Project Smoke is one man’s attempt to explore the world of barbecue by eating it every day for a week. Find all of the entries here, and please pray for his soul.
Monday brought me to Luling, Texas, about an hour south of Austin and home of City Market. This was a perfect place for me to start this meat-venture. It’s one of my all time favorites, even though it’s normally not thought of in that regard. (It makes Texas Monthly’s Top 50 list, but no where near the top.)
I don’t care I love it, and my reasons are plentiful. First of all, the trip is nice. You actually have to go through Lockhart (which is hard to pass up for barbecue), and the Texas landscape is perfect. Then there’s the clientele. Austin can be pretty lily-white, but City Market had everybody covered: black, hispanic, gringo. This is an everyone-is-welcome place.
In the back room, there’s this amazing mural. It’s everything a small town Texas restaurant should be about, not to mention walls with cattle brands all over them.
The food’s pretty good, too. I decided to go for the Texas Trio all week: brisket, ribs, and sausage. That’s pork ribs, because beef ribs scare me (and I wouldn’t be able to eat anything else after one of those Flintstones monsters). The brisket I was given (one slice each, lean and moist) definitely had some good char on the ends, and it was all to the good. The sausage was okay, but I didn’t finish it; this would become a theme of the week. The ribs at City Market are my favorite. Slightly sweet, but lots of smoke. They’ve got the red sheen that let’s you know everything’s going to be alright.
There are two more things that make City Market really stand out for me. One is the tea. You’ll notice in the picture above a huge jar of Lipton Diet Iced Tea. Yes, that’s what they serve, and I love it. It’s only $1, and it has that artificial tea bite. I am an anti-snob when it comes to this stuff. It kills.
The final piece of the City Market puzzle is the sauce. Great barbecue isn’t supposed to rely on sauce, and this place doesn’t. That said, this is the best sauce in Texas. You know it’s good because they have signs all over the restaurant telling you not to steal it! It’s packaged in Tabasco-style bottles, and is similar to that of the Salt Lick, but with more mustard. It could make gas station BBQ taste like a king’s meal.
Last thing about this visit: Luling is just a cool, tiny Texas town. And it’s that Texas part of Texas. Not Central. Not East. Definitely not West. There might not be a ton to do there, but I had a great fun shooting pictures around downtown. I’ll end with those be back tomorrow for another meaty visit.
