Austin, TX

[The Critic]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. It was a great trip 3.5 day trip. We spent time in Austin, Waco, Dallas, Plano and San Antonio.

Some of the well-known places we visited were:
1- Franklin's in Austin
2- Terry Black's in Austin
3- The Magnolia "empire" in Waco
4- The Oasis at Lake Travis
5- UT Austin
6- The new Toyota USA headquarters in Plano.

The people in TX were friendly, the food was great and the overall experience was fantastic.

 

[sleddriver]

Quote
Terry Black's has working pits at the Barton Springs Road location (which for old-time Austinites used to be Holiday House), so not all the meat is brought from Lockhart. The hipsters in the neighborhood on the hill behind it complained about the smoke, so they had to put some filtration on the pit stacks, but it still smells good.

The Kreuz/Smitty's BBQ family (the Schmidts) also opened Schmidt Family BBQ in Bee Cave (an Austin suburb) and the pitmaster did internship stints at both Smittty's and Kreuz's in Lockhart before they opened Schmidt's, so its also supposed to be up to Lockhart quality. I haven't tried it yet.
Not all Black's BBQ outside of Lockhart are owned by the same people. Terry B's is great, so is the other off Lamar? or Burnett? But the later told me several years ago all of their Q came from Lockhart. May have changed.

Kreuz's had quite the family feud amongst the siblings if I recall, several years ago, thus the multiple names.

BBQ happens...