How This 89-Year-Old Became a Texas BBQ Legend
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On Saturday mornings, 89-year-old Norma Frances “Tootsie” Tomanetz wakes up at 6 a.m.; climbs into her white pickup truck; and drives to Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, Texas, where she has been expertly manning the barbecue pits for more than two decades.
Snow’s world-famous brisket is cooked over low heat for 10 to 12 hours in a big cylindrical pit smoker propped up on steel legs. There’s no official certification or required course to become a barbecue pitmaster, but Tootsie has spent decades mastering her craft under the tutelage of Texas legends. Now, at an age when most people have long since retired, she is hard at work as one of the greatest pitmasters in barbecue history.
Tootsie’s inspiring story was documented in Netflix’s culinary series Chef’s Table, and thanks to her, Snow’s has been ranked the best barbecue in the state. She was a semifinalist for a James Beard award in 2018, the same year she became the second woman ever to be inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
But for Tootsie, smoking meat isn’t about the accolades or the awards. She describes barbecue—the act of laboring over and perfecting something for people to enjoy together—as a path to enlightenment. “It has brought me closer to people,” she says.
Barbecue devotees from every corner of the globe flock to Texas to meet the renowned octogenarian pitmaster and try her famous barbecue, served only on Saturdays when she’s not working as a groundskeeper for the local high school. Visitors camp out the night before, and by sunrise a line has formed, wrapping around the restaurant; Snow’s often sells out by early afternoon.
Tootsie is one of just a handful of female pitmasters in America, but that is slowly changing. Her success has helped pave the way for a new, more inclusive chapter in barbecue: In the Texas town of Lockhart, for example, a new female-owned joint called Barbs B Q just landed on the 2024 New York Times best restaurants list.
She has been working diligently almost every single day of her life, since she was a toddler collecting eggs on her family’s farm. Only now, with her 90th birthday approaching, is Tootsie starting to slow down—or at least what constitutes slowing down in her mind. With no plans to retire anytime soon, she still shovels coal, helps cook the chicken, and, of course, takes photos with her adoring fans. “As long as God gives me a clear mind and a working body—a strong body—I will continue,” she says.
On a recent Saturday morning, I visited Snow’s to watch Tootsie do what she does best: put her head down and work barbecue magic.
On Saturday mornings, 89-year-old Norma Frances “Tootsie” Tomanetz wakes up at 6 A.M.; climbs into her white pickup truck; and drives to Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, Texas, where she has been expertly manning the barbecue pits for more than two decades.
Snow’s world-famous brisket is cooked over low heat for 10 to 12 hours in a big cylindrical pit smoker propped up on steel legs. There’s no official certification or required course to become a barbecue pitmaster, but Tootsie has spent decades mastering her craft under the tutelage of Texas legends. Now, at an age when most people have long since retired, she is hard at work as one of the greatest pitmasters in barbecue history.
Tootsie’s inspiring story was documented in Netflix’s culinary series Chef’s Table, and thanks to her, Snow’s has been ranked the best barbecue in the state. She was a semifinalist for a James Beard Award in 2018, the same year she became the second woman ever to be inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
But for Tootsie, smoking meat isn’t about the accolades. She describes barbecue—the act of laboring over and perfecting something for people to enjoy together—as a path to enlightenment. “It has brought me closer to people,” she says.
Barbecue devotees from every corner of the globe flock to Texas to meet the renowned octogenarian pitmaster and try her famous barbecue, served only on Saturdays when she’s not working as a groundskeeper for the local high school. Visitors camp out the night before, and by sunrise a line has formed, wrapping around the restaurant; Snow’s often sells out by early afternoon.
Tootsie is one of just a handful of female pitmasters in America, but that is slowly changing. Her success has helped pave the way for a new, more inclusive chapter in barbecue: In the Texas town of Lockhart, for example, a new female-owned joint called Barbs B Q just landed on the 2024 New York Times best restaurants list.
She has been working diligently almost every single day of her life, since she was a toddler collecting eggs on her family’s farm. Only now, with her 90th birthday approaching, is Tootsie starting to slow down—or at least what constitutes slowing down in her mind. With no plans to retire anytime soon, she still shovels coal, helps cook the chicken, and, of course, takes photos with her adoring fans. “As long as God gives me a clear mind and a working body—a strong body—I will continue,” she says.
On a recent Saturday morning, I visited Snow’s to watch Tootsie do what she does best: put her head down and work barbecue magic.
When I arrive in Lexington at 6:30 A.M., there is already a long line of giddy barbecue lovers acting the same way a little kid might before a trip to Disney World; their excitement is palpable.
As they wait, often more than eight hours, many crane their necks to glimpse the pits, where Tootsie and her protégés are smoking the meat that will soon be piled high on their plates.
Meanwhile, she calmly observes her barbecue pilgrims. When they ask her for a selfie, she obliges. “I enjoy people,” she says matter-of-factly.
After working on her family’s farm growing up, Tootsie has held many jobs—from small business owner to high school groundskeeper, and now, pitmaster.
One of her first lessons in barbecuing was from legendary Texas pitmaster Orange Holloway, who showed her how to handle ribs and sausage at City Meat Market, another Texas barbecue institution. Tootsie still incorporates many of his instinctual techniques in her work today—from the amount of wood to use, when to turn the meats, and how to know when it’s done. Rather than using a gauge, she hovers her hand gently over the heavy metal pit cover to determine whether it’s at the right temperature.
When Snow’s BBQ opened in 2003, owner Kerry Bexley (pictured here with Tootsie) recruited her to help him man the pits. Just as she had on the farm growing up, Tootsie gave the job her all. Arriving at around 2 A.M. to get the pit fires going, she’d spend the next 12 hours smoking the tender brisket and ribs, mopping the chicken with barbecue sauce, and cooking the sausage until all the meat was sold. “She’d just be dripping sweat,” Bexley tells me. “You’d try to get her to sit down—she wouldn’t.”
Snow’s is located in an old peanut mill. The large, rusty structure in the left of this photo was used to store the nuts after they dried. Just down the street is a cattle auction, which still brings ranchers to town on Saturdays. When I pull up to Snow’s, a cacophony of moos greets me.
The smoke-filled heart of the entire operation is an open-air circle of pits covered by a metal roof. Unlike Snow’s brisket, which is cooked indirectly via a smoker, sausage is placed over coals inside deep pits, which Bexley built himself based on Tootsie’s exact specifications.
Just three months after Edward “White” Tomanetz, Tootsie’s husband of nearly 60 years, passed away in 2015, their son Hershel, whom she called “Hershey,” died of brain cancer.
She believes cooking barbecue is a divine passion gifted to help her work through unimaginable loss. “When White and Hershey died, those doors closed; they weren’t coming back anymore,” she says. “God opened these other doors.”
Barbecue purists from all over the world convene in this unlikely little Texas town to meet their hero. Sonnie Eis, the owner of Dad’s BBQ, came from Sønderborg, Denmark, to sample Tootsie’s cooking and study her techniques. Above, Eis gifts Tootsie a 1960s-era Danish bobblehead with a small golden crown—a symbol of royalty for the queen of barbecue.
Shizu Sasaki (far left), who runs Sun Cafe in Japan, recently started serving barbecue at her own restaurant after watching Tootsie’s episode of Chef’s Table. She spent months planning this big international trip to meet Tootsie with her friends Rie Kudo and Miki Yano (also pictured).
While Tootsie used to throw 150-pound beef cuts over her shoulder without hesitation, her colleagues now handle the heavy lifting. “I have cut back tremendously,” she says. Her barbecue knowledge is now being passed down to the next generation of pitmasters.
Clay Cowgill (pictured here with a rack of ribs fresh from the smoker) spends all night building fires, tending to the pits, and slow-cooking brisket. “I grew up eating [Tootsie’s] barbecue,” Cowgill says. “My dad and Tootsie were my barbecue heroes. Before she was famous, I thought she was the shit.”
When asked about the legacy she’s built, Tootsie gets misty-eyed. But, ever humble, she refuses to linger on the impact of her cooking.
“That’s a wonderful thing,” she says, before turning her attention back to the pit.
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