BBQ, Texas Style

Hill Country, TX – No trip to Texas is complete without experiencing their world famous stye of smoking meat (especially brisket): Texas Style BBQ. Slow and low is the motto here, meaning long smoking times at low temperatures. The meat is rubbed with only salt and black pepper and cooked over indirect heat using mainly oak wood. Oddly (for us coming from the north), Texas style typically doesn’t include BBQ sauce, and few, if any, sauce options are offered on the side. We sampled as many restaurants as our stomachs could handle in 2 weeks, often pairing our visit with a nearby hike in scenic Texas Hill Country.

Buzzie’s Bar-B-Q

Located in Kerrville, TX, which is about 2 hours west of Austin or 1 hour northwest of San Antonio. This is the heart of hill country, and we heartily recommend pairing your BBQ with a hike at the nearby Kerrville-Schreiner Regional Park. While Texas BBQ is typified by brisket, Buzzie’s specializes in pork, and I recommend you stick with what they are good at. The pork ribs are perfectly tender and smoked to perfection, with meat falling off the bone; the jalapeño & cheddar sausage was also excellent. I hear the pork chops are even better. But the brisket, oy. I don’t know why we ordered it. I don’t know why they even make it. It’s no better than BBQ you get at a Safeway food bar. Yikes. Not tender, overly chewy, no smoky flavor. Just avoid it.

Website: Buzzie’s Bar-B-Q

Buzzie’s BBQ in Kerrville had great pork ribs

We tried the pork ribs, beef brisket, coleslaw and potato salad

We also tried the regular and jalapeño cheddar sausage and beans

Smitty’s Market

Smitty’s Market is located in Lockhart, TX, about a 40 minute drive from Austin. This suggestion came from a 2011 copy of Southern Living about the best Texas BBQ that Karla had saved for a future Texas trip. The article mentioned how the visitor is part of the experience here, standing in line inside the actual smokehouse, watching while the fires are stoked and the meat is tended. That is indeed true, and we greatly enjoyed this experience. Unfortunately that is where the attraction ends. We tried the brisket and the ribs, and both were dry, tough and not smoky. I have no idea why the line was so long here. Everybody else was getting brisket and they looked like locals. So either our cut of brisket was particularly bad or these people have no idea how good BBQ tastes.

Smitty’s Market is located just off the main square of Lockhart, Texas

The line winds past the smoke boxes with their carefully tended fires

A peek inside one of the smoke boxes at Smitty’s

Oddly, you pay for the meat (cash only) separate from the fixings. Now you must carry around a huge piece of crumpled up butcher paper with hot, wet meat in the middle while waiting in another line to order coleslaw, potato salad, or beans, in addition to drinks. By the time you get everything to the table the meat is getting cold. They could easily improve the efficiency of this ordering process, but I’m guessing the owners enjoy the uniqueness of this oddball approach.

The town center in Lockhart

The downtown area of Lockhart is similar to the quaint feel of many of the small Texas towns we drove through

The small town of Lockhart is home to two other well known BBQ places, Blacks’s and Kreuz Market. Based on the recommendations from people we met, I would skip Smitty’s and head to Black’s, which was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

Website: Smitty’s Market

Terry Black’s BBQ

Now this is how you do BBQ. Terry’s Blacks, located in Austin, TX, came from a recommendation from a friend, and man was he right. You start by queuing in a long line (which seems to be a theme for well known BBQ places) and then helping yourself to various sides (we tried coleslaw, beans, and potato salad, all of which were good). You then proceed to a cashier/butcher station where meat is ordered by the pound, which they slice right in front of you. After paying you find a seat and dig in. Wow! The brisket had that perfect smoke ring which is typically (but not always) an indicator the meat is tender and moist. Well, both of those meat adjectives apply here in spades. In fact, the brisket was so tender and juicy you almost didn’t have to chew. It just melted in your mouth. Fantastic. The best I’ve ever had. The ribs were good, nice and tender, but not the best.

Don’t confuse Terry Black’s with Black’s, they are not the same

We appreciated this directions board, as at many of the other BBQ joints we weren’t sure about the ordering process

The meat is cut for you at the register and weighed as you pay by the weight

After lunch we walked by the BBQ pit to take some pictures and the pitmaster invited us inside to look around and ask questions. They start smoking the meat the night before it’s to be served the next day. That’s dedication. The only wood they use is post oak, a species of white oak. He mentioned being pitmaster is the best job in the winter but the worst job in the summer (the temperature inside the smoke house can hit 150 F in the summer). Luckily we visited in the winter so he was happy.

Terry Black’s had the best beef brisket. We enjoyed a quick tour of the pit area

Website: Terry Black’s BBQ

Salt Lick BBQ

I don’t know exactly where I first heard the recommendation for Salt Lick BBQ, but every time I mentioned visiting Austin, this uniquely named eatery was always mentioned. Per our Boots n’ BBQ series, we paired a hike at nearby Pedernales Falls State Park with a late lunch here. The parking lot is huge! I’m guessing that portends long waits on the weekends. But on a Tuesday in early March at 2 PM it was sparsely populated and we walked right in. Patrons are greeted by the defining factor here: a huge, stone BBQ pit where all the meat is smoked. Neither eyes nor nose can miss it.

Salt Lick Barbeque’s Driftwood location

Salt Lick ambience includes long rows of tables for dining in and was the only BBQ place we visited with waiter service

Salt Lick’s BBQ pit area

I wish I could say it lived up to the hype, but I would be lying. In fact, both Karla and I were quite disappointed in almost everything we ate. I ordered the brisket and rib platter and Karla tried the pulled pork and sausage platter. We figured 4 meats would be representative of their smoking prowess and we both could compare and contrast. All platters are served with “vegetables”, consisting of baked beans, potato salad and coleslaw. In addition they adhere to Texas BBQ rules and bring out plain white bread, pickles and onions.

Mike ordered pork ribs and beef brisket

Karla ordered pulled pork and a sausage

Let me start with the good. The brisket was excellent. Moist, juicy, and smoky yumminess. OK, I’m done listing the positive. There was nothing else good. The ribs were dry and tough, the sausage tasted like a hot dog from a vendor’s cart in any big city, and the pulled pork was dry and without flavor. But even worse were the sides. They apparently put zero effort into their recipes, unless the goal was to create food that tasted like absolutely nothing. The beans taste like cardboard. Or maybe that was the potato salad? Who knows, they taste the same. And the coleslaw tasted like shredded cabbage and carrots with no dressing. None.

It’s a bad sign when we can’t even finish half our plates after hiking for hours at nearby Enchanted Rock State Park. Since we were still hungry we opted to split a desert, choosing a piece of pecan pie. You can’t screw up pecan pie, right? It’s a southern specialty. There are pecan farms all over this part of Texas. Surely the pie would be good. Well, I don’t know how they did it, but it was not good. It wasn’t sweet! Isn’t that the #1 characteristic of pecan pie…that it’s sweet? It tasted like they forgot to add sugar (or more typically corn syrup). And there were no pecans in the filling, just a few placed on top. It tasted more like a non-pecan savory meat pie, but without the meat.

Website: Salt Lick BBQ

Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que

I’m glad this was the last BBQ place we tried before leaving Texas, because it was the best. Unlike our previous favorite, Terry Black’s, everything was amazing here, not just the brisket. A word of note before I continue: we went to the original location in Llano, TX. Cooper’s has two other locations in Texas that locals we talked with indicated are no match for the original. So I can only vouch for the quality of your BBQ if you drive all the way out to Llano (which is in the middle of nowhere).

Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que in Llano was our favorite

You begin by queuing in a long line (sound familiar?). Although on a Thursday at 1:45 PM the line was only 6 people deep. First up you order your meat from the pitmaster, who is standing directly over the smoking pit. All meat is by the pound, and he dips everything liberally in BBQ sauce (technically optional, but come on). He then plops the meat directly onto a plastic cafeteria style tray — no plate, no butcher paper. Nothing. I question the cleanliness of this process, but the health department hasn’t shut them down so I guess it’s ok. You then take this tray of wet meat into the restaurant where an employee transfers it to butcher paper, weighs it and puts in back on a tray (a new, non-wet tray).

Cooper’s BBQ meat selection area

Now you shuffle down another line ordering sides, such as coleslaw, potato salad, macaroni & cheese and various fruit cobblers. Baked beans are provided on the house, as is pickles, onions and white bread. The former is located in a huge serve yourself vat by the soda machine and the latter are located on all the tables. Between the two of us we ordered burnt ends (which is just the end of a piece of brisket), moist brisket, pork ribs, jalapeño & cheddar sausage, coleslaw, potato salad, blackberry cobbler and pecan cobbler. If that sounds like too much food, you’re right. But it provided dinner later that night and lunch the next day.

The cobblers at Cooper’s were delicious

Every single thing we ate was amazing. The burnt ends taste like beef candy! Which is a great thing for two or three bites, then it just overwhelms the taste buds I think. The moist brisket was everything you want in Texas brisket. Probably not quite to the level of Terry Black’s, but close. The ribs rivaled Buzzie’s. The sausage was the best of any place, as were all the sides. I’m so happy they didn’t phone in the sides like so many Texas BBQ places.

Website: Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que