I woke up early on Saturday morning without any plans for the day.

Since the Longhorns football team didn’t play Rice until 6:00 p.m. and it was a beautiful sunny Texas day — I decided to continue my quest for the best Day Trips to the best BBQ joints in Texas.

I quickly decided to make the 51 mile (each way) ride to Luling, TX to try out one of the most oft recommended BBQ joints around: City Market.

The Ride

Luling, TX (Google Map) is about 51 miles due south of Austin down Hwy 183. If you take 183 the entire route, Lockhart is the only other town you’ll ride through.

Once you get to Lockhart, I recommend veering over to FM-1322, which is a less-traveled twisty 2-lane road that passes though Seawillow, Brownsboro, and McNeil, TX. This backroad will take you through oil fields, hay fields, cotton field, and numerous ranches before stopping right in front of City Market in Luling.

When you ride through Lockhart, the smell of BBQ is pervasive. When you ride into Luling, the first thing you smell is oil (Luling is still called “Oil City” because of the number of active wells in the area):

In addition to the working oil fields, you’ll see a lot of cotton fields too — on this particular day, the fields were ready for picking:

On the ride home, I stopped at the Guadalupe Cemetery (also known as the Mendoza & Old Rest cemetery) just north of Lockhart on Hwy 183:

This old cemetery is mostly filled with Hispanic names, and Our Lady of Guadalupe was everywhere:

Speaking of unusual grave markers:

This historic old cemetery has (sadly) fallen into sever neglect. It was mostly overgrown, and numerous old markers were fallen or leaning, and many more were overgrown with grass and bushes.

It’s a shame, but still worth stopping for.

Total Distance Ridden in the Quest for Great BBQ: 112 miles

The Town

There’s not much to this little town of 5,080 people. Early settlement of the area began in the 1840s, and was settled by mostly German immigrants (common for Central Texas). One of the reason that Central Texas BBQ is so good is that a lot of the German and Czech immigrants who settled here brought with them butchering and smoking styles and techniques from Europe.

The discovery of the Luling oilfield by Edgar B. Davis in 1922 added to the local economy, which was mostly comprised of cotton, cottonseed oil, livestock, and pecans.

According to Wikipedia:

Luling was founded in 1874 as a railroad town and became a rowdy center for the cattle drivers on the Chisholm Trail. Contempt of the law by the cowboys helped Luling become known as the “toughest town in Texas.”

The Joint

Sitting next to the railroad tracks at the junction of Hwy 183 and Hwy 90, the Luling City Market is the classic old German meat market turned BBQ joint. They began selling smoked meat in 1930 to cotton pickers and oil field workers, served up on butcher paper.

Things have not changed much since then.

Once inside, you purchase your meat from the back pit room. Choose from pork ribs, brisket (by the lb), and hot guts (sausage by the link) — the Holy Triumvirate of meats. There is no chicken or turkey for you “health conscious” diners.

After you have your meat (you have to pay cash or with a local check before you leave the pit room), pick out your sides (pototo salad, pinto beans, corn on the cob, or a wedge of cheese) and a drink (beer, iced tea, Big Red soda, or a root beer), and find yourself a table in one of the two large family style dining rooms.

The Meat

That’s my meal in the picture above. Total cost was $18 for the meat, $1.25 for the Big Red, $0.85 for the chunk of cheddar, and $1.something for the beans. It easily could have fed 2 or 3 hungry people. I ended up drinking two Big Reds (probably more people drinking Big Reds than any other beverage on the very busy afternoon that I was there).

I always order twice as much (at least) as I plan on eating, and bring a small cooler in my bike’s saddle bags to bring home some leftovers. Typically I’ll eat a half lb of brisket and 2-3 ribs (plus a small bowl of beans and a few onions and some cheese) at one sitting. What can I say — I’m a big guy who loves good BBQ.

The brisket was an exceptionally good cut of beef, with just a very thin vein of fat on side. The meat was a little drier (read: less fatty) than I prefer, but the flavor was exceptional — nothing distinctive or unusual, just a good piece of meat slow cooked over hard wood (probably some type of oak) with minimal seasoning.

Initially, I was a little disappointed with the brisket — based mostly on the accolades this place usually gets. But on the way home, I stopped and picked up some moist brisket from Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ, which is one of the best franchise BBQ joint around (and there’s one only a couple of miles from my house).

When I got home, I heated up the City Market brisket and then had my own little “taste test” vs. a very good Rudy’s brisket.

It was night and day. As good as the Rudy’s brisket was, it wasn’t nearly as flavorful or as good of a cut of meat as City Market’s brisket.

The pork ribs were as exceptional as you’d expect to find at a BBQ joint of this repute. The meat-to-bone ratio was outstanding (much to the dismay of my dogs, who prefer more bone than meat when I brink them home some scraps), and they had the same excellent smoked flavor as the ribs. The quality of the meat was what made the ribs stand out though — and the meat just flaked off the bone.

There’s a reason that the Luling City Market doesn’t have forks — you don’t need them.

The red sauce that you see on my “plate” is their own sauce — it was a thin tomato-based sauce with not enough red peppers and a bit too sweet (but not overwhelmingly so) for my taste. The ribs didn’t need any sauce, but I did end up using a bit of a store-bought vinegar and cayenne pepper hot sauce for my brisket.

Apparently the house sauce is quite popular though, as I saw a lot of people drowning their meat in it, and every table had a sign imploring you not to steal their bottles of sauce.

Overall Impression

There’s nothing too remarkable about the ride, although if you do take FM-1322 you’ll enjoy it much more than if you stay on Hwy 183 the entire route. The BBQ is very good, and if you happen to be on Interstate 10 it’s worth the 8-9 miles drive north on Hwy 80 to stop and get some.

But if you’re coming from Austin I wouldn’t drive past Kruez Market, Smitty’s BBQ, or Black’s Market in Lockhart — as each of these is at least as good as the BBQ in Luling.

Rating: 7 out of 10 rib-bones

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OTHER DAY TRIPS:

• Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-b-que in Llano

Posted by Robbie Cooper on Monday, September 24th, 2007 | Trackback |