I Heart Lockhart
Posted on | July 11, 2009 | No Comments
I’m really not one to get worked up over Texas barbecue. I dig the sausage but for me, brisket has always been closely associated with Jewish religous holidays. It’s supposed to be cooked for days in a brown mixture that I know for many jews involves Coca-Cola. It’s something that Jewish mothers make and Jewish children eat. I’ve really only eaten texas barbecue once and that was at the Salt Lick in Driftwood. I thought it was good, but it certainly didn’t stand up in my mind to the Tennessee and North Carolina styles.
But on our visit to Austin I wanted to go the mecca of texas barbecue, Lockhart. It’s here that three different barbecue restaurants practice their craft. We only went to two: Smitty’s Market and Kreuz Market. That’s all we could eat. Smitty’s was first. THe rooms where the meat is cooked look like they haven’t changed or been cleaned in fifty years. Everything has a layer of black smoke. You order your meat in one room where a carver cuts what you order and gives to a casheir to be weighed and paid for. There are no concessions to modernity. The cash register is a million years old and the meat is served on butcher paper with the corners folded up. The utensils of choice is the plastic knife and your fingers.
The brisket was just incredible. Smokey and tender and melt in your mouth good. Sauce is pretty much out of the question but there is a hot sauce which I didn’t use. This meat does not need sauce. There’s tons of flavor from the beef and from the smoke. Leesy and I finished off a quarter pound of brisket and a sausage. The sausages(85% beef 15% pork) are fantastic with a nice crispy, but not dry, casing. Overeall, this was some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had. The beans were terrible and the cole slaw was nothing special but I guess if you do one thing this well, you can skip the sides.
Next up, Kreuz Market. There was some kind of feud that pushed some of the family members behind Smitty’s to open Kreuz Market. I neither know nor care what happened. All I know is that I hope more barbecue restaurants can multiply this way. Kreuz’s feels like a charicature of a barbecue restaurant. It’s big, modern, full of modern conveinces like the ability to open a “tab” at the meat counter and close it out when you get your drinks/sides. The lean brisket we ordered was pretty flavorful but it didn’t have that great smokiness and slightly charred flavor of Smitty’s. I’d say it was good, almost great, but in Lockhart that doesn’t really count.
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