Slab Restaurant at Westfield Topanga

They say the best barbecue takes time — and the story of SLAB is years in the making. It begins deep in the heart of Texas, where Burt Bakman, an Israeli immigrant, found his calling to be a pitmaster. Years later, that determination paid off. As the mastermind behind Trudy’s Underground barbecue in Los Angeles, Bakman built a reputation from his skill at the smoker and an obsessive Instagram following among LA’s notoriously fickle foodies.

SLAB, the brainchild of Bakman and The h.wood Group, was born in 2015. After 3 years of perfecting the space, kitchen and recipes, it officially opened as a brick-and-mortar location along a busy strip of West Third Street in Los Angeles. When you sit down at SLAB and taste the marbled brisket for the first time, you’ll know this experience was well worth the wait.