Building community with pizza and brisket in Coleman

COLEMAN – What is “community?”

What does it look like? Community is more than buildings, even more than a bunch of people living within a district.

It’s a feeling, the sense of something binding us to one another in a manner both profound and familiar. The look of community can take on any shape, is measured by a multitude of actions. If you went looking for it, perhaps you wouldn’t have a clear idea in mind, but you’d sure know it when you saw it.

Community looks like a lot of things. But down here, it also looks like a pizza.

A change of taste

Laurie and Robert Williamson opened Rancho Pizzeria at 414 S. Commercial Ave. four years ago, and since have opened Rancho Loma Vineyards across the street. All this in addition to Rancho Loma, the boutique restaurant and hotel they’ve operated outside of Coleman since 2003.

“Fine wine, good food, great conversation and a place to have it,” Robert explained. “I want to attract people from out of town, for us to be a destination.”

Robert has big dreams for Coleman. So far, several have worked.

You might think Coleman an out-of-the-way place for a pizza restaurant where everything’s made from scratch, but their intersection sees the kind of traffic Rancho Pizzeria wants to have.

“Highway 153 runs through Coleman, a major connection between Austin and Lubbock,” Robert said. “I noticed a trend, seeing all these BMWs and Prius and Audis. There are seven to eight thousand cars that go through that intersection each day.”

He’s long thought Coleman the ideal location for a Tesla charging station.

“Those cars go for 200 miles, and we're actually 200 miles from Austin and 200 miles from Lubbock,” he said. “So we're sitting perfect there, the electrics are coming.”

But more immediately, he and Laurie wanted to come up with a new idea for a pizza.

Since not much, if anything, that goes on their pizzas comes out of a can, this new pie had to somehow be locally sourced.

“We were trying to think about other people in the area, and a cross-promotion of businesses,” Laurie said. “With Rancho Loma being out by Big O's, we wanted to promote that.”

Big O’s Restaurant sits at the intersection of U.S. 67 and FM 503 in nearby Valera. I’ve known owner Lynn Owens since I first wrote a column about his place back in 2011.

In the years since, it’s been a favorite stopping place for me. I’ll drop by for a bit of local info, a slice of coconut pie and maybe an adventure like that time we went looking for white buffalo on a nearby ranch.

On the surface, Rancho Loma and Big O’s might seem to cater to clientele at opposite ends of the food spectrum. But good food doesn’t occupy the opposing ends of any ruler; if it’s good, anyone will agree. Rancho Pizzeria’s Big O Pizza is proof of that.

The pie is simple enough; a hand-tossed crust from 72-hour dough covered with a white sauce, then Big O’s brisket, onions, cheese and pickled jalapenos. It’s baked in their wood-fired oven, sprinkled with herbs and served up on a wooden cutting board.

The jalapenos gave it a nice, slow burn mixed with the meat, cheese and onions. The brisket was the dominant flavor, as you’d expect, and when the heat got to be too much I quenched it with a bite of the Greek salad.

A rising tide floats all boats

"I thought it was cool,” said Big O. “It's an honor to have my food in somebody else's establishment. It was a win-win and good for everybody.”

But food isn’t the only facet of community down here. It’s also been seen in the faces of the nearly 140 people who’ve worked for Big O over the past quarter-century.

This week marks 26 years for his restaurant. He started down the road in 1993 at a gas station. But selling barbecue was a lot easier than selling gas.

When the government told him he’d have to replace the tanks if wanted to keep selling fuel, Big O instead moved his restaurant down the road to where he is now.

Valera's No. 1 employer

Most of the people who’ve worked for him have been high school students from Coleman or Panther Creek. Last week, in the Coleman Chronicle & Democrat-Voice, Big O ran an ad in the newspaper listing all the former employees that he could remember, thanking them for their service.

I ran into one of them last year, Michelle Bellah who ran Throckmorton’s Stomping Grounds Coffee & Tea Co. with her sister-in-law Molly. Michelle called herself a proud alumni of Big O’s Restaurant, having worked there as a high schooler at Panther Creek.

Mindy Sykes was the first girl to work for Big O, back when she was Mindy Ewing.

“Last summer, her daughter Dylan came to work for me. I thought that was pretty cool,” he said.

His kids

If you ask him, Big O can tell you a story about each one of “his kids.” His favorite part is when they come back to visit after having grown up and started families of their own.

“You know, I had the Tapla girls that worked for me, four girls for over 13 years, all sisters,” he recalled. “That was Adriana, Elvira, Elizabeth, and Mary. They were great.”

The first started working for him about 2000, with the last finishing in 2013 or so. When Elizabeth was getting married, Big O went to her rehearsal dinner after finishing up at the restaurant.

Her father, Eladio, came up, put his arm around the pitmaster and said, “Big O, you raised some mighty fine girls.”

Standing beside his two massive barbecue smokers, Big O paused for a moment, rolling the memory around in his mind, and then smiled.

“You know, you don't get any better compliments than that,” he said.

More: Cash as catch-can for Throckmorton's coffee shop

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This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Building community with pizza and brisket in Coleman