Return Visits: Henderson & Kane, Since the First Week

The short version

Henderson & Kane is a general store with a barbecue counter at 715 Henderson Street, on the corner it is named for, in Houston's Old Sixth Ward. John and Veronica Avila opened it in June 2018 in a 1930s building that had been a meat market. I was there the first week, and I have been going back ever since.

The brisket is my favorite in Houston, and the smoked chicken is the current reason I go. If you are three or more people, the Pitmaster Plate is the only sensible order. It is also where I buy beer, where I have taken coworkers and out-of-town friends, and where both of my granddaughters, four years apart in age, learned to ride the same wooden horse.

Since the first week

The store opened quietly in June 2018 and held its grand opening on the Fourth of July, when the neighborhood fills up for the fireworks over Eleanor Tinsley Park. I did not need the fireworks. A barbecue joint had opened inside a corner store, with a coffee counter, a beer cooler and a dessert case, and I was going to find out whether it was any good.

It was. My X account has the receipts: brunch in June 2019 with a note that we were treated like family, a barbecue breakfast the following February that I called the best in the city, and a post from August 2021 about "our favorite hangout" with a granddaughter on the wooden horse by the door. Khloe rode it first. Lilly, her little sister, rode it a few years later in the same spot. The horse has held up better than my knees.

The pandemic spring is the story I tell most. On March 23, 2020, with the city shutting down, I posted from the store that I had picked up barbecue to go, curbside, with craft beer, toilet paper and hand sanitizer in the same stop. A general store turned out to be exactly what a neighborhood needed that month. I did not forget it, and I do not think the neighborhood did either.

That is the test I set out in the first Return Visits note, about Galveston. With every barbecue option in Houston available to me, this is the corner I keep choosing.

The brisket and the sauce

The brisket is juicy and tender without being too greasy. It is my favorite in Houston, and I have been saying that for years.

Then there is the sauce, which is where Henderson & Kane wins an argument most barbecue places lose by default. It is stellar. There are two, regular and spicy, and I am convinced the regular has more spice than the spicy. I prefer the regular. I have not confirmed this with a thermometer or with the Avilas, so treat it as an opinion held strongly by one man with a brisket sandwich.

The chicken that takes three days

I have had three favorite orders here: first the sliced smoked turkey, then the brisket, and now the smoked chicken. Making the chicken is a three-day process, and it has displaced two meats I already loved.

Some context for how strange that is. I am not a fan of chicken. Gatinha loves it, and it is a standing grievance in our house that I do not want it, and that when I do agree to it I am sick of it two meals later. There are two exceptions on record: a good butter chicken, and this. Henderson & Kane has turned a man who avoids chicken into a man who drives to the Sixth Ward for it.

The order for three or more

If you are going with three or more people, order the Pitmaster Plate and stop reading the menu. It comes with a third of a pound each of brisket, pulled pork, pork ribs and smoked chicken, a choice of sausage or boudin, and three sides. It arrives on a tray lined with butcher paper, with pickles and onions in a paper boat, and it settles every argument at the table at once.

For the sides, my ranking is cream corn, mac and cheese, sweet potato and kale, then potato salad. The plate only lets you pick three, which is the only complaint I have about it.

The beer

Henderson & Kane is also where I buy beer. The general store half of the building carries a very good craft selection, and the build-your-own six pack is the way to shop it: six different cans instead of six of one. It is the right way to feed a table, too. I have shared barbecue and a mixed six here with friends, with coworkers, and on a few occasions with strangers who became neither but were good company for an hour.

Ups and downs

Eight years is long enough to see a place change, and part of this series is saying so.

The sliced smoked turkey was my first favorite here, and it was amazing. It came off the menu after the pandemic, when the cost of doing it right stopped making sense, and I still miss it. The menu lists a smoked turkey again as I write this. I do not know whether it is the same bird, and I have not found out, because the smoked chicken is that good and there is only so much room on a tray. Prices have gone up more than once since 2018, as they have everywhere barbecue is sold by the pound. I have paid every increase without complaint, which is the most honest review I can give.

Who should go

Anyone who wants Central Texas barbecue without a two-hour line, and anyone with a group who would rather share a tray than argue over plates. It opens at eight in the morning, which puts breakfast tacos and the barbecue breakfast on the table before most pits in the city have opened. The seating is a few tables inside, picnic tables out front and a side patio, and parking is on the street.

If you want a white-tablecloth dinner, this is a corner store with a smoker. I come for the short list of meats smoked in the back. And if you came for the sliced turkey I remember, order the chicken and report back on the turkey. I have not been able to make myself check.

The record

Photographed visits with food in the frame: June 2019; January, February and March 2020; August 2021; January and September 2023; February, April and December 2024; February, April and June 2026. The posts on X fill in the gaps, and the wooden horse fills in the rest.

As of June 24, 2026, the most recent tray in my library, nothing has given me a reason to change the recommendation. If that changes, this note will.

Next in Return Visits

Return Visits: Asia Market, the One I Was Not Going to Tell You About