Micklethwait Craft Meats BBQ & Catering
The brisket rub is celery seed, onion powder, garlic, chili, mustard and coriander. It builds a coating thick enough to hold the post oak smoke.1
Why go
The pit runs out of a converted farm store that spent years after that as a neighborhood church, on the corner of Springdale and Tanney.2 Tom Micklethwait and Ren Garcia had owned the building for six years as their catering headquarters and commissary before they bought it outright and moved everything in. The conversion gave them 1,200 square feet of dining, a yard shaded by pecan trees, and three offset smokers sharing the space with the guests. The board runs past brisket and ribs into pulled lamb, pastrami and barbacoa. The pork shoulder comes sliced.1
Micklethwait is a fifth-generation Texan and an Austin native who came to smoke from a career in baking. His own account of why is that both trades are manipulating primitive elements for different end results.
4 He was cooking at the South Congress Italian restaurant Vespaio when he started smoking meat in his own backyard. He salvaged a vintage Comet trailer and served his first plate out of its window in December 2012. The kitchen still makes its sides from scratch and bakes its own pies.
Order this / avoid
- The beef short rib, about a pound and a half, a dense peppery bark over beef you can shred with a fork. It sells out fast, so it is the first thing to say at the counter.1
- The lemon poppy slaw and the citrus beet salad. Both are made from scratch and both cut the fat, which is more than most Austin side counters manage.1
- The Frito pie under smoked brisket, which is what Texas Monthly pointed people at when it listed the joint.3
- Avoid: the pork ribs. They carry more bite than other racks in town, and Nicolai McCrary rates the place 8.3 while putting them below the rest of the tray.1
What locals & experts say
- Nicolai McCrary, The Infatuation, January 2025, on why the rub matters: the seasoning
acts like Velcro to the post oak smoke it's slow-cooked in.
This is where he takes visitors.1 - The MICHELIN Guide Texas gave it a Bib Gourmand in 2024, one of Austin's fourteen in that inaugural selection. The 2025 count of sixteen names two additions and no losses, so the Bib reads as held. I could not read this door's own card.
- Texas Monthly, Top 50 BBQ Joints, 2021, listed at the old yellow truck on Rosewood Ave, with the beef rib then at $35 a pound. The list runs every four years and the 2025 edition does not carry the name.3
Good to know
- The door is 4602 Tanney St. The Rosewood Ave truck that carried the 2021 Texas Monthly placing is two miles west and long gone. The old Smithville room was a separate business that closed.
- Hygiene: Austin Public Health scores the kitchen 90, inspected 10 July 2025, after 81 in January 2025 and 88 in November 2023. Austin scores on a 100-point demerit scale where higher is better and 70 is the failing line. So none of this is a finding.5
Verdict
should-visit — Nothing here is bookable and the meat runs out, so this is a lunch stop and not a dinner plan. Turning up a few minutes before the doors open is the whole technique: weekends run about an hour in line and weekdays much less. McCrary is also plain that the trays have varied across his repeat visits.