Franklin Barbecue
Franklin's brisket gets salt, pepper and nothing else, then smoke in an offset from split post oak that Chief Firewood trucks in from Smithville.21 Franklin was one of the yard's first restaurant customers, and Daniel Vaughn still named it among Chief's Austin deliveries in 2024.1
Why go
Aaron and Stacy Franklin opened a barbecue trailer beside an Austin interstate in 2009 after a run of backyard cookouts, and they cooked everything in trailer-mounted smokers until the first pit room went up in 2014.13 In 2015 Aaron Franklin took Best Chef: Southwest at the James Beard awards, the first pitmaster recognized in any best-chef category, and his own reading of it was that it belonged to the trade: It is a monumental shift for the culinary world to recognize barbecue like this.
6 That award is his and not the restaurant's. What the restaurant holds is a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand from the inaugural 2024 Texas guide.14 Nicolai McCrary scored it 8.9 for The Infatuation and put the seasoning at the center of it: It's rich and tender, with the intense flavor of post oak that penetrates even the deepest regions of every bite.
4
Order this / avoid
- Order: brisket, moist. Then a beef rib if it is Friday, Saturday or Sunday, at $44 a pound.8 The pork ribs come off the same salt and pepper rub, and the cooks spritz them with sauce late on the smoker, which leaves them sticky without burying the pork.4
- Also: the Tipsy Texan, brisket and sausage under slaw and sauce, which has been on the board since the trailer days.2
- On the sausage, so you order it knowing: the links are a beef and pork blend and the jalapeno cheddar is the pick, but nothing current says who cases them. The only source found is a 2012 Austin Chronicle survey of Austin sausage makers, which puts Franklin's coarser grind at Texas Sausage Co.9 That is fourteen years old, so treat it as history.
- Drink: a cold local beer, which is what MICHELIN's own inspector pairs with the brisket. At $42 a pound for brisket, the carbonation earns its place between slices.
- Avoid: ordering around the brisket. McCrary's line is that skipping it is like queueing for a sneaker drop to buy Stan Smiths.4
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary (on-page 23 May 2024), 8.9. His brisket guide, updated 25 March 2026, ranks Franklin second in the city and prints the reason plainly:
These days, we're convinced you can get brisket that's nearly as good all over town.
15 He still rates it the most consistent in Austin. - Texas Monthly, Daniel Vaughn. Vaughn has moved this room down his own list for a decade: first in 2013, second in 2017, seventh in 2021, and on the 2025 list with no number, because the magazine ranks only its top ten and runs the other forty alphabetically by city. Vaughn wrote the explanation himself in 2021:
Franklin's drop into the bottom half of our top ten isn't a sign that the beloved establishment has diminished.
3 - MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, Texas guide, 2024, retained 2025.14
Good to know
- When: Tuesday to Sunday, 11am until sold out, which is usually mid-afternoon. Closed Monday. The restaurant closes for its annual summer break from 10 to 20 August 2026 and reopens on the 21st.8
- The line, and the two ways around it: the queue forms about four hours before the doors open, with camp chairs and coolers.4 Texas Monthly's own tip is to turn up early in the afternoon on a weekday.2 Online preordering skips it entirely, but it wants weeks of notice and a large minimum order.4
- The fire: in August 2017 an ember blew underneath Bethesda, the rotisserie smoker the team built themselves, smoldered beneath it and lit the walls. The pit room was a total loss and the smokers survived. Franklin reopened on 21 November 2017, 87 days later, cooking on trailer-mounted smokers, and the rebuilt pit room came into service in May 2018.5
- Hygiene, and read the shape of this carefully: the only Franklin Barbecue location in Austin Public Health's register is filed at 1001 E 3rd St, scoring 91 on 21 May 2025 and 86, 92 and 90 before that. Nothing is below 70 and nothing here is a failing finding, but the door you queue at, 900 E 11th Street, has no record of its own in this dataset, and absence is not a clean result.11
Jeff's take (his words)
- His review (Jeff, first-hand, 5 stars, 26 July 2017): No words with it.
Verdict
must-visit — A MICHELIN Bib Gourmand from the inaugural Texas guide, on Texas Monthly's 2025 Top 50, and an Infatuation 8.9. The brisket gets salt, pepper and post oak smoke and nothing else, which is the Central Texas argument stated in its plainest form. Aaron Franklin took Best Chef: Southwest at the James Beard awards in 2015, the first pitmaster ever recognized in a best-chef category, and the magazine that gave him first place in 2013 now puts him on the list without a number, which is a real thing to know before you spend four hours in a line. Go for the beef rib window Friday through Sunday, or preorder and skip the queue entirely.