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2M Smokehouse No. 1 Posse Favorite

Lunch spread at 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio, the Posse's favorite BBQ joint in Texas. (Photo ©Tom Fox/Texas BBQ Posse) If you’re a regular Posse reader, you know that we’ve been high on 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio since it opened a couple years ago. So, naturally, we'd take a close look at the place as we put together the Texas BBQ Posse's Favorite 41, our list of our favorite joints in the state. After our first visit in the spring of 2017 we wondered if 2M was, in fact, turning out the best barbecue in Texas. After a return…

A year later, 2M Smokehouse hasn’t lost a step . . .It still might be the best BBQ joint in Texas

Our lunch of ribs, brisket, turkey & sausage with sides at 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio. (Photo ©Chris Wilkins/Texas BBQ Posse) When we first visited 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio last year, we wondered if the joint was turning out the best barbecue in Texas. After a recent visit, our view hasn’t changed. “I’ll flat out say it,” Posse co-founder Chris Wilkins said after our lunch of brisket, pork ribs, turkey and Serrano pepper/Oaxaca cheese sausage, “I think the food here is better than Snow’s.” Snow’s, of course, is the legendary joint in Lexington that was ranked No. 1 last…

Joints - 03/15/2018

An “a-ha” moment for the Austin Posse — Driving to Snow’s BBQ is faster than waiting at Franklin

Customers stand in line at 8am on a Saturday at Snow's BBQ In Lexington. (Photo ©Gary Jacobson/Texas BBQ Posse) Eureka experiences are not uncommon in barbecue. Usually they have something to do with the food. My most recent BBQ “a-ha,” though, had nothing to do with great brisket or ribs and everything to do with time. Waiting time. Living in Austin, I just discovered, it's actually faster to eat at Snow's BBQ in Lexington than Franklin Barbecue in Austin, even though it involves a 100-mile roundtrip drive. My home is about three miles from Franklin and 50 miles from Snow’s,…

Joints - 02/07/2018

Texas Monthly's BBQ rankings, fair or not?

Are Texas Monthly’s barbecue rankings fair? Can you compare a joint open just one day a week to places open six and seven? And a related, but more complicated fairness question: With so much of Texas Monthly’s overall business plan — events, tours, dinners, merchandise — now tied to barbecue, can the magazine look beyond its self interest when it comes to smoked meat? After gurgling below the surface since the release of the latest Top 50 list last month, these issues erupted into full view this week when Ronnie Killen went public to the Houston media. He later elaborated…

Joints - 06/23/2017

When it comes to BBQ, a picture is not worth a thousand bites -- or even one

Posse member Tom Fox photographs a tray of BBQ at Louie Mueller in Taylor. A barbecue blogger last week weighed in on his role in assembling the latest Texas Monthly list of the Top 50 Barbecue Joints in Texas. Actually, the blogger, Jimmy Ho, didn’t weigh in. “I did help contribute to the list,” he wrote, but he added, “I am not going to write about any of the places I visited on my blog.” (I’m guessing that maybe his arrangement with Texas Monthly prohibited him from using his work for the magazine on his own blog, but that’s just…

Joints - 06/01/2017

Top 10 brisket joints for Texas Monthly

Briskets on the smoker at 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio. With all the hullabaloo over the online release of Texas Monthly’s Top 50 barbecue joints early this week, the print edition of the magazine still contained a nice surprise when it arrived Thursday: a list of the top 10 brisket joints in Texas. While seven of them are also among TM’s overall Top 10, three are not, including 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio. Regular readers will remember that Chris Wilkins and I raved about 2M after our first visit there earlier this year. I even argued that it might be the…

Joints - 05/28/2017

What do BBQ bloggers have in common with Homer, Chaucer and Twain? A lot!

BBQ sign on Hwy. 71 outside of Spicewood, TX., not one of the monsters of The Odyssey. A long while ago, we attended a gathering of BBQ bloggers at Louie Mueller’s in Taylor. Organized by Daniel Vaughn, then just the BBQ Snob now also the BBQ editor of Texas Monthly, the group included Don O., J.C. Reid, and others. It was a fun day of camaraderie and food. Fast forward most of a decade and I found myself engaged in a Facebook discussion about the “food press” last weekend with Jack Perkins, who created and sold Slow Bone in Dallas. My…

Roadtrips - 04/18/2017

Is the Posse going soft on gassers?

Massive wood pile outside Smitty's Market in downtown Lockhart. (Photo by Jeff Haynes) In the 4-year history of this blog, no topic has incited more passion than the wood-fired versus gas-fired smoker debate. The Posse has been pro-wood. All wood. Almost to an extreme. We once called out Texas Monthly for including gas-fired joints on its Top 50 list. But perhaps we have mellowed a bit as at least one of us edges ever closer to Medicare eligibility. On our recent Mid-Cities mini-tour, we liked the food at Eddie Deen Crossroads Smokehouse in Arlington even though the ribs and chicken…

Cooking - 02/20/2014

How Daniel Vaughn, the BBQ Snob, turned himself into the hottest brand in smoked meat

Daniel Vaughn bites into a rib at the Baby Back Shak in 2009. (Photo by David Woo/The Dallas Morning News) (Note: Rebecca LaFlure is a Texas native, long-time barbecue fan and journalism graduate student at Northwestern University. Prior to attending Northwestern, she worked as a reporter for media outlets in Killeen and Austin. She currently covers national security as a fellow at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington D.C. The following article was initially written as a research paper for a 21st Century Media course at Northwestern.) By Rebecca LaFlure On March 21, Texas Monthly announced it hired someone…

People - 07/12/2013

Will Texas Monthly's Top 5 BBQ joints be same as those named by its new BBQ editor?

During our live online barbecue chat Monday on DallasNews.com, a reader asked us to predict the Top 5 ranked joints in Texas Monthly's 2013 BBQ issue, which should be available soon. There was considerable agreement among the four Posse members participating. We each put Franklin Barbecue in Austin No. 1. The next three spots were occupied by the same three joints, although the orders differed: Snow's BBQ in Lexington, La Barbecue in Austin and Pecan Lodge in Dallas. The fifth spot, depending upon the Posse member, went to either Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor or Kreuz Market in Lockhart. A…

Joints - 04/30/2013

Is Lockhart losing its title as the BBQ Capital of Texas?

Smitty's Market oak wood pile & Caldwell County courthouse. (Photo ©Chris Wilkins/Texas BBQ Posse) At the Posse, we're ready to declare State Highway 130, the high-speed tollway that skirts Austin, the Barbecue Super Expressway. However, we're beginning to wonder whether Lockhart, one of the main stops on that highway, still deserves its title as the BBQ capital of Texas. Yes, we know that's borderline smoked-meat heresy. But on our recent Best of Texas Tour, we ate at three Lockhart joints and only one -- Kreuz Market -- made our top tier of six. The others -- Smitty's Market and Chisholm…

Joints - 02/14/2013

About the iguana who thought he was a cat and the python who only eats rats

On a barbecue tour, there is no such thing as down time. Even the long drives bring surprises. Last year, returning to Dallas from East Texas, we decided that someone should call out Texas Monthly for including joints that use gas-fired pits in its Top 50 BBQ rankings. We did just that, eventually engaging TM food editor Pat Sharpe in a constructive discussion about the magazine's selection criteria. Sometimes, we just learn interesting things about our fellow Posse members. On the first leg of our recent 35-hour, 700-mile dash to the Gulf Coast and back, Posse co-founder Chris Wilkins talked…

People - 06/22/2012

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