I became a big fan of Blaine Cooper when he had a place in Harrisonburg, Virginia, South Fork. I was hugely impressed by his brisket. It was so far better than any other brisket I’d had this side of Texas that it was in an entirely different league. More incredible, he was bold enough to give me a sample of lean brisket. Even in Texas I order moist! I was crushed when Cooper, frustrated by customers ordering chicken fingers, closed up shop and moved to Austin, where he has set up shop as B. Cooper Barbecue. I wasn’t able to get there on my last flying trip to Austin due to family obligations ..read more

I recently wrote up five Texas barbecue places from the Hill Country. (Scroll to the end of the page.) Vera’s offers another face of Texas barbecue spots, the Rio Grande Valley. I’ve had one blog post (here), and that from the far reaches of the Valley, a place celebrated in song and story. Unlike the Hill Country, the Valley serves delicacies the like of which you’ve never experienced. I haven’t made it to the Valley myself, but here’s a cheeky post from my eyes on the ground, our Senior Idaho, Mississippi, and South Texas Correspondents Doug Herbert and Toni Gelston. They offer a report on a ..read more

After our extraordinary breakfast at Valentina’s Tex Mex, Nancy and I headed back to Houston to see Anne Rain, Hunter, and Isabelle. Along the way, Nancy and I stopped and had a walk in Stephen F. Austin State Park. The modest admission was waived for Veterans Day Weekend (you’re quite welcome for my service, such as it was), the weather was beautiful, and the trails were wooded and level. The park hugs the Brazos River bottom land near San Felipe, the capital of the Republic of Texas. Once in Houston we rejoined the Browns, saw their very cool home, and entertained and were entertained by Isa ..read more

After our meal at Terry Black’s, I wasn’t about to miss Daniel Vaughn’s breakfast recommendation, Valentina’s Tex Mex Barbecue. The two places are very different in externals. Terry Black’s is a “city” barbecue place, right in the heart of Austin, the 11th largest city in the US and moving up. Valentina’s is barely in or just outside the city limits, in an area that’s rapidly changing from rural to suburban. Valentina’s is actually a large food truck outside an old building. I’d call the building a Fixer-Upper. There’s seating outside in a covered area, and the inside seating is functionally ..read more

After our magnificent lunch at the City Market in Luling and fulfilling Nancy’s burning desire to go to Smitty’s, we drove on to Austin. As I mentioned here, one of our goals in our trip to Texas was to complete our 10K — this one actually was 11K — state capital walk in Austin. It was state capital #42 in our quest to do all 50, which we began after we’d done 1,000K in other events. The walks are laid out by volunteers with the American Volksport Association, and there are walks all over the country, not just in capitals, but everywhere. Our first was in Custer State Park in the Black Hills ..read more

After a truly great lunch at the City Market in Luling, Nancy and I headed north toward Austin. She’d mentioned several times our visit to Smitty’s back in 2010 when I spent a term as a visiting professor at Baylor Law School. Back then Smitty’s was one of the top places in Lockhart, the epicenter of Texas barbecue, just up the road from Luling. Smitty’s barbecue didn’t impressed me, but it made a strong impression on Nancy because of the open fire on the floor right next to the line of customers. Hmmm. Looks due for a couple new logs. At the City Market, as at other places, the fire for thei ..read more

Nancy and I had three great purposes in going to Texas: to see Anne Rain and Hunter’s daughter, Isabelle (and, of course, Anne Rain and Hunter), to do one of our 10k state capital “Volksmarches,” and to see Henry Berry, Nancy’s grand-nephew, a senior at UT-Austin. Those are the goals that “we” had. I had a not-so-secret agenda of eating a lot of Texas barbecue. As you’ll be reading in the next posts, we succeeded in meeting all of our common goals. And I scored big time. By way of background, Anne Rain, I should say Dr. Anne Rain Tanner Brown, is the critical care pharmacist at MD Anderson Can ..read more

Daniel Vaughn’s quinquennial list of the Top 50 Barbecue Places in Texas is now out, and there are dramatic changes. You can see the list here. The Top 50 list has been one of the if not the most reliable “Best” lists around. I relied heavily on it when I spent a term teaching at Baylor Law School, a position that left me plenty of time to tour Texas and try barbecue places. My confidence in the list is a bit shaken by seeing that perennial #1 Snow’s, the atelier of James Beard Foundation honoree Tootsie Tomanetz, has fallen to #7 but, having been away from Texas for a while, who am I to judge ..read more

I saw this on The Smoke Sheet and The ‘Cue Sheet, two invaluable barbecue resources. A whole lot of barbecue places in Texas — and in other states — are closed on Monday. That’s a big problem because most Texans eat on Monday as well as other days of the week. Indeed, I have yet to meet one who doesn’t. And on Mondays people tend to need all of the help they can get. To the rescue comes Kevin’s Barbecue Joints with a list — which you can read here — of Texas barbecue places that are open on Monday. There are a good number of them, including a lot of great places, such as the ineffable Origina ..read more