Gather a crew to feast on Southern-style BBQ at this Sunday-only pop-up diner in the south

We should start with the brisket. Firstly, because it’s one of the most delicious things I’ve eaten this year. And secondly, because it showcases the extraordinary care that goes into something that sounds simple: barbecue.

Beef brisket – from the breast of the beast – is the pinnacle of low-and-slow American-style barbecue. Success is measured in juicy tenderness throughout the cut, a consistent “bark” or spice coating that caramelises as it cooks, and true beefy flavour with smoke notes that linger without overwhelming. On every marker, Lance Rosen’s brisket excels.

Smoked over pecan wood for 18 hours, the meat holds so much juice that the cut surface looks like it’s weeping salty tears of joy. Each mouthful is so succulent it seems to expand as you chew, before resolving into beefy brilliance.

I’m happy to sing its praises but perhaps you’d rather get the word from the Texans who come again and again: there’s probably one here now, drawling and drooling in a high-backed booth.

Southern Grace Diner is the Sunday-only pop-up at Big Boy BBQ, which is only open Fridays for brisket burgers. Owner and chef Lance Rosen, South African-born and fine-dining trained, became obsessed with barbecue after a trip to the US in 2007.

By 2011, he’d opened Big Boy BBQ, becoming one of Melbourne’s smoked-meat pioneers. Big Boy expanded to three stores and 60 staff before shrinking back to this twice-a-week one-man band. Rosen does pretty much everything, perfect for the obsessive realm of barbecue.

It’s not just brisket. There are different meats and sides every week. Best practice is to come with a few people so you can try more.

Honey-rubbed fried chicken is so crisp you’ll hear your neighbour cracking into theirs. Lamb ribs are soft and smoky, making finger licking compulsory.

Golden, sticky cornbread is glazed with brown sugar. Chilli con carne is made Texan-style without beans.

Mississippi pickles are marinated in Kool-Aid – that’s why your cucumber is purple and tastes vaguely like grape. The coleslaw is vinegary, cutting the richness of the meat.

Desserts are Southern-style, maybe peach cobbler or red velvet cake.

Questions of authenticity abound when it comes to barbecue, which can be a fiercely contested cuisine. An amalgam and ongoing refashioning of Indigenous American, African American and white European food traditions, it changes by region. Naturally, when it drifts to Australia, it’s transmuted again.

Rosen celebrates that, bringing in his food memories: the brisket rub includes elements he learnt as a chef at a fancy hotel, and the fermented coleslaw can be traced to a Jewish restaurant in postwar St Kilda.

It’s all lovely backstory for feel-good comfort food, served by the man who has spent the week making it, and will happily sweep you up in his soulful reverie.