Austin’s LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue<\/a>, his city was the obvious pick for No. 1 because it claims the highest number of Michelin-starred barbecue restaurants in the world.<\/p>\n\u201cNot only do you have the best of the classic Texas barbecue experience, but you also have the forefront of the cuisine and multiple cultures expressed through barbecue,” he told Travel + Leisure.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Tyler Brunache, owner and pitmaster of Orlando\u2019s Smokemade Meats + Eats also praised the quality and quantity of BBQ spots found in Austin noting that, “all of the best spots, [are] sometimes within a block or two of each other!” Other pitmasters like Daniel Castillo of California’s Heritage Barbecue called Austin’s\u00a0LeRoy and Lewis and InterStellar BBQ “the new-school standard” and James Petrakis of Orlando\u2019s The Ravenous Pig and The Polite Pig called the Central Texas city his hands-down favorite for barbecue.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustin is on most barbecue lovers\u2019 lists, and it does not disappoint,\u201d Petrakis told Travel + Leisure. The heavyweights like Franklin and Terry Black\u2019s warrant the lines, but the lesser-known spots won him over just as fast.<\/p>\n
As for Texas’ barbecue capital located about 30 miles south of Austin, Castillo says Lockhart lives up to its title with places like Smitty’s Market being, \u201cabsolutely worth visiting for the history alone,\u201d he said. The Smitty’s space was originally a German-Czech butcher shop in the 1900s operated by the Kreuz family until Edgar “Smitty” Schmidt, a longtime butcher at Kreuz Market, purchased the business in 1948.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alongside its award-winning brisket, sausage and more, the market also honors its roots by serving saltine crackers, raw white onions, pickles, which has, “become what many people now think of as the classic Texas barbecue experience,” Castillo continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lockhart is also home to Texas Monthly’s annual BBQ Fest, where the state’s best pitmasters gather to celebrate the magazine’s famed Top 50 BBQ list.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to sample the very best barbecue Texas has to offer in one place, that\u2019s where I\u2019d go,” Castillo concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The live music capital appears to be giving the barbecue capital of Texas a run for its money.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1112,820],"class_list":["post-392170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-mysafood","tag-mysastaff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}