiting long hours for barbecue in L.A. still feels like a new phenomenon.