Kreuz Market.

Kreuz Market

When the business moved half a mile up the road in 1999, Roy Perez and the Schmidts shovelled the burning coals out of the old pits into a steel wash tub and dragged it up the street to light the new ones.4 Order the sausage first, because Daniel Vaughn says the brisket is the cut that cannot be relied on.2

Why go

Jesse Swearingen opened a meat market in the middle of Lockhart in 1875, and J.C. Reid calls it one of the first documented examples of how Central Texas meat markets would eventually transition to selling barbecue.4 Charles Kreuz, the son of German immigrants who settled in Seguin, bought it in January 1900 and put his name on it.4 Edgar Schmidt, a butcher at the counter, bought the market in 1948 and sold it to his sons Rick and Don in 1984, and when Edgar died in 1990 he left the building to his daughter and the business to his sons.9 Rick Schmidt and his sister Nina Sells could not agree terms in 1998, so he took the name half a mile north and she reopened the brick building as Smitty's Market.4 The method on the pits has not moved: salt and pepper, post oak, and no sauce afterwards.11

Order this / avoid

• The sausage, first. Daniel Vaughn: Your first choice should be sausage. Part-beef, part-pork, and all-around flavorful, it boasts a snap that is particularly satisfying.2
• The smoked pork chop, which Vaughn calls remarkably succulent and Anne Cruz says is so moist and tender you can tear off a piece with just a fork.28
• Shoulder clod if you want beef, lean and tender, rather than the brisket.2
• Pork spareribs with a whole ripe avocado added at the counter, which is Vaughn's own order: A scoop of the soft, unseasoned fruit with a bite from the salty pork spareribs makes for a perfect marriage.1
• Sides: the sauerkraut and the German potato salad both carry brisket through them. Creamed corn with poblanos and the baked potato casserole are the other counter's picks.28
• Avoid waiting to be served. Meat is bought by weight at one counter and sides at another, and nobody brings you anything.12

What locals & experts say

• Daniel Vaughn said two opposite things about the brisket on the same day. The magazine's venue page says Only the brisket is unpredictable, often coming in dry and under-smoked. His honorable-mentions write-up the same day says: When I recently posted a photo of my barbecue spread at Kreuz, some friends commented that it looked like it contained the best slice of brisket they'd ever seen from the legendary joint. And they were right.23
• Texas Monthly has put it in the honorable mentions twice, in 2021 and again in 2025, and never on the Top 50 itself. The 2021 essay reads: For the first time, sadly, no Lockhart joints made the list (though the venerated Kreuz Market does appear in our Honorable Mentions, page 106).735
• J.C. Reid, who has written barbecue for the Houston Chronicle since 2010, reads the building as a church: Lockhart is known as the Barbecue Capital of Texas. Fittingly, the cathedral-like building you encounter driving into town is not a church, but a barbecue joint.4
• The Infatuation's Anne Cruz ranks it fourth of the five Lockhart rooms, and traces the whole Central Texas style back to the German and Czech butchers who came to the state in the mid-1800s.13
• No MICHELIN Bib Gourmand. The inaugural 2024 Texas Bib article names one Lockhart restaurant and it is Barbs B Q.14

Good to know

• It is said "Krites".2
• The floorplan tells you how to order. Reid: you enter and line up in a long, nave-like hallway, squeeze into the apse-like pit room to place your meat order, and then funnel into the dining rooms along the two side aisles where you can order drinks and other accoutrements like cheese, bread and pickles. Roy Perez still works that pit room in a cowboy hat and mutton-chop sideburns.4
• Prices, read off the market's own menu: brisket and ribs US$32.90 a pound, prime rib US$39.90 a pound.12
• The sausage has a business of its own. The market runs a nationwide white-label wholesale line on it, which is why the recipe turns up on other people's boards.11
• Smitty’s Market is the same room this one left, trading in the 1900 brick building under a different half of the family.4
• Hygiene: Austin's inspectors do not reach this address. The Census geocoder puts 619 N Colorado St in Caldwell County, outside Austin Public Health's jurisdiction, so the city's scores say nothing about this kitchen in either direction.10

Verdict

should-visit — Nothing here takes a booking, and the long tables take a group without a wait for seats. Go for the pork rather than the beef. Brisket runs US$32.90 a pound and prime rib US$39.90, which is Austin money in a Lockhart room.