I finally found my BBQ Mecca after years of searching!
It all started around 2008. I had just started a new job where we have to hang around a conference booth in San Antonio, TX for four hours in the evening.
My boss calls me at 10 am and says “We’re going out for BBQ. Meet me at the car.” After 1/2 hour of driving, I’m thinking to myself, “This better be some f&$king great BBQ” We finally end up in a tiny little town after an hour drive.
My boss gets out and starts walking with purpose to a convenience store on main street and I’m wondering why we aren’t going the BBQ joint across the street.
We walk in to what appears to be a convenience store with picnic tables and a dirty old booth in the back with a line out the door. We stand in line and my boss explains that we have to be prepared and quick because the people running this place don’t suffer fools gladly.
When we walk in to booth; it’s a tiny dark space with decades of smoke and drippings on the walls. I feel like we’re in a Seinfeld episode with the BBQ Nazi as the people in front of us are being berated for not ordering fast enough or knowing the procedure.
We make our BBQ orders, pay in cash, and the meat is placed on butcher paper with meat, bread, and pickles. We are sent back out into the convenience store with our butcher paper platters to order whatever else we want.
This is the first time I’ve ever tasted REAL TEXAS BBQ…an it’s FANTASTIC. I probably thought that Dickies was pretty good up until this point, but as one of my students put it “There ain’t no smoke in those Dickies microwaves”.
I was a convert after this experience and Texas dry BBQ has always been my favorite. Don’t put sauce on my BBQ!
I always assumed this place was in Lockhart, TX; but after hours of perusing the google map pictures of every BBQ joint in the region, I finally realized that it was City Market in Luling, TX.
And I finally had a chance to return a couple of weeks ago. Things have changed, but I managed to confirm with some locals that this is, in fact, the first place I ever tasted real BBQ.
My decades long quest is finally complete.
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