BBQ World Cup Qualifier: Eloy De Leon
He tried golf, he tried fishing, and his wife said no to both. So Eloy and Debi De Leon cooked barbecue instead, and now Los Buzzards are the first Rio Grande Valley team on the road to the BBQ World Cup and a shot at $1,000,000.
Eloy De Leon tried to make retirement work the normal way. When he and his wife Debi found themselves empty nesters in Weslaco, down in the Rio Grande Valley, he went looking for a hobby the two of them could share. He took Debi golfing. She told him never to do that again. He took her fishing. That was a no as well. So they fell back on the one thing they had always done together on a Texas weekend, the thing going on in every backyard of Eloy's childhood, and they asked a simple question of it: could barbecue be the thing? Ten years later, the answer has carried them somewhere neither of them saw coming. Los Buzzards, the husband and wife team of Eloy and Debi De Leon, are on the road to Las Vegas and a shot at $1,000,000, the first team from the Rio Grande Valley to punch a ticket to the BBQ World Cup.
A South Texas Backyard
Barbecue was never far from him. Eloy grew up in South Texas, and the memory he keeps coming back to is his parents' backyard on the weekends, the pit lit and the music going. His family was full of musicians, so there was always a guitar out and somebody singing while the smoke rolled. His mother taught him the first thing a cook needs to know, which is what to look for in a flavor, how to tell when something is right. That was the whole of his barbecue education for a long time. It was a family thing, a fun thing, and it stayed that way for years before it became anything more.
How Los Buzzards Took Flight
Los Buzzards started around 2005, and for the first decade it was not really a competition team at all. It was about a dozen friends who got together once a year to cook a single event, Smokin' on the Rio, purely because it was a good time. They did that for ten years, the same crew, the same one weekend, just for the fun of it. Then the house went quiet, the kids grown and gone, and Eloy wanted more of it. He turned to Debi with the question that started everything. Will you be my partner in barbecue. She said yes to barbecue, and they broke away from the group of twelve to compete as a pair. That was about ten years ago. As Eloy tells it, she said yes, thank God.
The early going was rough. For a couple of years it was just the two of them and they were not walking, not getting called to the stage, not sure what they were missing. A good friend, Hector Villanueva of the Killer V barbecue team, finally told him what he needed to hear: go take a class, it will show you what is up. So Eloy drove four and a half hours north to San Antonio to learn from a cook named Clarence Joseph, a mentor he still calls their sensei. He came home and put it plainly to himself. Big dummy, you have not been doing it right. The very next contest was a mess, he admits, all over the place, but they walked a couple of times, and after two years of nothing that was the saving grace. From there they refined the technique and the flavors and started to take off.
A team named Los Buzzards ought to be known for something that flies, and it is. Ask around the Texas circuit and the answer comes back the same: those buzzards are chicken. Chicken is the category Eloy owns, the one that has other pitmasters calling his phone for help, a bird for a team named after a bird. He builds his own blend from commercial rubs he has spent years dialing in, cuts a favorite sauce with something a little sweeter or a little sharper, and lets the two come together. It is not fancy. It is just his, worked out over a decade of Saturdays.
The Week Starts on Monday
The way the De Leons prepare says everything about how seriously they take a thing they insist is supposed to be fun. The week starts on Monday, cleaning the trailer and restocking. Tuesday is the hunt for proteins, the hardest part, because the perfect brisket is never at the first store, and Eloy will hit six or seven of them to find it. Wednesday is trimming, Thursday is glazes and sauces and injections, and Friday, right after work, they are on the road to wherever in Texas they are cooking that weekend. By Friday night everything is done, so while other teams are still trimming meat, Eloy and Debi are sitting back, relaxed and ready. Saturday is go time. They cook one brisket, two racks of ribs, three half chickens and a pork, not for a crowd but for a panel of judges, and they do it fifteen to twenty times a year. They do not chase points and they do not pick a contest for its payout. They pick the ones they know will be a good time.
That approach has stacked up a serious record. Over the past decade Los Buzzards have earned twenty Texas state titles and more than 300 walks, the top-category finishes that are the real currency of competition barbecue. The bonds have stacked up too. Eloy is on a group text with world champions and state champions he has cooked against for ten years, and to this day they still bounce problems off one another, still ask for help on a category, still want to see each other walk. The camaraderie, he says, is the best part of the whole thing. It is also why the bad days sting. Coming off back to back chicken wins at the San Antonio rodeo, the largest cook-off in Texas, the De Leons drove to a small contest in La Jolla, got beaten by high school teams and finished near the bottom of nineteen. The ride home was silent. Eloy has made his peace with days like that. It is barbecue, he says, and some days it humbles you.
The Win at Smokin' on the Rio
The win that changed everything came in February at Smokin' on the Rio, the big sanctioned cook-off in Mercedes, in the same Valley the De Leons come from. It was the 23rd running of the event, and Eloy and Debi had set up at it for twenty-two years straight without missing one, first with the group of twelve and then just the two of them, trying to win the one that mattered most because it was home. This February they finally did, taking Grand Champion and with it one of the first seats at the BBQ World Cup. The Valley noticed. A Texas state representative presented the couple with a proclamation and a flag flown over the Capitol in Austin, so their name now sits in the statehouse, and their city is planning a day in their honor. Around twenty couples have already told them to send the dates, they are coming to Vegas too. As Eloy told a local news crew, the whole thing is humbling, because they are not going for themselves. They are going to represent their community.
Debi, Family, and $1,000,000
For all the friends in their corner, the center of Los Buzzards is the marriage. Debi is not a silent partner. She can't do it without me, she says, and she means it as a joke and a fact at once. The one point of friction between them, when it comes, is honesty: when Eloy hands her something to taste, her face answers before she can, and he already knows. They tweak it, they agree on it, and that, she says, is the best part, that she can tell him the truth. Their barbecue runs three generations deep now. At one Smokin' on the Rio, their grandson Nolan cooked in the kids' division, their son Dylan cooked with his own team, Tejas Que, and Eloy and Debi cooked theirs, and all three generations walked the same stage on the same day. Eloy still marvels at the odds of that.
One person he wishes could see all of this is his mother, the woman who taught him what a good flavor was. She is the reason for the moment he holds closest. Years back, cooking a windy, miserable day at one of the first Champions BBQ Alliance contests in Eagle Pass, with everything going wrong, Eloy looked up and saw a single white dove flying straight into the wind. He walked into the trailer and told Debi they were going to be fine. When she asked why, he told her he thought his mom was watching over them. They won that day. It is the kind of story he does not get through without stopping, and it says as much about him as any trophy. The De Leons also run a foundation, RGV Wings of Hope, which helps Rio Grande Valley families cover funeral costs when they lose a child. Giving more to it is near the top of the list of what a win would mean.
Ask Eloy what he would do with $1,000,000 and the answer is not about him. He and Debi could retire a little easier and finally travel the way they have wanted to, and they would put more into Wings of Hope. But the reason he is doing it, the one he keeps circling back to, is her. I'm doing it for Deb, he says. When he pictures the moment his name might be called in Las Vegas, he already has the walk-out song picked, a cumbia by Los Angeles Azules called Como Te Voy A Olvidar, which means how will I ever forget you. He chose it because it plays at Dodger Stadium in the seventh inning, and if it is good enough for them it is good enough for Los Buzzards. His idea of the greatest cook alive is Ernest Servantes of Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin, and the best meal he has ever eaten came off that man's pit. When the De Leons roll into Vegas next April, one of a hundred teams chasing the largest prize the sport has ever offered, they will not change a thing. They are bringing the South Texas flavor that got them here, and a whole Valley behind them.
Sources
Eloy and Debi De Leon, Road to 1 Million qualifier interview with Shannon Pruitt (BBQ World Cup). BWC Qualified Pitmasters Tracker: Grand Champion, Smokin' on the Rio (team #25, Los Buzzards, Weslaco, Texas). BBQ United team profile (member-written bio: Los Buzzards, founded 2005, IBCA / CBA / SCA; 20 Texas state titles, 300+ walks; sponsors Modelo Especial and Commissioner David Fuentes).
Smokin' on the Rio BBQ Cook-Off, Mercedes, Texas.
Burnt Bean Co., Seguin, Texas (Texas Monthly).
Meet the Field: Every Team Qualified for the BBQ World Cup, BBQ United.