About
Tri-Tip Story The tale begins in the mid-1800s in the cattle ranching country of the Santa Maria Valley along the Central Coast. There, ranchers hosted springtime barbecue feasts for their hired hands-mostly Mexican cowboys, vaqueros, and their families--along with their neighbors. Hundreds of people attended. Pits were dug and filled with local red oak, which burned down to glowing embers. Beef was seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic salt and other spices and cooked over the hardwood coals. The main side dish was pinquito beans, a small pinkish variety native to the area. The condiment of choice was salsa. Fast-forward to the late 1950s, when Santa Maria butcher Bob Schutz experimented with the cut, which is one of the three muscles in the bottom sirloin of the steer. Meat cutters had routinely diced it into stew meat or ground it into hamburger but not Schutz on that day. Instead he seasoned it Santa Maria style and cooked it on a rotisserie. His "creation" was surprisingly delicious. He named it "tri tip" because of its shape and promoted it locally. Its popularity spread statewide and is now considered the "King of the California Grill". We now bring that lean cut of beef to the Richmond area. We put our tri tip through a five step cooking process. We marinate it, cover it with a dry rub, char the seasonings to the meat, smoke it and then slow roast it to a perfect medium rare. The result is a juicy, delicious piece of beef. We pair our tri tip with pinquito beans and homemade salsa. Come enjoy!
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