The Original City Market, Luling, Texas

The morning after our wonderful dinner at Rainbow Lodge, Nancy and I rose with the roosters, ready to set out toward Austin to complete our 42nd state capital 10k “volksmarch.” We’d gained an hour by the time zone change, and we’d just left Daylight Savings Time, so getting up early was not a problem. The problem was that I wanted to stop for lunch along the way, in part because it was a Game Day in Austin, and I calculated, based on my experience in Tuscaloosa, that everything in Austin would be packed. Also, it’s only a 2 1/2 hour drive to Austin, and my first thought, Truth Barbecue, about an hour away, doesn’t open until 11:00 am.

I was toying with the idea of eating breakfast in Houston when the dilemma was resolved as the unseen Hand of a Benevolent Providence guided me to the Original City Market in Luling, which would involve a small detour and which opens at 10:00 am. (It’s now called the Original City Market because some enemies of humanity opened a place in Houston called the Luling City Market to lure in customers with the siren song, “Luling”, and then crash them on the rocks of lousy barbecue.) Perfect! Off to Luling.

I spent a term as a visiting professor at Baylor Law School in the Spring of 2010. I only had to teach one seminar, one I’d created and taught at Cumberland Law before, so Nancy and I had plenty of time to explore Central Texas armed with the Texas Monthly 50 Best issue. That’s a long way of saying that I ate a lot of barbecue and that the City Market was my favorite, with the best brisket in Texas Monday through Friday. Snow’s narrowly held the crown on Saturdays, and I preferred the then new-to-me jalapeño-cheese sausage at Kreuz Market, but City Market was my overall favorite.

I write often how some barbecue places should be UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites to honor the great Southern tradition of cooking pork directly over wood coals-places like Archibald’s, Grady’s, the original Scott’s, and Ramey’s, places that hold fast to tradition, immune from trends and fads. The City Market is a monument to and exemplar of the noble craft of Texas barbecue.

The City Market is set in a street that looks essentially as it did 50 years ago.

Nancy commented that Luling could be a movie set, so pure is it. Inside, the City Market has the traditional layout. You pass through the dining room

and enter a separate room in which the meat is cooked in a pit with an offset log fire.

There the meat is transformed by the smoke and heat from post oak logs by a team that manages the fire and oversees the cooking, and cuts and weighs the meat. The team is led by pitmaster Joe Capello, Sr., a genius.

You order by weight and pay for the weight actually cut, and receive it along with some pickle, onion, and jalapeño, all on a couple of layers of butcher paper. There’s no tray to help support the food, and the butcher paper becomes your plate. The dining room is where you order the sides and drinks, and where you eat. The City Market walls are wood paneling and unmarred by anything recent. There are booths and wood tables with folding cafeteria chairs.

We arrived shortly after 10:00, when there was only a short line, as we were just before the rush of hunters and the general crowd that stretched the line nearly to the front door. I looked at the menu outside the meat room

and ordered a half pound of meat and two sausage rings, traditional sausage with no cheese or jalapeño. In the dining room we added beans and a couple of potato salads. And some banana pudding.

It doesn’t show in that picture, so let’s zoom in on the bark on the brisket.

While I was fooling with my camera phone, Nancy took a bite of her sausage. “This is really good!” Another bite. “I love it!” She turned to her brisket. “Let’s see, can I cut this with a plastic fork? Yes.”

I took a bite of brisket and my palate sang the “Ode to Joy.” This is extraordinary brisket. And the sausage is exceptional, meaty, peppery, and just delicious. Did you see the prices? Brisket for $20 a pound, and a sausage ring for under $3.00! That’s dirt cheap these days, in or out of Texas. Remember that $20 per pound in my coming posts to appreciate it fully. The superb quality at the City Market comes not through Wagyu or embellishment, but through true artistry. It’s just amazing.

The beans also were great. They were just old school pinto beans, much like the ones in the South, like the ones I had at Ramsey’s Diner and liked so much. I chopped a bit of my raw onion and added it. Very nice. The potato salad and the banana pudding were good, but certainly less memorable than the spectacular brisket and sausage.

The Original City Market hasn’t changed since I was there in 2010, and I hope it never does. It’s free of pretense, and proof against fads and frills, and it captures the essence of the meat and sausage, and of Texas. The City Market is a wonder, well worthy of UNESCO designation. If you’re within 200 miles of Luling, you should hop in your car and go there right now. Those farther away should plan a trip. It is a special place.

***

And while you’re at it, click “follow” on our front page to receive blog posts in your email box.  Or bookmark us and check in from time to time.  If you’re planning a trip, you can “Search” the name of the destination city, state, or country for good restaurants (in Europe, often close to sites, like the Louvre or the Van Gogh Museum, that you’ll want to visit in any event). And stick around for news, all manner of recipes, hotels, and the occasional book or movie review and fine arts and architecture commentary.  Comments, questions, and suggestions of places to eat or stories to cover are very welcome.  And check out our Instagram page, johntannerbbq.