When I first became enamored with barbecue in the 1990s, I ate a lot of chopped pork at Carolina barbecue joints, and sometimes chicken and ribs. One thing I almost never encountered was beef, especially slow-smoked brisket. That barbecue cut remained mostly a Texas thing until well into the 21st century.

A few pioneers did try to introduce it to the Carolinas over the years, with limited success. Tommy Brightwell, for instance, put brisket on the menu when he opened Pappy’s BBQ in Madison, North Carolina, in 2004. A review in the Greensboro News & Record began, “So, you think barbecue has to come in pork form only?”

The public’s appetite for brisket has proven stubbornly persistent – inelastic demand, as economists would put it

The public’s appetite for brisket has proven stubbornly persistent – inelastic demand, as economists would put it

Brightwell, a Texas native and former pastor at the New Life Baptist Church, brought evangelistic fervor to the enterprise. “Some like [the brisket], and some don’t,” he told the newspaper. “But most do, and I’ve converted a lot over to eating beef.” Those converts apparently went right back to their old pork-centric ways, for I can’t find a trace of Pappy’s after 2005.

Things started to change around 2010, when a new generation of cooks and diners outside Texas started discovering barbecued brisket. In a matter of years, America was in the throes of full-on brisket-mania. I chalk that up to three factors: newcomers, media and migration.

First, the newcomers. For the last half of the 20th century, barbecue had been in secular decline, eclipsed by burger and fried chicken chains. But in the opening years of the new millennium, it staged a remarkable comeback. A new generation of........

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