It all started in 2004 when Neil Strawder was watching the TV show "Good Eats" on the Food Network. Improbably, host Alton Brown cooked a batch of pulled pork using a do-it-yourself barbecue smoker built out of a flower pot. Strawder was so inspired, he devised his own flower-pot smoker and started cooking on the balcony of his apartment in Hawthorne, Calif.
Humble beginnings, to be sure. Strawder now owns two barbecue restaurants in nearby Long Beach with his wife and business partner, Phyllis. And in a case of life coming full circle, Neil and Phyllis are now appearing on the Food Network as one of six teams on the current season of "The Great Food Truck Race."
The path from flower-pot cooking to rubbing elbows with Food Network celebrity and show host Tyler Florence was circuitous for Strawder, who grew up in Galveston.
He graduated from Ball High School and attended Southwest Texas State in San Marcos. He returned to Galveston in 1987 during the depths of the oil bust.
With no job prospects in the Houston area, he moved to Long Beach to live with his father. For the next 15 years, he worked various jobs, from the mundane to the colorful. His most memorable gig was working as a bodyguard for a hotheaded local boxer, making regular trips between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
"We didn't really need to protect him from other people as much as we protected other people from him," Strawder says.
By the mid-1990s, the Internet boom was at full steam, and Strawder worked in computer sales and website development. He was briefly the chief technology officer of an internet startup called Allergy Avenue that sold allergy products on the web.
By 2004, he had settled into a job as a financial manager at Wells Fargo bank, met and married Phyllis and plunged into his new hobby of smoking meats on his apartment balcony.
The turning point came when he discovered The BBQ Brethren online forums. Tapping into the accumulated knowledge of this like-minded community of smoked-meat enthusiasts, his confidence in his barbecue skills grew.
At the time, he was writing a blog called the Survival Gourmet and recruited three other bloggers in Los Angeles to start a team to participate in Southern California's nascent barbecue-competition circuit.
Strawder and his teammates racked up awards immediately. He and Phyllis began cooking for friends and family, taking on the occasional catering job. In 2008, the couple started serving their barbecue at farmers markets in greater Los Angeles using Strawder's nickname, "Bigmista."
Over the next six years, they built a dedicated following. Eventually, Neil and Phyllis quit their day jobs and opened Bigmista's Barbecue & Sammich Shop in Long Beach in 2014. A year later, they opened a second location, a barbecue-for-breakfast concept called Bigmista's Morning Wood.
Strawder's style of barbecue - he calls it "Bigmista style" - defies easy definition. It combines the complex flavors of competition-style rubs and mops with the strong smoke component of Central Texas 'cue. Menu items such as rib tips and collard greens reflect his East Texas upbringing. And everything from the barbecue to the restaurant décor reflects Strawder's eclectic and engaging personality.
It's no surprise the Food Network came calling. Neil and Phyllis, along with assistant Eric Lara, are among six teams who commandeer a food truck and race across California to see who can sell the most food. Each week, the truck that sells the least is eliminated.
Strawder's truck, Bigmista's Fatty Wagon, serves barbecue-inspired dishes. Because of the nature of the competition - cooking and serving a unique dish in every episode - slow-smoked meats aren't on the menu.
In the first episode, the Strawders narrowly escaped elimination after a dish featuring Southern-style grits didn't go over well with Los Angeles food-truck connoisseurs. There are four episodes to go. It's a long and winding road to the $50,000 grand prize, but Strawder's life story has prepared him well.