The Big "L's" of Barbeque---Number Eight in a Series

                                

I need to remind everyone that I made this pilgrimage about ten years ago, so some of the notes may be a bit outdated.  I have added explanations to bring the narrative up to date, but be careful—some of these places are closed.  So much for a disclaimer.

            Llano has four good barbeque places. (I keep saying “places” because they are not cafes, and they are not restaurants. Some are joints, and some are halls, some have live music, some sell beer, and some have tablecloths. So, rather than dig through my limited vocabulary for just the right word, I call them places.) As I was saying, Llano has four good barbeque places. Inman’s is a big place, justly famous for its turkey sausage. Cooper’s has become one of the best known in Texas, and most everyone’s favorite, but I’ve not had good experiences there. I believe the server is first cousin to the adolescent in Fredericksburg, and I invariably get a bunch of stringy grey meat, sliced with the grain so it hangs in my teeth like half-cooked spaghetti.

Laird’s is the newest barbeque place in Llano. It is in a spotlessly clean, remodeled old house on the main drag, south of downtown.  Ken Laird once cooked for Inman’s or Cooper’s, but I’m not sure which.  Sometimes his bread is not as fresh as I’d like, but he does a good job with the meat. Incidently, in Llano, you don’t buy a barbeque sandwich. In Llano, you buy a chopped or sliced “bun.”

My favorite Llano barbeque is in a place called “Brothers.” It’s out west on Highway Twenty Nine, on the right, across from the Dairy Queen, just before you get to Cooper’s. I’m told that it started as a lean-to shack, next to a gas station operated by the cook’s brother, hence the name. Brother knows how to cook the meat, how to slice it, and how to serve it.  He consistently does all that better than any of the other places in town. The station has now closed, and the barbeque place occupies the whole property.

On a recent trip to Llano, Cooper’s was busier than ever, and Brothers was closed.  That shows how much I know about what is going on in the business end of barbeque.

Lockhart claims to be the barbeque capital of Texas, based upon the presence of Black’s Barbeque, Chisholm Trail Barbeque, and Kreuz’s Meat Market. Although Chisholm Trail and Black’s both serve good Barbeque, I believe their true function is to handle the people who are too impatient to wait in line at Kreuz’s Market. “Kreuz” is pronounced “Krites,” which rhymes with nights. I don’t know if they were Polish or German, or whatever, but they couldn’t spell schitt.

Regardless of the spelling, Kreuz’s is one of the most impressive barbeque places I’ve ever seen. It was started in the 1890's, and the chief cook, a guy named Schmidt, bought out the Kreuz family in 1948, but changed little of the operation. This allowed Black’s (est. 1932) to loudly announce “oldest barbeque place in Texas.” And in little bitty letters below, say “operated by the same family.” On sunny weekends, it seems that everyone in Austin lines up for barbeque at Kreuz’s.

You enter Kreuz’s through big double screen doors, permeated with several decades of Hickory smoke. Once inside, you’re in a dark hallway about 12 feet wide, maybe fifteen feet high, and about one hundred feet long. Everything is covered with layers of smoke, and at the end of the hall, you discover why. There’s a depression in the concrete slab, and what I’d judge to be about a three alarm fire is just blazing away in the middle of the floor.

As you work your way around the fire, you discover that it actually backs up to a low brick wall, and the flames are drawn into an opening in the wall. This wall forms the end of the pit, a brick affair about thirty feet long and four feet high, with counterbalanced steel doors on top and a chimney at the end opposite the fire. The chimney is in the corner of the room, and there is another pit down the back wall, with another fire at the end opposite the chimney. Two fires, two pits, and one chimney. The same design is repeated in an adjacent room with the pits terminating in the same corner, so all four pits can share the same chimney. Only two of the pits were operating during the times I visited. They may fire up all four on busy weekends. A big chopping block table stands out in front of the pits, and a high counter separates the cooking and cutting from the public area.

On my first visit, I ordered a loop of Kreuz’s world famous sausage, and a quarter pound of brisket. It was late in the day and they had no brisket, so I had beef clod (shoulder roast). They weighed my order, put three slices of bread with it, loosely wrapped it in red Kraft paper, and had me pay for it.

I went into the dining room. I had to stand in another line where I could buy a cold drink, an onion, an avocado, a jalapeno or Serrano pepper, a chunk of cheddar cheese, some potato chips or a giant dill pickle. I bought a jalapeno and a Big Red soda, made my way to a long table and sat on a bench like a lonesome private in a strange mess hall.

I may have eaten a greasier meal in my life, but I’m not sure when or where.  Oh, but it was good! The beef was done to a turn, sliced wrong, but so tender that it made little difference. The sausage was bland for my taste, but unique, and I could see how it could be famous, especially if the taste and texture remained consistent over 90 some-odd years. When I cut the sausage with my serrated plastic knife, grease shot all over my shirt, face, and glasses. I could almost hear the arteries clog as I ate, but I must admit the food was good.

In later trips, I ate pork chops, brisket, and beef tenderloin. They just pull out a big chunk of pork, and slice off a two inch thick pork chop or two as you order. Same with the tenderloin. The meat was excellent, except for brisket. The server didn’t want to cut into a fresh brisket so late in the day, so he sold me the dried up remnants of one that had been cut up and kept warm too long. It was obvious to him that I was a greenhorn, and wouldn’t know the difference.

If you go to Lockhart today, Kreuz Market is in a big, new building on the way out of town toward Austin.  The food is good, still cooked as it should be, but on a newer, more modern pit. 

Kreuz’s original downtown location is now Smitty’s and the fires are still on the floor and the sausage is just the same.  All the things I said describing Kreuz’s are still true, but now, the sign out front says “Smitty’s."

Seems that old man Schmidt died and left the business to his children.  To be absolutely fair, he left the business to his son and the real estate to his daughter.  Soon, the daughter decided that the son was making too much money, which was not fair, so she raised the rent.  The son bitched and moaned, and she raised the rent again.

Eventually, the son borrowed a bunch of money, built a gigantic new place, and moved out north of town.  The daughter, who had a hundred-year-old empty building, hired a cook and went into the barbeque business.  She named the place Smitty’s after her dad.   No one ever wins in a situation like this and I’m sorry it happened.  I bet their family reunions are a drag.

I hope that someone will always be cooking Barbeque on those old pits at Smitty’s.  It would be a shame if we lost a hundred year old tradition because two kids couldn’t get along.

While you are in Lockhart, visit the restored County Seat building, a half block from Smitty’s.  Look at the building and read about how it was built.  As you walk through the building, you realize it is special.  If there was an architect with enough talent to design it now, there would not be a contractor with enough knowledge to bid it, much less build it.  Then, if we found those two unlikely people, where would they find the craftsmen to do the work?

I’d better let this go for now.  I still have a lot of ground to cover, but if these things get too long, I fear no one will stay with me and read them.  Next time, we’ll get to Lubbock and Taylor and somewhere else.  Eventually, I’ll take you to what I consider the best in Texas and thus the world.  Hang in there.