Jack Zizzo’s barbecue journey has tested him. His Austin joint, Space Kat Barbecue, has closed three times due to forces outside his control. One of those times was in 2023, when his new food truck was stationed in San Diego. A fire sparked in the joint because of faulty assembly, and the business was out of commission for months. “If there is a higher power, it is literally telling me to not do this with my life,” Zizzo said. Call him the Odysseus of barbecue, who followed a siren’s song back to Texas.
Zizzo started working in the pit room of La Barbecue in 2014 under the tutelage of John Lewis and Esaul Ramos Jr. He worked there for a year and half before briefly opening his own pop-up, Birdhouse BBQ. Zizzo soon found a home in the Barley Swine kitchen, which is where he met his current business partners, Lance Brase and Justin Payton. In 2017, he left Austin for good, he thought, to return to his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, where he made waves with his first iteration of Space Kat.
“I was making so much money in Youngstown,” he said. “My costs were so low, and I was the only barbecue in town.” After the COVID-19 pandemic, he was looking for a fresh start and to be closer to the ocean. Business was good on the West Coast too, but after the fire, his debts mounted. Then he developed two extruding discs in his back. “I could barely walk some days,” Zizzo said. He sold the truck, the smokers, and most of his other equipment. He thought his barbecue journey was over…