Cooper's Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que
The Big Chop, a bone-in pork chop off the pit, with cowboy-style pinto beans; it is the plate the pitmaster puts his own name to.2
Why go
For the chop, and with your expectations set. Cooper's has traded at 217 Congress Ave since 2014, and The Infatuation's Nicolai McCrary reviewed it in April 2026 at 6.0 against the Llano original: that room is is one of the great Texas barbecue institutions, absolutely worth a 90-minute drive,
while this room is merely a brisket-shaped shadow of the original.
1 The Chronicle's readers voted this address the city's best brisket in 2018, over two weeks of public balloting.2 Eight years later the critic tells you to skip that same brisket. Both records are dated and both stand.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Big Chop with cowboy-style pinto beans, the plate the pitmaster recommends himself.2
- If you must have smoke: the turkey, which the review calls decent, or the ribs,
seasoned well, if a little tough
.1 - Avoid: the brisket.
the brisket is a step down from what you'd get from H-E-B's drive-thru BBQ
.1 - Also thin: the chicken, which
has seen juicier days
.1
What locals & experts say
- Nicolai McCrary, The Infatuation Austin, 6.0, page dated 7 April 2026:
Everything is serviceable, but none of it will leave an impression that lasts beyond the time it takes to walk back to your desk/hotel/car
.1 - The same review, on where to go instead: Llano is
one of the great Texas barbecue institutions, absolutely worth a 90-minute drive
.1 - Austin Chronicle, Battle of the Briskets 2018, decided by a two-week reader vote: this address was named champion. It is a public vote, not a critic verdict, and it predates the review above by eight years.2
Good to know
- Which door: 217 Congress Ave. Cooper's also trades in Llano, New Braunfels and elsewhere; those are different pits, outside Austin Public Health's jurisdiction, and nothing here describes them except the reviewer's own comparison.1
- Hygiene: Austin Public Health scores the kitchen 96, inspected 28 January 2026, register name Cooper's Old Time Pit BBQ Austin. Behind it: 94 in May 2025, 90 in September 2024, 75 in March 2024 and 88 in August 2023. Austin's failing line is 70 on a 100-point demerit scale, so the 75 was not a finding and the run since is upward.3
Verdict
could-visit — The Llano original is one of the great Texas barbecue institutions and The Infatuation says it is worth the ninety-minute drive. This Congress Avenue outpost got 6.0 from its Austin critic Nicolai McCrary in April 2026, with the brisket put below H-E-B's drive-thru barbecue and the whole plate called serviceable and forgettable. It survives as a downtown lunch on the strength of the Big Chop, the bone-in pork chop the pitmaster himself puts on the recommended plate, and a Chronicle reader vote that is eight years old.