Roadtrips

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Tootsie’s barbecue pork steak warms the heart of a Carolina pig cooker

Phillip Townsend shows off his tray of smoked meats at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, one of the highlights of his four-day Texas BBQ trip. (Photo ©Trish Townsend) By Phillip TownsendSpecial to the Texas BBQ Posse The North Carolina barbecue tradition runs in my veins. Doctors say that might account for my triglycerides, but that’s another story for another day. As a kid, I grew up helping my dad raise, butcher, and cook hogs on our small farm. Through my teen and college years, I eagerly embraced every opportunity to sample good barbecue — the Eastern N.C. style of my youth…

Roadtrips - 12/05/2019

Reflections after a decade on the BBQ Trail

Snow's BBQ pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz works the smokers during the Posse's 10th anniversary trip. (Photo ©Tom Fox/Texas BBQ Posse) Anniversaries are often times of reflection. So it was for the Posse on Saturday when we visited Snow’s BBQ and Louie Mueller Barbecue 10 years after our very first trip to these Central Texas meccas of smoked meat. In many ways nothing has changed. The food was still terrific. Snow’s brisket remains among the best around and my first bite of the beef rib at Louie Mueller’s was the best mouthful of barbecue I’ve eaten in a long, long time. Posse…

Popular / Roadtrips - 11/17/2019

The BBQ Posse journeys into the heart of Texas

Pitmaster & owner Michael Wyont greets customers at Flores Barbecue in Whitney. (Photo @David Woo/Texas BBQ Posse) EDITOR'S NOTE: We're sorry to report that Flores Barbecue has closed effective Sept. 2019, after moving to a new location in Fort Worth. If the Texas BBQ Posse has a fault, it might be it’s bluntness. We talk bluntly — positively and otherwise — about our favorite food, barbecue. So, on a recent Saturday while I was telling Michael Wyont, pitmaster and owner of Flores Barbecue in Whitney, how much the Posse liked everything he served, I added that at least one of us could…

Joints / Roadtrips - 11/27/2018

BBQuest, a new video series, gets high marks from the Posse

Dishes featured in scenes from BBQuest, a web series from the Texas Beef Council. (Photos ©Beef Loving Texans) If memory serves, and sometimes it doesn’t in my advancing years, no one on the Texas BBQ Posse has ever gone shopping for party clothes, cowboy boots and hats before one of our smoked meat tours. That’s exactly what Kelsey Pribilski and Jess Pryles do in the middle of the premier episode — about Austin — of BBQuest, a new digital video series from Beef Loving Texans, a consumer brand of the Texas Beef Council. No matter. The main focus for Pribilski…

Joints / People / Roadtrips - 09/10/2018

The Posse heads to Oklahoma's Chickasaw Country

Joe Wells, right, and his son Coby pose in the dining room of Smokin’ Joe’s Rib Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma. (Photo ©Chris Wilkins/Texas BBQ Posse) Barbecue is like the weather: Once in a while, it’s glorious. Once in a while, it’s awful. And Oklahoma isn’t where you go to find the best of it. Earlier this month, the Texas BBQ Posse accepted an invitation from the Chickasaw Nation to visit three of south central Oklahoma’s more popular barbecue joints: • Smokin’ Joe's Rib Ranch in Davis. • Jake’s Rib in Chickasha. • Pigskins BBQ in Ada. To be honest, our…

Roadtrips - 05/10/2018

Let the Texas BBQ Posse eat cake, mom says, and we do

Customers line up on a Saturday morning at Truth Barbeque in Brenham, the Posse's first stop of the trip. (Photo ©Michael Ainsworth/Texas BBQ Posse) At the first stop of the day on a barbecue tour, we almost never order dessert. Plenty of opportunity later for sweets, if we’re still hungry. And so it was at Truth Barbeque in Brenham on a recent Saturday morning. After tasting the joint’s beef rib, brisket, pork ribs, turkey and sausage, we confirmed that Truth deserved every bit of its recent Texas Monthly ranking among the Top 10 places in the state. “I can’t think we’re…

Joints / Roadtrips - 06/26/2017

The birth of the Posse during a lightning tour of Central Texas' best BBQ joints

Snow's BBQ on a foggy Saturday morning in Nov. 2009, this was the Posse's first of many trips to the BBQ mecca. Editors note: We thought it would be fun to republish the story from our first BBQ pilgrimage to Central Texas in November 2009. What began as a simple roadtrip for six friends became a life-changing experience for us all, giving birth to the Texas BBQ Posse. Once we tasted that Snow's brisket for the first time, nothing related to BBQ would ever be the same. Here's our story... By Gary Jacobson In thick fog on a Saturday morning, we…

Roadtrips - 05/07/2017

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

How to plan the perfect Texas BBQ tour

Pecan Lodge in Dallas is a don't miss stop on any DFW BBQ tour. The Posse is approaching its eighth anniversary of driving the cities, towns and backroads of Texas in search of great barbecue. Inspired by Texas Monthly magazine's 2008 list of the Best BBQ joints in Texas, our original group of six hit the road in early November 2009. Seven-plus years later, we've made dozens of trips around the state, sharing our stories on this blog and in The Dallas Morning News. Here are a few things we've learned along the way. 1. Do your research: There's no substitute…

Roadtrips - 06/20/2015

The Barbecue Chronicles: Austin is the new Lockhart BBQ Tour

The Texas BBQ Posse dives into a spread of sausage, brisket, ribs and turkey at La Barbecue in Austin. (Photo by Tom Fox/DMN) Story by Gary Jacobson It would be easy to get carried away by what’s happening in Austin barbecue. Amid a fertile startup environment, young pitmasters are creating a smoked-meat renaissance, using only wood-fired pits and adopting old-school ways to cook for a new generation. A case could even be made that Austin has replaced Lockhart as the capital of Texas barbecue. We’ll leave that big-think stuff for another time. This is a story about…

Roadtrips - 05/07/2013

The Barbecue Chronicles: Best of Texas BBQ Tour

Brisket, ribs and sausage at Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor. (Photo by Tom Fox/DMN) By Gary Jacobson/Texas BBQ Posse For a while now, members of the Texas BBQ Posse have strongly suspected that Dallas finally has a joint that can hang with the elite barbecue restaurants in the state. Our recent Posse Favorites Tour confirmed that suspicion. We drove nearly 700 miles and ate at 10 top places over 48 hours. We scored brisket, pork ribs and sausage, the holy trinity of Texas barbecue, on a 10-point scale. In the end, we compiled a list of the six top-scoring spots.…

Roadtrips - 03/12/2013

The Barbecue Chronicles: Tales from the Speedtrap BBQ Tour

Here's Posse member Bruce Tomaso's take on our recent Speedtrap BBQ Tour. Bruce joined Marshall Cooper, Jim Rossman and me on a 500-plus mile trek that began at Snow's BBQ, our favorite place to start every tour in central Texas. Here are some stories from one of our best BBQ journeys yet..... Last Friday night, a friend and I went to see Tool. My friend, a student at Texas Christian University, doesn’t have a car, so I picked him up. I got off work and headed west on Interstate 30 from downtown Dallas to the TCU campus in Fort Worth.…

Roadtrips - 01/26/2012

The Barbecue Chronicles: Back to East Texas where we find proof that wood rules

It had been a few months since the Posse’s last barbecue tour. So, we reminded ourselves to be conservative and not overeat at the first stop. “I’m just going to have one rib,” said tour veteran Marshall Cooper as he drove east from Dallas on I-20. His passengers laughed. “Well, if they’re good I might have four or five,” he conceded. In the end, somehow, Texas barbecue always manages to bring out the truth. For this chapter of our barbecue chronicles, we traveled 290 miles over 10 hours on a beautiful spring Saturday that was chilly when we started and…

Roadtrips - 05/01/2011

The Barbecue Chronicles: Central Texas 5-Star BBQ Tour, 8 joints in 26 hours

Some of us didn’t know what good smoked brisket was until we ate at Snow’s during our first Barbecue Posse tour a year ago. Since then, the Lexington place has been our unanimous standard. Nothing compared. But after a recent two-day, 555-mile “anniversary” tour to Central Texas, there’s a new favorite for several of us: Franklin Barbecue, a trailer joint at 34th street and I-35 in Austin. Over a 26-hour period, we ate at eight places, including lunch at Franklin and breakfast at Snow’s BBQ the next morning. Tour organizer Chris Wilkins, a photo editor at The Dallas Morning News,…

Roadtrips - 01/13/2011

The Barbecue Chronicles: BBQ tour to the Brazos and beyond

Consensus is probably a mission impossible on a barbecue tour. Too many people. Too many sensibilities. And let’s face it, rib people are different than brisket people. The Barbecue Posse, though, almost reached consensus when we visited the Loco Coyote Grill near Glen Rose on a summer Saturday. It was part of a 9-hour, 210-mile barbecue tour that took us southwest of Dallas, to the Brazos and beyond. “Those ribs were the bomb,” R.J. Hinkle, a free-lance photographer making his first trip with the Posse, said of Loco Coyote. Another tour newcomer, Michael Gluckman, general manager at Fearing’s at The…

Roadtrips - 10/22/2010

The Barbecue Chronicles: Fort Worth area has good barbecue, but it's wise to space the tastings

On barbecue tours, it's better to plan a break for the middle rather than the end. We learned that valuable lesson on a recent Saturday during a 100-mile, nine-hour excursion to four places in and around Fort Worth. Since the stops were close, all the eating was stuffed into five hours. Even our biggest eater, Gary Barber, couldn't keep pace. Barber (a multimedia editor at The Dallas Morning News) ate a half-pound of sausage, a quarter-pound of brisket and two ribs at the first stop, Off the Bone in Forest Hill, at 11 a.m. By our last stop, Smokey's Barbeque…

Roadtrips - 05/08/2010

The Barbecue Chronicles: One day, four pit stops in East Texas

The wheelman on a barbecue tour needs thick skin and quick reflexes. During a 240-mile trip from Dallas through East Texas on a recent Saturday, our driver had both. Moments after getting needled for poking along at 50 in a 70 mph zone, David Woo quickly had his car at the speed limit. Then we spotted smoke coming from a portable smoker in front of a low building. We were headed east on State Highway 31, between Tyler and Kilgore, about 115 miles from Dallas. "That looks interesting," one posse member said. "Let's go back." Woo, a photographer at The…

Roadtrips - 03/13/2010

The Barbecue Chronicles: Our first journey to Central Texas

In thick fog on a Saturday morning, we missed the turn for Lexington. We quickly doubled back and arrived at Snow's BBQ a little after 8 a.m., relieved to see only a short line. A half-hour earlier, when we left our motel, none of us felt hungry. But the smell of wood smoke changed our minds. We ordered thick slices of tender brisket on white bread. "That's the best breakfast I've ever eaten," said Chris Wilkins. "I could have gone home at that point and the trip would have been worth it," said Gary Barber. Our lightning tour of the…

Roadtrips - 03/07/2010

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