A BBQ Odyssey

"His good friend made a goodly fire, of which the force once past,
He laid the spit low, near the coals, to make it brown at last:
Then sprinkled it with sacred salt, and took it from the racks:
This roasted, and on a dresser set on, Achilles brought the meat,
And to divinest Ithacus took his opposed seat
Upon the bench. Then did he will his friend to sacrifice,
Who cast sweet incense in the fire to all the deities.
Thus fell they to their ready food. -" The Iliad, lines 205-218, Chapman's Homer

Barbecue is a kind of epic Texas poetry so who better to introduce an odyssey of the taste buds than Homer himself. A few years ago, for Father's Day, I proposed to my dad that we travel all over Texas exploring the BBQ joints blazoned on the Texas Monthly Top 50 List. Some good father/son bonding time. Of course Mom came along too ;) Dad and I mapped out our strategies and mom packed the ice chest with snacks that we might need in between gorging stops. The strategy was simple - mark off an area with about 4 or 5 BBQ joints in a few hours radius. Then at first light on Saturday head to the one opening earliest then gradually work your way over the countryside until closing time. Our first outing started off at the legendary's Snow's in Lexington then wormed down the back roads to Giddings for "brunch" before shooting down to Luling and the ex-BBQ capitol of Texas, Lockhart. Yes, EX-BBQ capitol. Austin has now become not only the legal capitol but the BBQ capitol as well, with places like Franklin's, La BBQ, Freedman's, etc. By the end of the day, all three of us could barely roll into the car, in full grip of the dreaded "meat sweats". We had an ice chest full of leftovers but now realized that we couldn't do five BBQ stops in one day nor could we get more than a small helping to split between the three of us at each stop. Basically 1/4 pound of moist brisket, two ribs and a ring of sausage with a side here or there would be our taste testing plates. We don't really consider bird to be BBQ in Texas so we never tried any. So from this first epic outing, we figured out that we would hit only three or so BBQ joints a day and that these trips probably needed to be extended into longer road trip style vacations. That's been more or the less the pattern over the last couple of years since our first great whirlwind excursion. So, as I've promised various folks, I'm FINALLY posting our critiques and notes of the TOP 50 BBQ Joints in Texas - according to Texas Monthly. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we didn't. Read on to find out which ones...

Snow's BBQ - Lexington, 2013

(I'm not a food writer and this isn't a magazine. I'm going to type out the notes we made without waxing too poetic, just giving you the stuff you need to know. I find most foodie descriptions to be quite annoyingly pretentious. Just say it tastes super or needs more salt or it was entirely too expensive for the pile that showed up on your plate! You know...useful information.) 

That's a lot of sausage!

The brisket here was extremely tender with a great texture. Very nice concentration of fat emulsified through the meat. Perfect level of salt and pepper. Didn't have a very smoky flavor to it though. 

Pork shoulder was moist yet just salty enough with a nice mouth feel to it, whatever that means. I didn't want to keep using "texture" over and over again. But it certainly felt good in my mouth.

The ribs didn't do it for me. My mom liked them though - salty and crusty. Weren't tender enough for me though.  I enjoy watching them slide off the bone. Franklin's has this down to an art. Most other places I've been don't seem to reach that stage of slidage yet. Is slidage even a word?

The sausage seemed to be what we enjoyed most. Had a gamey, venison flavor to it. The jalapeno sausage had a bit too much of a sting for my folks, but my tongue has been horrifically scarred by intaking massive amounts of Thai food, so I didn't feel it much. The folks noticed a nice after-burn from the jalapenos. The regular sausage had a bit of a bite as well. The skin had good snappage. Snapauge?

The sauce, if you needed it, was tangy with an underlying sweetness of ketchup. Too ketchupy for me though. I've never been a fan of the sweet ketchup syrup Texas has called BBQ sauce. I much prefer the more vinegar based mop sauces or other Texas sauces that have managed to tap into that wellspring of tart tradition.

Coleslaw was the non-creamy kind, sweet and no real tang of vinegar.

Potato salad was smooth, no tang, chunky.

Beans were ranch style, the kind I love, but mom wasn't a fan. I enjoyed them though. They had a taste of BBQ sauce mixed in and a bit peppery with chili powder. They were also free which is a definite plus. Only socialists make you pay for beans.

Free beer in the back too. That seems to be a thing with a few bbq places but I can't handle beer for breakfast. I'm German but not THAT German but that's not germane to this discussion. Though, actually, if you look back at the long history of Texas bbq the earliest restaurants were actually German meat markets looking to get rid of their leftover cuts. You'll find the oldest family owned places usually have Germanic sounding names too. So I guess German is germane to barbecue. Germans also invented chicken fried steak but that's for another blog. Germans did not invent bbq but they certainly helped shape our bbq culture into what it is today. Prost!

The place has a small town atmosphere. The building itself is small but there are quite a few tables outside next to the pit. Outside we could hear brisket on the hoof mooing at a slaughterhouse down the street. The ladies inside were not overly friendly. Indeed, they seemed annoyed we were even there. But the actual owner and pit master walked about outside and was very friendly with all the folks chatting her up. Remember though, this was three years ago. Those morning sour pusses could very well be long gone by now and replaced with more chipper folks. All in all it was a pretty auspicious start to our day of BBQ but it didn't blow us away. Don't get me wrong, it was excellent and still worth getting up at the ass crack of dawn to munch on some beef for breakfast. It just didn't make me weep in ecstasy.

Snow's is only open on Saturdays until sold out. Doors open at 8 am. I would recommend you get there between 7:30 and 8:00 to avoid a line and make sure you get some. - 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Go forth and do likewise.

- Erstwhile City of Waterloo, 09/27/16, 11ish, wind north/northeast, a taste of fall in the air.