With four estimable pits, including Black’s, the Chisholm Trail, and Kreuz Market, Lockhart (population 13,000) is indisputably the barbecue capital of Texas, making it something like Mecca’s Ka’ba: the heart of the heart. The town’s oldest barbecue building now houses Smitty’s Market, which we nominate as the most atmospheric restaurant in America. It is literally so, because the stinging clouds that rise from open wood fires around the pit will make your eyes tear.
There is also an intangible sense of the past that hits like a sudden dizzy spell when you walk in from South Commerce Street. Out of the sunlight, a dim, time-burnished eating hall is outfitted with rows of wooden benches against the walls. The room is now mainly used for passage to the pit, giving it the feel of a hushed exhibit of indigenous Texas foodways in a museum of culinary history. When we first came upon this place, in the 1970s (when it was Kreuz Market), the benches were outfitted every ten feet or so with sharp knives attached by chains so that diners could use the blades to cut their meat but not steal them or stab anyone.
Smitty’s sausage ring, which is 85 percent beef and 15 percent pork, has to be the juiciest in Texas. It is so succulent that if you plan to snap it into two pieces, you must treat it like a bottle of Champagne you are about to uncork. Use two hands and significant pressure and be certain to push outward. When the casing has reached the breaking point, it bursts. Juice erupts and will splatter your face and shirt if it is not aimed away from you, preferably downward toward the table rather than at the stranger sitting opposite. By the time a ring is halfway dispatched, the butcher paper underneath it will be pooled with drippings of such beefy baritone depth, sparkling with the bite of red and black pepper, that it seems the best idea in the world to sop it up with creamy slices of Butter-Krust bread. You want a stack of bread slices for another reason as well—they are much handier than napkins. Every time you pick one up, you automatically blot fingers glistening with sausage grease.
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