The sun rises and paints the town of Alliance, Nebraska, with a warm tint of gold. The people around town stretch and get ready for a day of work. Two of these people include Flor and Fletcher Sheridan. The husband and wife duo own and operate the mouth-watering barbeque joint known as Golden Hour. They start their day early to prepare their food for the people that will soon be lined up out the door waiting to get a taste of their barbeque. The couple takes great pride in being able to bring Texas-style barbeque to Nebraska, and they work hard to make sure everyone enjoys their experience. Their hard work seems to be paying off – for they were just awarded one of the spots on the list of Top Texas-Style BBQ Joints Outside the Lone Star State by Texas Monthly’s Daniel Vaughan.
“Daniel Vaughan is one of the biggest food editors when it comes to Texas barbeque,” Fletcher said. “He does a top-50 in Texas every four years, and that’s kind of the end all be all for barbeque, but he got Texas Monthly to let him go around the country to all the other forty-eight lower states, tried over 150 barbeque places and put us at number ten.”
This new title did not just excite Flor and Fletcher, but the town of Alliance as a whole. Golden Hour has a special tie to the community due to the location that it has made its home. Golden Hour can be found on the main stretch of Alliance tucked into a historical building called Newberry. The Newberry was built in 1914 and holds a lot of history and nostalgia for the people in Alliance. This tie is extra special for Flor, who grew up in Alliance.
“The fact that we are in this beautiful building that has been a part of a lot of peoples childhood not just ours but also a lot of peoples’ grandparents,” Flor said. “It is such an honor to keep this building thriving and to take care of it for the next generation.”
To celebrate the special relationship between Golden Hour and the community, Flor and Fletcher host community events such as Newberry market and themed nights at Golden Hour for fundraisers. At its core this is what Texas barbeque is: spending time with friends and family to enjoy a good meal. Good food can do more than just nourish the body. It can make people feel a certain way and bring them together.
“In this community everyone knows each other and it’s so cool to see people just interacting with each other after not seeing each other for a while, or someone just comes in intending to eat by themselves but seeing someone they know and sitting with them, it is just a place to be together,” Flor said.
Nothing draws people to a place quite like good food does. With the amount of time and care Flor and Fletcher put into their food it is no wonder people come in droves just to get a taste.
Creating good quality Texas barbeque is no easy task, preparation is required everyday except Tuesdays. Sausage by itself is a three-day-process. Even off-days are filled with making banana pudding and coordinating catering and events. The couple works hard to ensure that every piece of meat sold is crafted to perfection and meets a quality that they are proud of.
“If I am spending fourteen hours cooking one piece of meat I better get it right, and it better be as good as possible, because if you mess that up you are wasting everybody’s time from the rancher who raised the beef properly to the person who is trimming it and seasoning it,” Fletcher said.
Bringing top-notch Texas-style barbeque to Nebraska started as a source of nostalgia for Fletcher who grew up in Texas. He noticed a serious lack of good barbeque places in Nebraska when he first moved there for college. With roughly 44,400 farms and ranches within the state this came as a bit of a shock.
“This is a meat and potatoes kind of place, so Texas barbeque should be here already, brisket is the single biggest cut of meat on the cow and no one is cooking it up here,” Fletcher said.
They feel that Nebraskans deserve better barbecue. So the mission began for them to do it themselves. Barbeque is a craft that requires extensive labor and a work ethic that connects the business to the work ethic of the people of Alliance. There is a blue collar pride that runs through the town. The people take pride in the hard work that they get up to do each day. This is a quality that is directly reflected inside Golden Hour.
“Barbeque is for the working man,” Fletcher said. “It is not city food necessarily, it tastes best cooked in your backyard and we are just doing the business version of that.”
To be able to make a business that has a backyard-home-cooked taste requires a lot of work and a lot of wood. Fletcher uses an oak, or what they call post oak in Texas, to smoke his meat. One log will keep the cooker at 250 degrees even through the winter. This business also requires huge cookers that are made of repurposed propane tanks – one being 250 gallons. Lastly, it takes a lot of time and care. Together these things make up the essence of good Texas barbecue.
Golden Hour has shined a new light on the community of Alliance. When Golden Hour is packed with people the building comes alive. Older generations reminisce about how things used to be when Alliance was a booming town, and Fletcher hopes that this could be the first step in having the whole downtown come alive again. In the future Flor and Fletcher hope to turn the second and third floor of the Newberry into apartment living. All it takes is a few steps and this barbeque joint could be the start of lifting up a small town, and in turn this place will make sure this barbeque joint can keep rising up. As delicious smelling smoke billowed up through the air the golden light caught it for the second time that day. The same way golden hour happens twice a day, Fletcher checks on the meat twice. Soft golden light is a reminder that we get to do it all again tomorrow.
