Lockhart, Texas

If you’re going to spend a day riding a bus, eating four barbecue meals in less than five hours, there is only one way to begin.

Donuts.

There are sixty of us split between two buses, which are motoring north from Austin, Texas, on I-35. On one bus is Michael Stern, and on the other is Jane Stern, the beloved American roadfood gurus, published monthly in Gourmet, heard weekly on NPR’s The Splendid Table, and authors of more than forty books, including the 2008 update of their guide to authentic American eating, Roadfood. Their web home is the wonderful, if not quite beautiful Roadfood.

Last December I was agile enough to secure two spaces on the Stern’s fourth annual Roadfood road trip, this one to the barbecue country east of Austin. This would be traditional Texas barbecue: mostly beef, heavily smoked, sauce free. It was me and the boy, out to see a side of American barbecue with precious little resemblance to the dripping Kansas City style of ‘cue popular throughout the northern Midwest.

Texas barbecue arrived not through the typical West Indies routes, but via Eastern European immigrants who popularized it to make use of unloved and excess cuts of meat in the days before refrigeration. The most typical cuts are luxuriant, fatty brisket, and thick, natural-casing sausages (“hot guts”).

But did I mention donuts? Round Rock Donuts sits in a new wood and stone building in an Austin exurb. The glazed donuts here would have put Krispy Kreme into bankruptcy if greedy management hadn’t. Hot, melting, dripping with glaze that looks like cheddar cheese while still coagulating, this was easily the best donut I ever ate. Sweet-dough pigs-in-blankets and savory jalapeño cheese sausage rolls are other highlights.

Round Rock Donuts

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Twenty minutes later, palates-teased, we arrive at Louie Mueller’s in small-town Taylor. A storefront in a fading downtown, the place is a cavernous former gymnasium, walls literally blackened by wood smoke. You order at an old counter, watch a pitman carve your meat, then are served on a plastic disposable plate. The sausages (mostly beef, a little pork) are encased so thickly that trying bite through one guarantees a blast of grease. The brisket, available fat or lean, is covered in a thick pepper and spice crust that is probably the signature of the Mueller barbecue. Peppery coleslaw is exquisite. White bread, pickles, and raw onion slices are complimentary as is a thin, peppery “jus” that was the closest thing I saw to sauce all day. The next generation of the Muellers has come onboard, hopefully guaranteeing many more years of authentic Texas goodness in Taylor.

Louie Mueller's: Michael Stern (far left, standing) and Jane Stern (far right, seated, in black)

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Another short piece down the trail took us to Elgin (hard “G”) and the massive Southside Market, which is situated in a newish building where the food prep is invisible, you order fast-food style, and the sausage is pre-cut for your convenience. Southside’s modernity saps all the charm, but there’s no denying its breadth of offerings, from incredible smoked chicken, baby back ribs that would make Famous Dave anonymous, and beloved local Bluebell ice cream. Awaiting our arrival is the larger than life Bud Royer, proprietor of the Round Top Café in Round Top, Texas. Round Top was too far off our routing, so Bud came to us with dozens of incredible pies, including a lip-smacking pecan and tart cherry pies. If only Solveig Tofte at Turtle Bread could make a crust this melting.

Southside Market (left) and Bud Royer (right)

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With an hour on the road to Lockhart, Michael Stern spent some time on the PA chatting with the trippers, many of whom are regular contributors to the Roadfood website. Local color of the Minnesota variety is disproportionately in evidence, most notably Hell’s Kitchen proprietor Mitch Omer and clan, jars of his homemade peanut butter being passed around to keep hunger at bay. More than 10 percent of the trippers have Minnesota ties, perhaps evidence that when you live somewhere without an authentic food culture, you do whatever’s necessary to immerse yourself in one.

Downtown Lockhart could be downtown Taylor, and the storefront entrance to Smitty’s Market is equally forlorn. The smoke hits right when you open the door, a literal haze you follow to the sight of burning logs and men in white aprons. A corridor leads to a scene out of Dante: a blackened anteroom where pit men pull briskets from huge, room-sized smokers; lay them on a table cut from an old oak tree; and slice them for your pleasure. The meat is placed on butcher paper, which is folded up and handed to you. Next is a stark white room that feels like a 1930s drugstore, where you order drinks and condiments (raw onion, pickles, avocado halves, cheddar cheese hunks, Saltine crackers). Seating is in here. There are no plates, forks, or other frills. But the brisket, sausage, and beef shoulder are succulent and memorable.

Smitty's Market

Sausage, beef shoulder, cheddar cheese, and iced tea; Inside Smitty’s smoker

All the action is at the pit.

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Smitty’s longtime Lockhart competitor, Kreuz (krites) Market, is out by the highway in a new building, a modern iteration of Smitty’s, with a big parking lot, multiple dining rooms (some air-conditioned), and a big, brick-colored pit room with the same service system as Smitty’s. (This is perhaps no surprise since Smitty’s building downtown used to be Kreuz’s home.) There is also pit ham and jalapeño cheddar sausage in addition to the standards, and it is all very good though the modern environs inevitably sap some of the pleasure. (And some in our gang suggest Smitty’s smokes longer at lower temperatures, resulting in more melting meat.)

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We pull out of Kreuz around 4 p.m., full to bursting, and Michael Stern pops a DVD in the bus’s video system—a documentary about the Sterns filmed by German television. The filmmaker’s thesis was that fast food had not yet won out in America because the Sterns and their acolytes would not let authentic American food die. The Sterns proved terribly unassuming, friendly and accessible, but largely stayed in the background. The trip was more about the food, the places, and the camaraderie of sharing notes about discovering America by its regional cuisine.

Those barbecue dining rooms were filled with a cross section of America: old farmers in seed caps, enlisted men and women from the nearby base, black families in hip-hop regalia, Latino locals, and the odd tourist. They might not live in the same neighborhood, vote for the same candidates, or share any of the same culture. But they come together for that most authentic of American foods: barbecue—hold the sauce, crackers on the side.