The Franklin-to-Parish pit lineage.

An Austin barbecue CV is a menu prediction. Cooks move between Franklin Barbecue, Interstellar BBQ, la Barbecue and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue, they carry the fundamentals out with them, and then they put one thing on the board the old room never had. So the useful question at a new counter is where the pitmaster worked before, and the useful order is whatever the answer does not explain.

Holden Fulco "managed InterStellar BBQ and cooked at Franklin Barbecue and at Pinkerton's in San Antonio" before he opened Parish Barbecue. 1 Travis Crawford runs the smokers at Mum Foods Smokehouse And Delicatessen, and Daniel Vaughn introduces him as a cook "who spent time cooking for LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue, Valentina's Tex Mex BBQ, and the now-closed Smokin' Beauty". 2 Jack Zizzo "learned the pit at la Barbecue in 2014 under John Lewis and Esaul Ramos Jr" and now cooks Space Kat BBQ on Webberville Road. 5 Interstellar BBQ says on its own site that its kitchen trained the pitmasters who left to open Parish. 7

Every one of them kept the fire and changed one variable. Travis Crawford changed the sausage, and Daniel Vaughn found his links "more cohesive with a finer grind" than the Lockhart ones he learned beside. 2 Zizzo changed the heat instead. He runs "post oak in a trailer-mounted offset, then a finish over oak coals on a grill", and he cooks tri-tip, baby backs, lamb chops, coppa and hot links with no brisket anywhere. 5 8 John Bates keeps the salt and pepper and post oak underneath and cases a Frito pie into a sausage. 9

Three of the four cooks below came off John Bates's pit room. Bates opened Interstellar BBQ in 2019 after his cooking years at Wink and Asti, which are restaurants with nothing to do with smoke. 10 Fulco and his co-pitmaster Jake Haygood both came out of that pit room, Haygood by way of Terry Black's. 1 Crawford came off LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue and Valentina's. 2 Zizzo came off la Barbecue, took a first version of Space Kat to Youngstown and then San Diego, lost the business three times including to a truck fire in 2023, and reopened in February 2026 out of a converted minibus. 5

Order the thing the old room never had. Parish Barbecue sends out the Louisiana half, and The Infatuation reports the intention straight: this trailer doesn't want to be the next Franklin. 4 Take the ring sausage and the pastrami at Mum Foods Smokehouse And Delicatessen, cured with black pepper and coriander and never steamed. 2 Take the tri-tip at Space Kat BBQ, because there is no brisket to fall back on. 8 And if the point is only to skip a queue, McCrary prices the compromise at Loro: the brisket there "hits about 80% of the original's wow factor". 3

The apprenticeship is the common route and it is not the only one. Texas Monthly's number one joint in the state is Burnt Bean in Seguin, run by Ernest Servantes and David Kirkland, who came off the competition circuit rather than out of an Austin pit room. 6 And Fulco came off two of the best pits in the city and still opened a room that cooks Louisiana. 4