LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue
The beef cheeks get a salt and pepper bark, four hours of post oak smoke, then a finish in beef tallow confit.6
Why go
Evan LeRoy came off the pits at Freedmen's Bar and opened a truck at Cosmic Coffee in 2017 with Sawyer Lewis, who runs the operation and usually takes the orders.3 What he brought with him is the foil boat: the brisket sits wrapped so its lean underside stays in its own juices, mimicking the deckle fat that butchers used to leave on, while the fat cap stays exposed to constant heat that climbs to about 300 degrees late in the cook and concentrates the seasoning into a crust. There is no sugar in the rub. I'm a fan of the crust,
LeRoy told Daniel Vaughn.3 The kitchen states its sourcing flatly: beef from Dean & Peeler, Lorene Farms, 44 Farms and Heartbrand, pork only from Peaceful Pork, chickens from True Bird Farm, lamb from Sloan Dennis and Dutchman's Market, and We do not use any commodity meat.
6 It holds a MICHELIN One Star from the inaugural 2024 Texas guide, and Texas Monthly ranked it second in the state in 2025, the highest Austin placing that year.112
Order this / avoid
- Order: beef cheeks. Vaughn's line on the cut still holds:
This underutilized cut (for now, at least) has all the juiciness of fatty brisket, but more surface area for black pepper lovers.
3 Take them in a sandwich with kimchi and the house beet barbecue sauce if you want the acid and the earth against the fat. - Then the sliced beef, which is flat iron and chuck roast off the shoulder clod. They smoke the chuck roast fast, so it eats closer to steak, and give the flat iron the long low treatment to fill the brisket-shaped hole.4
- The vegetables are not a concession: cauliflower burnt ends and miso glazed carrots go on the same pit and come off with a thin bark, sweet and soft inside, a little bitter and charred outside.4
- Sausage: cased in house and it changes. The everyday hop sausage is a coarse German kielbasa built with Citra hops rather than citrus.6 MICHELIN's inspector found a daily link studded with Hatch green chiles and mozzarella.5
- Why there are no pork ribs: they only take whole hogs, three or four a week, and butcher them in house, which yields eight racks at most. Those become the Saturday bacon rib, a sparerib with the belly still attached.62
- Avoid: the pork burger. McCrary calls it a well-executed smashburger and then says there are more exciting ways to use your stomach real estate, which is fair on a menu this deep.4
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary (on-page 31 July 2025), 9.5:
It's a love letter to beef, and this broad-minded approach makes LeRoy and Lewis the best all-around barbecue experience in Austin.
4 He is not blind about it either:Do they have the best brisket in Austin? Maybe not.
His own brisket guide then puts them first anyway.12 - MICHELIN Guide Texas, One Star, 2024, retained 2025. The inspector's note is that the menu is not built around brisket, which is available as a daily special at the end of the week.5
- Texas Monthly, Daniel Vaughn, second in the 2025 Top 50 and fifth in 2021. The same edition records this as the most expensive brisket in Texas at $40 a pound, against a state average of $29.2
- The Austin Chronicle Best of Austin 2026, Barbecue (Readers Poll, public vote). Franklin Barbecue, KG BBQ, la Barbecue and Stiles Switch were the other names on the ballot.8
- Austin Monthly's dining guide names eight barbecue joints in Austin and gives this one its
best of the best
marker, one of two on the list to carry it. That was written in 2020, when the operation was still the truck on Pickle Road.9
Good to know
- The wood: LeRoy and Lewis buys its wood from Chief Firewood in Smithville, which Daniel Vaughn reported in 2024 was supplying three of the four Texas barbecue joints MICHELIN had just starred.1
- When: Wednesday to Monday, 11am to 9pm, until 10pm Friday and Saturday. Closed Tuesday.6
- The line, and how to skip it: the kitchen's own guidance is about 20 people waiting at open, growing to about 50 shortly after, with a 45-minute to two-hour wait depending on where you join. Flat iron, cheeks and brisket sell out first, so arrive in the first two hours of service for the full board. Buy a drink and drink it in the line. The Anytime Eats counter at the bar serves burgers, sandwiches and salads with no queue at all.6
- Booking: no reservations for barbecue, first come first served. The steak nights are the exception and book through OpenTable.6
- Where it is: Garrison Park in South Austin, off Stassney Lane about 1.5 miles west of I-35, in a glazed-brick building with a peak-roofed dining room.5
- Hygiene, and the shape matters here: there is no current inspection record for the restaurant. The only row under this name is
LeRoy and Lewis BBQ, Kitchen #2
at 630 Ralph Ablanedo Drive, a bay in a shared commissary building, which scored 94 on 18 October 2023 and has not been re-inspected since, past the 18-month currency bound. Absence of a row for the restaurant itself is not a clean result.10
Verdict
must-visit — A MICHELIN One Star, second in Texas Monthly's 2025 Top 50, first in The Infatuation's Austin brisket ranking at 9.5, and the 2026 Austin Chronicle readers' pick for barbecue. The argument is the whole cow: beef cheeks smoked with a salt and pepper bark then finished in a tallow confit, flat iron and chuck roast smoked like brisket, and a cheeseburger ground from the trim that is the top seller. Evan LeRoy built the foil boat method at Freedmen's, which keeps the lean underside of a brisket sitting in its own juices while the exposed fat cap takes hard heat and crusts, and the rub has no sugar in it. Every animal comes from a named Texas ranch and the kitchen states plainly that it uses no commodity meat. Cauliflower burnt ends and miso glazed carrots get the same pit as the beef, which is the rare case of a barbecue vegetarian option that is not an apology.