My Write-Up: Day 2
OK, so this is the day that I took some personal time off to head down to Lockhart and Luling. Again, I'll post videos later. I got coverage for all of these places to some capacity.
1) City Market in Luling. This wound up also being the best of the day. It was a market in the front, and a strange closed-in area in the back with the pits. Very good, nice and smokey. Brisket was great and the hot links were even better. They had a mustard vinegar (basically a S. Carolina) sauce that was the best out of all of the places IMO. I got a used/cleaned out Lipton Iced Tea bottle full of it that I will bring home.
2) Chisholm Trail in Lockhart. Meh. The brisket was ok; not great. No real smoke taste. The hot links were hot, but as oily as your worst nightmare. I prefer it drier and didn't see any options to order it that way; I could have missed it certainly as I was busy taking in the local flavor. I probably could squeeze a teaspoon or 2 of grease out of a 1 inch chunk.
3) Smitty's Market in Lockhart. Another Meh. They had the coolest pit setup, with 2 open fires on the ground, adjacent to 2 pit rows. All of these places have about the same type of pit. More about that later. As for the food, it was just OK. I ordered brisket which they called Fat, and it was. It was like a point that never saw a trim. And was not rendered, underdone. I also ordered the "lean" brisket which they called shoulder; it tasted like an eye of the round or something. Not bad, but not brisket flat like I assumed it would be. I must have missed something when ordering. I was busy trying to get some video shots of the pits as they were pretty cool. No real smoke flavor in either cut, even with all the smoke that was certainly getting on it. Like Chisholm Trail, the links were a grease-fest. Here I found out after the fact that I could have ordered a dryer version, which they said are just cooked longer.
4) Black's in Lockhart. Yum, boy. This place was very good. Nice lean flat section like I asked for. Smoke was medium, but at least was there. The hot link was great. It had chunks of garlic and jalapeno and was lean, hardly any grease. Real good.
5) Kreuz Market. Mega-meh. Worst overall. Place is huge; looks like it may have been good at one time, but now seems to be a tourist trap. It is the first obvious BBQ joint coming into Lockhart from the North (Austin) but was my last stop as I went south to Luling first and then came back up through Lockhart. I got brisket, which was point and almost all fat. What little meat there was was underdone and tough and cut with the grain. I didn't eat but a small bite of bark that I got. Tossed the rest. The link was OK; in the middle of the crowd I guess. Kinda greasy, not terrible.
All of these places had about the same type of pit. They are all brick/stone, and all on the floor. The fire is at one end, and the pit stretches quite a ways to a chimney. There are several heavy steel doors along the tops of the pit rows where they have grates inside and meat getting happy. So, think of like a typical offset, but on the floor, and stone. Most had a fire box made out of brick/stone also with a steel door for loading. The one at Smitty's didn't even have the box; the fire was just sitting there on the floor next to the intake to the pit row. All of the places had 2 rows of pit that shared a common chimney; in an 'L' formation if that makes sense, where the vertex of the 'L' is the shared chimney. The ends of the 'L' would be where the fire boxes were. All of the places that I asked about firewood reported that they use post Oak.
One thing that was pretty consistent was the subtle nature of the smoke flavor. Some places hardly had a hint, while a couple had slightly more.
