ACK!!!!!
You MUST try it some time!!! It is amazing!!!!
Here's a little info: (I grew up in Santa Barbara, which is about an hour south of Santa Maria, home of the tri tip)
Tri-tip -- Santa Maria, California barbecue
August 3, 2001
By JOE O'CONNELL, cbbqa past President
Outside California, the tri-tip cut of beef is not well known. But in California, the Santa Maria tri-tip barbecue remains the center of authentic California barbecue.
Taste and texture
Californians know that the tri-tip roast combines the strong flavor of beef with the perfect texture of a great steak. The taste and texture of the tri-tip roast is unlike any other cut of beef.
The taste of tri-tip is strongly beef. The taste cannot be compared with that of any other cut of beef. Tri-tip is not light and smooth, like the taste of the tenderloin (filet). Instead, tri-tip tastes like meat - the essence of great beef - a taste that is bold and strong. The flavor is all meat, not buttery and soft but meaty and hard. Not other cut tastes more like beef than the tri-tip.
Combined with the beef taste is the texture with says beef. Tri-tip has a bold texture that is moist and chewy and not at all dry or tough. Tri-tip has none of the leathery texture of inferior cuts and grades of beef. On the other hand, tri-tip does not have the soft texture that some mistakenly equate with great beef. Tri-tip has the texture of great beef, like a rib-eye, and not the "melt in your mouth like butter" texture of tenderloin. Tri-tip's texture says beef, not butter. Chewy but not tough, with the texture of beef, not mashed potatoes.
In recent years, barbecue tri-tip has taken on a folk status as those outside of California try it for the first time. Called either California tri-tip or Santa Maria tri-tip, the cut and barbecue method are uniquely Californian.
A beef tri-tip roast is a boneless cut of meat from the bottom sirloin. It also
is called "triangular" roast because of its shape.