Distant Relatives
The chicken leg quarter comes out with crisp skin over soft, smoky dark meat, with a chile vinegar dip alongside to cut it.1
Why go
Damien Brockway works the African diaspora through Central Texas barbecue. He blends his own spice mix and makes a smoked mustard butter sauce and a tamarind molasses barbecue sauce. He finishes lima beans with smoked pork butter and chives, slow cooks black eyed peas with brisket burnt ends stirred through, and puts out a toasted sourdough Pullman loaf where most Texas trays hand you sliced white.13 The kitchen states its own terms as three pillars, cookery, culture and community, and most of the produce comes from Black farmers in the Austin area. Nicolai McCrary scored it 8.4 and wrote of the brisket: With a nice, crispy bark and a moist interior, it's damn near perfect.
1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the chicken leg quarter first.
And we're not even exaggerating when we say this is some of the best chicken we've ever had, barbecue or otherwise,
is McCrary's line on it.1 - Then: brisket, with the smoked mustard butter sauce and the tamarind molasses sauce both on the tray, and the black eyed peas with burnt ends. The pulled pork sandwich turns up under green mango slaw or preserved cabbage depending on the week, and either one is doing the same acid job against the pork.
- Avoid: deciding on a side before you get there. Brockway rotates the menu and the sides turn over fastest, so whatever you read about last month may not be on.3
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary (on-page 4 March 2022), 8.4: note the date, and note that the format has been confirmed unchanged since. The strongest line about this brisket sits in a different piece: in the outlet's breakfast-taco guide, the Veracruz migas taco is praised by comparison,
Like Super Mario Bros. 3 or the brisket at Distant Relatives, they're best in class.
2 - MICHELIN Guide Texas, 2024 (inaugural): Bib Gourmand, in the Austin selection that carried seven one-stars and fourteen Bibs.5
- Texas Monthly, and this one is a negative worth stating precisely: the state's barbecue authority does not carry this joint in its 2025 Top 50.
- KUT (29 August 2025), used for facts only: the station's own editor's note says Distant Relatives comped some or all of the food for that piece, so nothing in it counts as a verdict. Its facts are the two-trailer setup, the rotating menu and the hours.3
Good to know
- Where it is, exactly: two trailers on the Meanwhile Brewing lot at 3901 Promontory Point Drive in South Austin, one smoking and one serving, with picnic tables.
- Hours, as published by KUT in August 2025: noon to 8pm Wednesday and Thursday, noon to 6pm Friday through Sunday. Barbecue counters sell out; treat closing time as an upper bound.3
- Brockway has one door here, and a Tiny Grocer project that looks like a second. He is developing the menu and barbecue program for a Tiny Grocer store at 2411 East Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, on the old Longhorn Meat Market site, with an in-house butcher shop. That is Tiny Grocer's business, not a branch of this one.4
- Hygiene: there is no inspection record for Distant Relatives, because it is a mobile vendor and the city's published dataset covers fixed addresses. The host brewery holds the permit at this address: Meanwhile Brewing Company, scoring 92 on 20 April 2026, 90 on 21 October 2024 and 87 on 6 November 2023. That is Meanwhile's record and not the pit's, and the absence of a row for the pit is not a clean result.6
Verdict
must-visit — Damien Brockway's kitchen reads Central Texas barbecue through the African diaspora, and the cooking is where you see it rather than in the framing: a proprietary spice blend, a smoked mustard butter sauce and a tamarind molasses barbecue sauce on the tray, lima beans finished with smoked pork butter, black eyed peas cooked with brisket burnt ends, and toasted sourdough Pullman in place of the usual sliced white. The Infatuation scored it 8.4 and calls the brisket damn near perfect; the same outlet uses that brisket elsewhere as its benchmark for best in class. The plate that actually wins is the chicken leg quarter, which McCrary calls some of the best chicken he has ever had, barbecue or otherwise. It holds a Bib Gourmand from the inaugural 2024 MICHELIN Guide Texas and it runs out of two trailers on the Meanwhile Brewing lot.