Before sunrise, St. Elmo.

Chef Jonathan Ferguson steps out of his four-door Nissan, the morning still dark.

Before he even unlocks the doors to Little Coyote - the St. Elmo restaurant serving Texas-style barbecue in Chattanooga - he opens up the J & R Oyler smoker door, reaches for a split log - stacked hickory, red and white oak - in a ritual-act that's been ongoing since the restaurant opened some 500 days ago.

No matter what the day brings, everything is dependent on this.

He tends the fire.

It is the genesis of Southern barbecue. From plastic tables on roadsides to white tablecloths inside Michelins, no barbecue exists without fire and smoke.

To tell the story of one brisket or plate of spare ribs, we begin here: early dawn, the solitary chef, stoking the fire, reminiscent of centuries of humans before him.

"Starting the day to light fire? It's primal," Jonathan said. "You can put yourself in a place where you feel connected to people cooking food ever since we’ve been cooking food over fire."

Pitmasters will describe this as spiritual work: the daily, attentive discipline of keeping the fire alive. Like passing a baton, the smoker's fire box was banked the night before in an inverse relationship moment: the last thing his colleagues do the night before influences the first thing Jonathan does in the morning.

Tend the fire.

"An Olympic flame," Jonathan said.

In 2023, Little Coyote opened, serving smoked meats daily, three words delivered so casually, yet demanding an enormous amount of hyper-vigilance. Ten minutes of inattention can sink the whole ship.

Little Coyote borrows from the tradition of Texas barbecue, a "low and slow" type of smoking that can last, on the short side, eight hours.

Within this family tree, there's a legion of unknown roadside joints; others, well-documented. At Snow's - named the best barbecue in Texas - they light fires around 2 am. Their hours?

Saturday only. "8:00 AM Until Sold Out."

At Franklin's, folks line up at 6 am. (In parts of Texas, barbecue is breakfast.) It is perhaps unrivaled in the culinary world: hours of zero-dark-thirty work for a few hours of service.

"It's easy to make good," said Jonathan. "It's hard to find incredible."

Incredible equals freshness. The brisket you eat on a Wednesday went into the smoker on Wednesday. The spare ribs you order on Friday were not cooked on Thursday.

Like any pitmaster, Jonathan's chasing a tiger: perfection. Cooking over fire is unpredictable, an ever-changing roller coaster of variables made new each day: the weather, temperature, crowds.

"Everything affects everything," he said.

7.14 am.

The fire banked, Jonathan walks inside, pours coffee, black. Architecturally, it's as though Little Coyote was framed up around the smoker: half sits outside, with the remaining on the inside, to the right of the front doors.

Inside the smoker door, five racks rotate, like a ferris wheel.

It's brisket time.

"Briskets go in first thing in the morning," Jonathan said.

The 13-pound Niman Ranch brisket will yield about half that amount once cooked.

To the right of the smoker door, a yellow timer with four separate timers keeps the day's clock: when to spritz, mop, wrap.

"We live and die by the timer," he said.

People speak of brisket in religious ways. Daniel Vaughan, barbecue editor of Texas Monthly, described his first taste of brisket as “revelation.”

"The very nature of brisket is to be delicious," declares Texas Monthly. "Yet there’s more to it than that. We love brisket because cooking it is a spiritual path, a quest that, as a wise man once said, begins with a single log."

In A Meat-Smoking Manifesto, Franklin gives advice on cooking brisket. Recipes use bullet points and abbreviated sentences. His brisket chapter reads like an essay, as the entire process takes hours, and that's just to get started. Then, comes the cooking.

"Find a comfortable chair," he jokes, but not really, "and read War and Peace."

By 7.30 am, the smoker's hitting 250 degrees. Briskets are cooking. Timer's set. The door won't open again for 90 minutes.

9:00 am.

Carnitas - pulled pork known as "little meats" in Spanish - are placed on the rack, and the brisket, already browning, is spritzed.

Jonathan returns to his office, months of spreadsheets on his desktop.

He can track the time briskets sold out on Tuesdays, the average number of guests on Thursdays, the leftover spare ribs when the weather's warmer than 65 degrees.

It's a live wire nightly, the search for the "sweet spot" between supply and demand.

The goal? Sell out each night.

The difficulty?

"It’s three-dimensional chess," Chef Erik Niel said. "The variables have their own variables. That’s what makes it so interesting. Otherwise, you’re not holding true to who you are."

Erik and Amanda Niel opened Little Coyote - their third restaurant - offering, as the menu sublimely declares: Texas barbecue Chattanooga.

It's relationships, all the way down: the weather affects the wood which affects the smoker which affects the meat. Is the wood wet from an overnight storm? Is it cold and 45 degrees or sunny and 75? How many walk-ups?

Everything affects everything.

"It’s so intimidating to do it right," said Jonathan. "That’s the nature of the beast. We’re playing in a space where it could be unpredictable."

10:01 am.

The timer sounds. Jonathan opens the door, spritzes, closes and then goes outside. Time again: feed the fire.

He lights a Lucky Strike - a match, no lighter - standing near the Oyler smoker, a model first made in the 1940s in Mesquite, Texas, which can hold about 1,000 pounds of meat.

The fire box reaches high temps - 900 degrees - while an internal thermostat - set at 250 - regulates the smoke, flue and heat that circulates through the racks, over the meat, rolling over and around with flavor.

"It’s this good marriage of old school style barbecue and just the right amount of technology," Jonathan said.

Breaking from the central Texas tradition of white oak, Little Coyote uses a blend: hickory, red and white oak.

"Oak brings good heat without overpowering the flavor. Hickory adds a little seasoning," he said.

"Enough smoke to flavor the meat. Enough heat to cook it."

10.58 am.

Earlier today, the ribs were pulled from an overnight salt-sugar brine, then patted dry with the tale membrane removed and black pepper added.

Five slabs of ribs, or 50 bones, go onto the racks. (An evac-system expels the smoke before the doors open.)

Jonathan came here from Texas in 2022. Raised in Mobile, he'd been wanting to get back to the Southeast. Looked in Asheville. Charlotte. Knoxville. Needed to be within a day's drive of Chicago, where his two children live with their mom.

It was Father's Day when he and the Niels spoke. Jonathan was in Houston, coincidentally, for a barbecue pop-up - "fresh tortillas, daily smoked meats" - at his family's brewery.

That's when Erik Niel called. The two chefs connected on a core vision for Little Coyote.

Put the best ingredients in the best situation possible.

Prioritize hospitality.

Be uncommonly excellent.

"Let's meet the customers in the place they're at," he said, "and slowly walk them to the promised land."

The menu is an ongoing act of creation. They've had 70 different iterations of different dishes since opening. It's a constant adjustment, this feeding of a different fire.

"I’m not getting people to taste my personality on the plate," Jonathan said. "I’m trying to get them to taste the ingredients. My job is to get out of the way."

12.01 pm

Time to mop.

In South Carolina, beloved pitmaster Rodney Scott cooks whole hogs; they studied his mop sauce ratio, adding special ingredients - like mezcal - making the mop sauce smell "like a mezcal margarita."

The smoker door opens; Jonathan mops the ribs.

2.35 pm

Little Coyote opens in 85 minutes. Jonathan goes to the smoker, opens the doors, studying the ribs - texture, color, their bark and tenderness - with one question:

Is it time to wrap?

Both the ribs - sold on plates of four, six or eight - and brisket are wrapped so they won't take on more smoke or flavor while they finish cooking.

"So much of wrapping is about allowing the right amount of bark to develop, then protecting it while it makes its way to the final temperature," Jonathan said.

The brisket and ribs are pulled from the heat and given time to rest and relax.

They split the point from the flat on the brisket.

"Brisket is the best when it comes out of the smoker and has time to rest and is sliced and served this evening," Jonathan said.

3.59 pm

The restaurant opens.

Over the next five hours, guests will order from the Little Coyote menu.

The past eight hours of work, reduced to six simple menu words.

Smoked beef brisket.

Smoked pork ribs.

"We’re entertaining people," Jonathan said. "You don't go to restaurants like Little Coyote just for the food. You go for the experience."

Years ago, he used to follow Phish - "the best band in the whole fucking world" - whose live shows are always reaching for that fulcrum between this-day-only originality and perfection.

"You’re constantly chasing it," he said. "You’re constantly chasing the next experience."

It is barbecue spirituality: the brisket of today will not be the brisket of tomorrow. You never stand in the same river - or eat the same brisket - twice.

"That lets us be a little bit better the day after."

Just before midnight, St. Elmo.

Lights go out at Little Coyote.

Outside, the last person to leave opens up the smoker door, adds five or six logs of hickory and oak, closes it back again.

Throughout the night, the fire continues to burn.

"We touch back to things done over incredibly long periods of time and still worthy of doing today," Jonathan said. "Taking time to get a properly lit fire and slow cook meat is still worth doing."

Everything continues to affect everything. Inside both chefs, another fire burns.

"Texas barbecue is about this relentless pursuit of perfection. You’re almost never going to attain it," said Jonathan. "But you're sure not going to get there by reheating and serving day-old barbecue."

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