A San Antonio Smokehouse Is in the Food Network 'Pitmasters' Finale. It Airs Tonight.

A San Antonio couple spent 11 days building their own fire pits, cooking in underground coal chambers, and running kitchens that stretched past 12 hours at a stretch. On Monday night, the whole country finds out how it went. Esaul and Grecia Ramos, the husband and wife behind the city's 2M Smokehouse, have reached the two-team finale of Food Network's new competition series "Pitmasters," and the last episode airs tonight.

They cannot tell you who won. What they will tell you is that it was the hardest, and the most fun, thing they have done in a decade of cooking together. "It's very mental, it's very physical, it tests your creativity to the max," Esaul Ramos told Texas Public Radio. For a neighborhood barbecue joint on the city's Southeast Side, a spot on national television against a decorated Canadian kitchen is the kind of stage most pitmasters never see.

The couple from the Southeast Side

Esaul Ramos opened 2M Smokehouse in 2016, after learning the trade in Austin, and named the place in honor of his grandparents. The launch was not a well-funded restaurant deal. He and a partner paid to renovate the Southeast Side building by running pop-ups, cooking their way into a permanent address one weekend at a time. He built the reputation the slow way after that, one brisket at a time, on South WW White Road away from the tourist path. Within a few years the little smokehouse had done something almost no new joint does that fast: it became a name people drove across the state to try, and a stop that national barbecue writers started putting on their lists.

The credentials back it up. Ramos has been named a James Beard Award semifinalist, the closest thing American food has to an Oscar nomination, and the restaurant carries a Michelin Guide recommendation after the guide reached Texas. Texas Monthly has placed 2M among the best barbecue joints in the state, a ranking that in Texas functions as a scoreboard. The demand has pushed the business outward, too, with an airport location and a second restaurant planned in nearby Castroville.

Grecia Ramos is the other half of the operation, and on the show she turned out to be its secret weapon. She trained as a pastry chef, a background that sounds out of place at a smoker until you watch what she did with it. She baked a baklava cheesecake inside a smoker, cooked an ube pudding underground, and made a sweet tamal over an open fire, she told TPR. In a competition built to break cooks out of their routine, a pastry chef who thinks in sugar and structure had somewhere to go that a pure meat-and-fire cook did not.

Eleven days, eight challenges, one whole hog

"Pitmasters" is Food Network's newest cooking competition, a six-episode series that pits chef duos against each other to prove their live-fire skill. Nine teams started. The show ran them through eight challenges over 11 days, and the tasks were designed to punish anyone who only knew one trick. Teams cooked surf and turf, a backyard barbecue, and a whole hog. One challenge made them cook entirely in underground chambers with hot coals, another forced them to build their own pits from scratch.

The finale is the biggest swing of all. The last two teams cook a five-course meal over an entire day, and Esaul Ramos called it both the most creative test of the run 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. After years of grinding side by side at their own restaurant, Grecia Ramos said the pressure that broke other teams is where they finally loosened up. "We actually got to just enjoy it," she said.

The team on the other side of the pit

Standing between the Ramoses and the grand prize is a Calgary duo with a resume of its own. Connie DeSousa and John Jackson have cooked together since the late 1990s and built a small restaurant empire in Alberta: the wood-fire steakhouse Charbar, the nose-to-tail favorite Charcut Roast House, a burger spot, and a pizza shop. Charcut landed on a national list of the country's best new restaurants the year it opened, and the pair have kept a foot in television for years.

DeSousa in particular is a familiar face to competition-cooking fans. She has appeared on Top Chef Canada and Top Chef All Stars, and has judged Food Network's live-fire show "Fire Masters," which means she has spent time on the other side of the pit, scoring the exact kind of cooking she is now doing. This is not a case of a big-name kitchen against a plucky unknown. It is two accomplished teams, one American and one Canadian, cooking for a prize the show has set at up to $50,000, with the trophy that comes attached to being the last duo standing on national television.

That framing matters to how the finale reads. The Ramoses run a single-city smokehouse known for one thing done exceptionally well. DeSousa and Jackson run a portfolio of restaurants across a range of styles, from steak to charcuterie to burgers. Two cooks who go deep on Texas smoke are meeting two cooks who go wide, and the show's final test, a five-course meal built across a full day, is designed to reward whoever can stretch furthest without losing the plot. It is a genuine contrast of philosophies, not a mismatch.

Why a San Antonio smokehouse on TV matters

Barbecue keeps earning bigger stages, and the people carrying it there are increasingly the independent operators rather than the chains. A husband-and-wife team from a Southeast Side smokehouse did not audition their way onto a polished set to lose their identity. They brought the whole thing with them: the pit-building, the improvised fire, the pastry chef reworking dessert over coals, the stubborn belief that a neighborhood joint can hang with anyone. Win or lose tonight, that is the story San Antonio gets to watch.

There is already a payoff waiting back home. Grecia Ramos said the experience will change what shows up on the 2M menu, hinting at more specials and more unusual dishes drawn from everything they learned under the lights. The couple is hosting a watch party for the finale on Monday night at McIntyre's in Southtown, the kind of hometown gathering that turns a TV episode into a block party. The pit is lit, the town is watching, and a small San Antonio smokehouse is one meal away from the title.

Sources

Texas Public Radio / San Antonio Report, "2M Smokehouse owners make finale of Food Network's 'Pitmasters'" (Aug. 27, 2026). San Antonio Report, "Pitmaster celebrates 'big win' with Texas Monthly recognition, airport contract". San Antonio Magazine, "Three San Antonio Chefs Named James Beard Foundation Semifinalists". Michelin Guide: 2M Smokehouse. San Antonio Current, "2M Smokehouse plans fall opening for second location in Castroville". Daily Hive, "Two Calgary chefs are set to compete on a brand-new TV show". Charcut. Chatelaine, "Connie DeSousa". Image: courtesy Esaul Ramos / 2M Smokehouse.