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A fire is burning in the middle of George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. It never goes out and cannot be left unattended. Thousands of passengers walk past it every day. An elaborate, eye-catching system of copper-clad tubing carries the smoke outside, where it exhausts above the airplanes sitting at their gates. Ramp workers often complain about the smell, but only because it makes them hungry.

That fire is coming from the smokers at Q, the new barbecue joint inside Terminal E. Airport barbecue vendors are nothing new, but they typically smoke the meat off-site, truck it in, and serve it, reheated, to customers who don’t expect much else. Bush is the only place I know of where raw briskets are cooked with burning hardwood.

United Airlines, the largest tenant at Bush, controls development in its terminals. To help run its food and retail concepts, the airline turned to New York–based OTG Management, which designs, builds, and oversees restaurants and stores at airports across the country, with an emphasis on local.

A barbecue joint where the meat is cooked on-site was OTG’s idea. (I should point out that Q isn’t the only Bush vendor smoking barbecue on the premises. Ray’s BBQ Shack, which opened in 2016 in Terminal B, uses a smoker tucked in the back that exhausts straight up through the roof. Sometimes the “only in Texas” cliché is wholly appropriate.)

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