Smoked by AI · Central Texas
Culture of place.
How Central Texas eats: the habits and patterns that belong to the city rather than to any one room. The people who make the food live on their own page: producers.
Texas Monthly prints the same two words beside joint after joint on its Top 50, post oak, and the rub is salt and pepper and nothing else. The counter sells beef by weight onto butcher paper and shuts when the meat is gone, which is why the hour you arrive decides what is still on the board.
- best version at Burnt Bean Company First of fifty in the state on the 2025 list, cooking oak in an offset and a wood-fired rotisserie.
- best version at LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue Second in the state, and the brisket is the most expensive in Texas at forty dollars a pound.
- best version at Interstellar BBQ Sixth in the state, out of a beige strip mall on Ranch Road 620.
- best version at Franklin Barbecue Post oak and an offset since the trailer went up in 2009, and it still trades until sold out.
- best version at la Barbecue The first barbecue counter in Texas to hold a MICHELIN star, and the queue grew the week after.
- best version at Smitty's Market The pits burn a few feet from the line, inside the brick building Kreuz Market cooked in for 99 years.
- best version at Kreuz Market A meat market since 1875, and the counter still sells by weight with sides bought separately.
- best version at Black's Barbecue Lockhart A market and slaughterhouse from 1931, and the brick pit Edgar Black Jr built still runs.
- best version at Barbs B Q Two days a week on the Lockhart square, with serrano-glazed ribs and lime zested over them at the counter.
- best version at Mum Foods Smokehouse And Delicatessen Every brisket here comes from Goodstock, and the pastrami is brined ten days before it goes on.
- cooked with at Slow Bone, 2234 Irving Blvd, Dallas
Where to eat one: the The Central Texas pit card on the Central Texas list has the rooms.
Texas Monthly, Daniel Vaughn, Top 50 BBQ Joints 2025, on Louie Mueller Barbecue in TaylorThe Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary and Matthew Jacobs, Iconic Dishes That Define Austin, 10 March 2025The Austin Chronicle, Evan Rodriguez, 1 September 2023, quoting Diego Duan of Camino Alamo BBQKreuz Market, own history page