Texas Barbecue Trail, Dispatch #2: Taylor (Father's Day Edition)

"Now you're about to see something really special."

Sometimes I make this declaration to anyone sharing the table with me right before I dive into an obscenely overloaded plate of barbecue. It's not that I mean disrespect to what's on my plate by wolfing it down. Rather, I'm describing the exquisite pleasure I'm about to derive from that plate. On some occasions, my ecstasy borders on the pornographic but, if you get too close, you could lose a limb.

Yesterday, I uttered these words while standing in line at Louie Mueller BBQ in Taylor, Texas, well before my plate was even prepared. One of the true Texas barbecue shrines, Louie's was founded in 1946 as a grocery, Louie Mueller's Complete Food Store. After opening a barbecue shed to feed workers from a nearby railroad yard and from area cotton fields, Louie Mueller's opened in its present location at 206 W. 2^nd Street in 1959 in what had been a ladies' basketball court in 1923. The walls and ceiling of the cavernous, dimly lit temple are darkened by years of oak smoke that emanates from the brick oven in the center of the building. There's a corkboard full of business cards that, having never been removed, range from tanned to blackened from the years of smoke. Added in 1999, the screened-in dining area brings some air circulation to the proceedings.

So, indeed, at Louie's, "atmosphere" isn't some frou-frou, ephemeral term with which to describe the indescribable. At Louie's, like Kreuz's Market in Lockhart, you literally breathe it.

Naturally, there's history to along with that atmosphere. Louie's son, Bobby, bought the place out in 1974 and began serving cole slaw and potato salad, which were his mother-in-law's recipes. Bobby has made the hot sausage from scratch since the '60s. Bobby's son, Johnny, brought a taste of Taylor to Austin at the now-closed Johnny Mueller's on Manor Road. From what I've been able to gather, there's been years of bad blood between father and son. While I can't confirm the nature of the dispute, the bottom line has been that loyalty to Bobby versus the convenience of Johnny being in Austin has been a conundrum for barbecue aficionados in Austin. It was bittersweet to discover upon our return to Austin that the issue was rendered moot last year when Johnny's sadly closed.

But back to Louie's. Right out of the gate, I've got a lot of use for a barbecue joint that pours draught Shiner Bock in chilled Mason jars. When I was growing up in Columbus, Ga., on Sundays after church I drank gallons of IBC root beer that Country's Barbecue served in Mason jars. Nostalgia goes well with barbecue.

It should come as no surprise that Louie's serves its meat on butcher paper in the old-school Texas tradition. As was with the case with Johnny, Bobby makes a point of cutting off a piece of brisket for you to sample while he gets your meal ready. As was not the case with Johnny, Bobby spares you the splash of surliness often dished out to unwitting customers on Manor Road.

The clear musts on the menu are the moist brisket and the jalapeno sausage. They've introduced chipotle sausage as well, but I saved that for a return trip. The brisket comes in slices nearly three-quarters of inch thick, featured nearly centimeter-thick smoke rings and, as was the case with Johnny's, practically melted in my mouth, such was the slow-cooked consistency.

Similarly, the tender, fine-ground sausage fell apart as soon as I cut into it. Like the brisket, the sausage was well-marbled and thus drenched in moist, fatty goodness. Per personal custom, I skipped the white bread, which might've been a misstep this time. Owing to the cayenne and jalapeno, Louie's sausage has a long-lasting piquancy that can overshadow your appreciation of the other items on your plate. A splash of iced tea or beer can put some of the fire out, but a little white bread might make a more effective sorbet with which to cleanse the palate. I'm just offering this as a caveat to the taster, not as a criticism of the meat, which, as Gourmet and the James Beard Foundation and others have noted, is exceptional.

I also tried the pork ribs, which, like the brisket, feature Louie's signature rub, a delicious cracked pepper blend that accents the flavor of the meat without overpowering it and seems to hold in the moisture as well. This may be my regional bias rearing its head again, but it seems an unfortunate fact of life with Texas barbecue that, when you order pork ribs, you can expect spare ribs, rather than the loin back ribs, which are prized in Memphis for their fall-off-the-bone tenderness. Spare ribs have more meat per rib, but, in spite of being a fattier cut, lack loin back ribs' tenderness. Additionally, there's a bit more effort required to get all of the meat off. Still, Louie's does a fine job here and the smoky oak flavor, combined with the delicious rub, does plenty to balance any criticisms of texture.

It should be noted that Taylor is also home to the Taylor Café, another historic barbecue establishment, which I'll have to cover in a later dispatch.

By the way, Happy Father's Day. If you live in the same town as your dad, take the ol' man out for some 'cue.

Texas Barbecue Trail, Dispatch #1: Elgin

As part of Apropos de Nada's continuing efforts to defy categorization, to mess with and, ultimately, re-embrace Texas, to stave off the imminent post-March Madness and pre-kickoff doldrums and, lastly, to undo whatever good is being done with the new gym membership, the crack staff at AdN has endeavored to canvass the Texas Barbecue Trail. Slow-cooked meat is one of the few subjects about which we're qualified to comment at length, having resided in barbecue Meccas such as Memphis, Georgia and both Carolinas and having competed in the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

It's only fair at this, the outset, to warn our readership across the Mississippi River: this will involve beef. The Southeastern visitor will note with a mixture of derision, befuddlement and sadness that Texans include beef in their otherwise delicious barbecue cornucopia, which also features chicken and turkey. In the South, inviting someone to barbecue that includes any kind of meet besides pork is akin to inviting them to a satanic orgy. As for Texas' take, well, beef comes from cows, which are, um, plentiful in Texas. Dance with them what brung ya.

Having previewed Lockhart rather aggressively before our departure to barbecue oblivion, aka California, AdN pre-loosened its belt and picked as its first stop Elgin, home to the Southside Market & BBQ Inc. and to Meyer's Elgin Smokehouse. Famous for its hot sausage, Elgin is a tiny hamlet roughly 30 miles northeast of Austin on Highway 290.

The first stop was the Southside Market, which was founded in 1882 and has been in the same hands since Ernest Bracewell took over in 1968 after moving from San Antonio. As with most Texas barbecue establishments, you can buy your meal buy the pound and eat it off of butcher paper. For the dandies among us, you can also order a plate for lunch.

Oscar Wilde, clearly with barbecue on the brain, famously averred that "Nothing exceeds like excess." Thus, we ordered up the four-meat combo, which featured sausage, brisket and ribs of the pork and beef variety.

As a native Georgian, I share my home region's wariness of brisket, a lower-quality cut of beef. And bad brisket is about as appealing as shoe leather. Fortunately, Southside shares the conviction held by the sorely missed John Mueller, who smoked his brisket until it was of near-liquid consistency. The same could be said of Southside's cuts, which, as tired as I am of this cliché, melted in my mouth. The all-beef sausage, too, was superb. While it lacked the almost explosive juiciness of Smitty's in Lockhart, the hallmark piquancy more than compensated.

I am always frustrated by the beef rib. Sure, it's huge. It's also a lot of work and it rewards that work with poor-quality meet and relatively little of it. I dunno, maybe I'm getting bad cuts, but my Southside experience was no different. You spend a lot of time gnawing off small chunks of meat off this Flintstones-sized bone and get very little out of it, besides a lot of grease on your face. Contrast that with the Memphis-style baby back pork rib, which is of manageable size and the sheath of meat slides off the bone like silk. Southside's pork rib was a better experience, primarily because it's pork and pork ribs are proof that our God is a loving one. The fat seems to be marbled better on pork ribs than on beef ribs and the meat is much more tender, so you get a much more buttery experience.

Sauce, in my experience, seems to be something of an afterthought in Texas. Primarily, this is because the effort is directed towards the rub and the smoking. If you've done that part right, the logic goes, why cover it up with sauce? Fair enough. Also, unlike the Southeast, there's not a real regional bias toward vinegar, tomato or mustard. At the Salt Lick and at County Line, you get a viscous, sweet syrup that I recommend avoiding. Southside serves a peppery vinegar sauce that aficionados of South Georgia and Eastern North Carolina barbecue would feel right at home with.

Southside's sides – cole slaw and beans – were serviceable. Sides aren't what I come for, but these didn't detract and that's the most verbose you can expect me to be on this matter.

The next stop was Meyer's, founded in 1949 by R.G. Meyer and, before you consider me inhuman, this was a "to go" purchase. I finished this meal today for lunch at my desk and, due to having had to re-heat the meal in an oven, I'm can't claim to having been equitable to Meyer's, where I ordered a three-meat combo. That said, perhaps due to the extra baking, I found their pork ribs to be exceptionally tender, whereas the sausage, a pork and beef combo, was perhaps toughened by the baking. The brisket was a little tougher, too. Some of that can be blamed on re-heating, but I just didn't see the balanced fat distribution in their brisket that Southside's well-marbled cuts had. The sauce seemed a little sweeter, but featured the same vinegar base as Southside.

At first blush, I have to give the edge to Southside over Meyer's, but I say that with the caveat that I owe Meyer's a fresh shot at a later date.