First impression is that this place is made for crowds, unlike any of the other local BBQ joints. Several huge rooms lined with tables give you plenty of options on where to eat. Head back to the smokers, of which there are also more than usual (making me wonder just exactly how old the current grills are), which are cleaner than others. You can't tell where the fires are from that room, which is in stark contrast to places like City Market and especially Smitty's.
Alright, so it's a newer building and suspiciously clean for the caliber of BBQ place I'm looking for, and that's made a little worse by the fact that I went very early in the day when they had run out of ribs the night before, so they didn't have ribs ready yet. This is what happens when you go to a BBQ place that has run out of ribs:
Fine, it gives me an excuse to go back. Instead I ordered a pork chop, beef shoulder, brisket, and jalapeno sausage. For sides I went with beans and slaw, and a pecan pie that was pre-packaged. They threw in some cheddar cheese and onions as well. This was my haul:
The picture was taken on my blackberry because I'm not carrying a camera into a restaurant, so everything is much smaller in scale than it really was. That's a big pork chop in person, and the picture doesn't do it justice.
First, the lack of ribs is a cardinal sin, but like I said I just have to go back. And second, the brisket was amazingly and unfortunately fatty. It was fairly bland (like a Ford), and I usually wouldn't care about the amount of fat I had to trim because I trim it religiously anyway, but when you're throwing away a third of the meat you buy by the pound it's altogether different. It was decent, but not smoked nearly long enough. If you happened to get an edge piece you got some flavor, but otherwise it wasn't anything you couldn't get in your H-E-B. There was no sauce to spice it up, well, they had a hot sauce that I didn't want to try because I don't like hot sauces, but there was a salt rub in shakers on the table that was pretty good. It was mostly salt, but seems to have had some crushed red pepper and black pepper in there as well. It zipped it up some, but was too salty if you tried it in an amount to compensate for the lack of smoke.
The pork chop gets its own paragraph, because damn if it wasn't amazing. A tad dry, which I love, but almost two inches thick so it had to be to get cooked all the way through. The bits along the inside of the rib were moist despite being the most thoroughly cooked, and had great flavor. The rub was probably the same thing that was on the table, since it was saltier than it was anything else, but the smoke flavor was great for the pork chop where it was almost absent anywhere else. I wouldn't have ordered it if not for the fact that they were out of ribs, but I'll order it everywhere else that it's offered from now on, and this will be the metric by which the others will be judged. It was that good.
The beef shoulder was fairly dry (probably from yesterday), which again is the way I like it, and had a better smoke taste than the brisket. I'm hoping the brisket was also just a result of the time of day I went, and that the next time it'll be much better. The shoulder doesn't need anything though, it was great as is. The jalapeno sausage was also good. Firm, and not fatty like some sausages can be, with a zip from the pepper that keeps it interesting. I'm not a sausage fan, but when it's done this well I can eat quite a bit of it.
The slaw was unimaginative, basically cabbage and a light mayo. The beans were great though. Well cooked and not overly spiced, whereas some places like to make them taste like Ranch Style beans. The pecan pie was as expected of a pre-packaged pie you can find in most gas stations.
In a head to head comparison with City Market, which doesn't offer pork chops, only the beans are better at Kreuz. But where it counts, City Market is far and away better. I'll come back later in the day to give Kreuz a second chance and will never turn it down of offered, but it's not even as good as Black's, much less City Market.
619 N. Colorado St.
Lockhart, TX 78644-2110
Phone: 512-398-2361
Monday through Saturday 10:30a.m to 8:30 p.m. (Mon-Sat)
Closed Sunday
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