Pieous
Texas Monthly's barbecue editor rates the house pastrami above a few famous New York places, off fourteen hours of live oak and a steam finish.1
Why go
Joshua and Paige Kaner opened Pieous in 2013 in an old Cartwright's BBQ building and put a wood-fired oven in for the pizzas. They also found a rotisserie smoker the previous owners had left behind.1 That is why a Neapolitan pizzeria cures its own pastrami. By the time Daniel Vaughn came out for Texas Monthly about half the customers were adding it to a pizza order.1 The method is his reporting. Whole untrimmed briskets go into a wet brine and take a rub of black pepper and coriander plus ten more ingredients. They smoke about fourteen hours over live oak, then finish in a steamer.1 A multi-day cure and a bake that finishes in about ninety seconds do not naturally share a kitchen. Nicolai McCrary reviewed the room in October 2023. He called the pies chewy and slightly blistered, then told you to start with the pastrami anyway.2
Order this / avoid
- The pastrami first, then a pie off the dozen-plus fixed topping combinations. That is both writers' sequence and it shows both halves of the kitchen.2
- At the counter they ask lean or fatty. Vaughn takes a mix, and found both juicy and fall-apart tender with the black pepper balanced against the smoke. Pickles and onions come with the platter.1
- Avoid: asking for pastrami as a pizza topping. Kaner will add it and would rather not, because it dries out in the oven. His fix is a quarter pound crumbled over the finished pie at the table.1
- Avoid: slotting this in as a downtown stop. McCrary clocks the drive at thirty minutes, out past Oak Hill toward Dripping Springs.2
What locals & experts say
- Daniel Vaughn, Texas Monthly's barbecue editor, February 2015:
You'll want to taste the meat at Pieous because it's some of the best pastrami I've eaten, and that includes a few famous places in New York.
He notes it is cut thicker than a deli cuts it, which is why a brisket eater is comfortable with a platter.1 - Joshua Kaner on smoke, in the same piece:
A kiss of smoke adds a great seasoning. If you drown it in smoke, that's all you taste. You don't even taste the meat.
1 - Nicolai McCrary rates it 8.3 for The Infatuation:
Grab some pastrami as an appetizer, it's some of the best in town.
2 - The older piece is about a different building. Vaughn ate at 12005 U.S. 290 West, which the business left for Belterra Village in 2018. Same owners, same cure, a different room.1
Good to know
- Price: not published. The venue's site is an ordering widget showing a handful of numbers between US$13 and US$18 and no menu.3
- Hours: not published anywhere.
- Hygiene: no inspection record. The reason is unsettled. The 78737 ZIP carries 48 premises, so Austin Public Health reaches the area. Every one of them sits on the Travis County side. Hargraves Drive is in Belterra, on the Hays County side of the same ZIP. I have not researched the Hays route.4
Verdict
should-visit — There is nothing to book and no phone to call, so the drive out is a bet on somebody else's visit. Take it for the pastrami and eat the pizza while that comes. The newest published judgment on this room is from October 2023, and the one about the pastrami is a decade older.