Why You Should Head to Hill Country for the Brisket Sessions

Pop by Hill Country Barbecue Market in Brooklyn (345 Adams Street, Brooklyn; 718-885-4608) tonight, April 13, 2015, and you can have a drink with New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein. Well, sort of — if you reserve a $5 spot ahead of time, you’ll get a beer or margarita, which you can sip while you listen to Silverstein detail his rise through Texas Monthly, where he hired the country’s first barbecue editor, and his move to New York City. The informal chat, moderated by LinkedIn executive editor Dan Roth, is part of an occasional Hill Country series known as Brisket Sessions.

These chats are meant to bring together influential people in the fields of arts, media, politics, and business, says Hill Country CEO and founder Marc Glosserman. “It was an organic thing,” he says. “Dan was having lunch at Hill Country sometime last fall, and we were talking about the process of cooking barbecue as a slow-smoked, casual thing — we were comparing that to slow-cooking conversation over barbecue.” Roth and Glosserman began exploring holding casual, moderated conversations with leaders in various fields.

Brisket Sessions launched with Seth Meyers, an old friend of Roth’s and Glosserman’s. Via an interview with Roth, Meyers talked about his rise through television and divulged some behind-the-scenes secrets of Saturday Night Live. “It was really successful, and we’d like to continue to do them,” says Glosserman.

Roth will employ the same interview setup with Silverstein, who will discuss barbecue and the media industry. Attendees will be able to ask questions at the end. “It’ll be great to talk to him about his experiences,” says Glosserman. “He has these great tie-ins with barbecue and New York.”

Expect the first 45 minutes of the conversation to be the moderated interview, after which will come the open call for audience questions.

Glosserman says there’s no plan to make Brisket Sessions a regularly scheduled series, but Hill Country will offer these conversations intermittently. “It should be casual, fun, and interesting,” he says. “And delicious.”

Doors open at 6 p.m., and the talk begins at 6:30.