Lockhart - Barbecue Capital of Texas

Although others places in Texas may disagree (Llano, TX proclaims itself to be the BBQ capital of the World), the Texas State legislature made it official with a resolution just a few years ago - Lockhart is the "Barbecue Capital of Texas."

The town of Lockhart, with a population hovering around 13000, is approximately 30 miles south of the Texas state capital of Austin. According to the New York Times, it is at the Southern tip of what many call the Texas Barbecue Belt, which extends about 100 miles North to Waco through the rolling hills of South-Central Texas. The area has a "long history of settlement by people who made an art of cooking meat over smoky fires: Comanche and other Indian nations, Mexicans and later German and Czech immigrants," the Times writes.

Lockhart is the seat of Caldwell County. The building you see in the photo to the left is the Caldwell County Courthouse. It sits in the center of Lockhart's quaint town square. Built by the architectural firm of Martin, Byrnes and Johnston in 1884, the structure features mansard roofs and a high central tower with a four way Seth Thomas clock. The three-story edifice is built of "Muldoon" limestone with red Pecos sandstone trim.

Kreuz

A short block from courthouse sits the original home of Kreuz Market (pronounced "Krites"). Kreuz Market was started in 1900 by Charles Kreuz as a meat market and grocery store. Like many markets in the area, Kreuz cooked cuts of meat on barbecue pits to prevent wasting meat by spoilage. Lesser cuts were ground up to make what is now a delicious version of Texas' famous beef sausage links. Early customers would buy their barbecue and sausage (which was wrapped in butcher paper), then buy some items from the grocery store to go along with it, and eat it off the butcher paper using their hands and a pocket knife (and, as the modern day employees of Kreuz like to remind you, "with NO SAUCE.")

According to Kreuz's website, Charles passed the business along to his sons and son-in-law who ran it until 1948, when Edgar Schmidt, who had worked there since 1936, bought the market from the Kreuz's. In the 1960's, Edgar closed the grocery store and kept some of the more popular "side items" for the barbecue restaurant, such as crackers, sliced white bread, pickles, onions, and cheese.

In 1984, Edgar sold the business to his sons, Rick and Don Schmidt, and they ran the place until Don's retirement in 1997. In 1999, after 99 years in business, Rick Schmidt moved Kreuz Market to a newer and bigger warehouse sized barn filled with communal tables a quarter mile north of the old location, right near the entrance of town. Along with the new building came some new items on the Kreuz menu, most notably: pork spare ribs, beans, German potato salad, sauerkraut, and a new jalapeño cheese sausage.


We happened to visit late on a Monday afternoon, which meant that we pretty much had the palace of deliciousness to ourselves. When you make your way to the "counter" at the back of the building, a purposeful elderly woman instructs you to order your smoky meat product of choice by the pound. The pit master opens the huge floor level brick pits, takes out the right cut and thinly slices it on what looks to be an ancient cutting block. Your portions are taken to a scale, weighed and priced, and then everything is laid out and wrapped up in butcher paper with slices of white sandwich bread. Although we couldn't get ourselves to order the pork ribs (we were in Texas after all), we did order the brisket, the shoulder and both the regular and the jalapeño and cheese link sausages.

With paper "satchel" in hand, you walk through a set of double doors to pick up your "vegetables," in this case, sweet slices of fresh onion, a variety of pickles, cubes of cheddar cheese, wonderfully smoke-laden pinto beans and a whole avocado. Grab a bottle of Shiner and a bottle of "Texas Pete's" hot sauce and you have yourself a meal, of course without forks, plates or barbecue sauce. But who needs any of those things when the food is this good. After all, Kreuz Market provides its customers the opportunity to reconnect to their most base instincts. Huge slabs of meat, smoked over open wood fires, basted with rendered fat and dripping with juices, sliced and then eaten with their own two hands. The experience is worth the trip alone. The fact that it was the best brisket we have ever had only made all the better.

Smitty's

The story of how Smitty's came to be is apparently somewhat of a local legend. The rumor is that when Edgar Schmidt passed away, he left the Kreuz business to his son and the building that housed it to his daughter and the two siblings couldn't come to an agreement about how to operate going into the future. Kreuz Market moved up the road, Smitty's opened up and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, Smitty's was closed by the time we got to it and we weren't able to confirm the rivalry rumors. So, let's just say that in Lockhart, barbecuing runs along family lines. Nevertheless, Nina Schmidt Sells and Jim Sells, along with Nina's sons, John and James, are literally following in the footsteps of Nina's dad, Edgar "Smitty" Schmidt. Using the same smokers that Nina's father used to run Kreuz Market for over 50 years, Smitty's is serving up great barbecue brisket, sausage and even pork chops.

You'll find the traditional family "extras" of onion, avocado, pickles and cheddar cheese, served on brown paper and accompanied by your choice of bread or crackers and a plastic knife. John and James have also added something to their menu that the locals found hard to believe at first - beans. John says it's Grandpa Smitty's secret recipe and they thought they would try it out. It seems like going out on a limb is paying off and now there is a bit of a friendly rivalry with Rick Schmidt over at Kreuz as to who really has Grandpa's recipe. Regardless, the beans at both locations have been a real hit, spicy, smoky and meaty. Smitty's is definitely at the top of our list the next time we head back to Lockhart. We are sorry we missed it.

Black's

"8 Days a Week" ...reads the sign outside Black's Barbecue just a few blocks across the town square from Smitty's. Norma and Edgar Black, co-owners of the self-proclaimed "oldest family-owned barbecue restaurant in Texas," say people are always asking where that eighth day comes from. "If you're here as much as we are, you find a few extra days in that time," Norma likes to say. "It's easier to remember when we're closed - just Thanksgiving and Christmas - than when we're open."

Black's looks like you'd expect a Texas barbecue restaurant to look. Framed photographs of local high school football teams and Texas college football greats cover the walls. Scattered throughout the restaurant are a number of hunting trophies, longhorns and even a jackalope. A photograph of former Texas Governor Ann Richards, guards over the back room too.

This restaurant has been in the family since 1932. Things have changed a lot since then, but the recipe for brisket is still the same. "It's simple," Edgar says. "You just need salt, pepper, the right wood and a few family secrets that I can't tell you." The "right wood," we later discovered, is post oak. And unlike Smitty's and Kreuz, Black's has a house made barbecue sauce. "We didn't have a sauce when we first started," Edgar explains. "My wife, she makes it. We added it after a lot of people from the North came down. They'd ask for it." Norma's sauce is bright red-orange, hinting of lemon and a little cumin with a sweet finish; "eight" days a week it simmers in an electric cooking pot not too far from the restaurant's cash register.
While the brisket wasn't as good as Kreuz's, Black's has a few items that you just can't get anywhere else in Lockhart. Aside from the standard beef offerings, Black's smoked chicken, turkey and whole pork loins. The turkey and chicken had a great smoky flavor, but were still light enough to entice those folks looking for something "healthy." Black's version of jalapeño and cheese sausage actually tasted like jalapeño and cheese, whereas Kreuz's version seemed simply like a spicier version of its original beef link. I did think, however, that Kreuz's sausage casing had the better snap.