Tolga E.'s Profile

On my barbecue pilgrimage to Texas hill country, I made it to four of the top five barbecue places in all of Texas, as rated by Texas Monthly and countless others. I failed to reach Snow's (which currently sits at #1). However, of the remaining four, it was immediately clear to me that Kreuz Market in Lockhart was by far the best.

Driving south from Austin, Kruez is the first thing you see from the highway as you enter Lockhart, the "barbecue capital of Texas". The road takes over a low-rise train bridge and you start to descend that into town, a giant, bright red barn on your right side reads "Kreuz" - and you know you've arrived.

Kreuz Market is a study in Texas barbecue purity. The place is simple. The people are indifferent (except when it comes to the quality of the 'cue). There are very few condiments and even fewer side dishes. The rules, as posted on the walls, tell you that vegetarians are not welcome, forks are unnecessary (that's why you have hands), and that you should know not just what to order, but how to do so, before talking to anybody. I heeded that last warning, so here's a little run-down for those not as familiar.

How to properly order Texas barbecue:
1. You must order beef brisket. It will be sliced, there are no options.
2. You may order "the fat" or "the lean", which refers to the fat content of the various cuts of brisket that have been prepared. Contrary to popular belief, it actually is acceptable to order "the lean", though why would you?
3. You must order by weight, and it is NOT acceptable to order anything under  1/2 pound.
4. You may order sausage by specifying how many "rings" you would like.
5. You may not ask for a fork or plate (they have neither). You eat on butcher paper and sometimes they will have a plastic knife (sans fork) to attempt to cut the sausage.
6. You must be respectful and speak clearly, they aren't patient if they can't hear or understand you.
It's really that simple. I suggest you stand back and watch a couple of locals order first until you get the idea. You know, to avoid embarrassing yourself.

Now, as to the brisket itself, there is no substitute for it anywhere. The smoke room uses an elongated smoker that funnels heat and smoke from the applewood fire (the precise composition of woods burned is a family secret). It imparts a flavor so intense, I can't really find words to describe the perfect marriage of beef, fire, smoke, and brilliance. Just know that, in five days, I tried eight different briskets across the state and upon two or three bites I knew I found what it was I came to Texas looking for.

When you're searching for the best barbecue in Texas, I fully believe that you must drive out to Taylor and eat at Louie Muellers. I don't want to say it was or wasn't the best 'cue I've ever had, but it was in the top three. There are many, many reasons to eat here, but what's important is that it is unique. The smokers here don't resemble the other places (in appearance at least), the atmosphere doesn't resemble the other places, and the brisket itself doesn't resemble other places. The brisket here is covered in a dense peppercorn crust which imparts an unbelievable flavor into the meat. I can here the other places..."they're cheating!", they must be screaming. And yes, they sort of are cheating. Your brisket shouldn't need the aid of a peppercorn crust. But here's the catch - Louie Mueller's doesn't NEED it, it's just a minor incremental enhancement. And for that, I cannot penalize them at all.

It's a beautiful slab of beef. The fat (aka not "the lean") here was by far the most moist and explosive brisket I had during my travels. The smoke rings on it were the most pronounced in color and thickness. It was a thing of beauty.

Of course, there are other reasons to go here if you can regain consciousness long enough after taking your first bite to get your wits about you. Taylor is an impossible lost old Texas town, essentially abandoned. It makes for a creepy, creaky neighborhood that feels you're in an old western movie. You could take great black and white photos there. The establishment itself is large, comfortable, well-worn, blackened and perfectly Texas. The years of smoking have turned the inside of this place solid black. The wall of business cards is a great marker of time's passage. The yellowing of the cards indicates how long they've been there, like tree rings. Mine is up there now too and hopefully, when I come back in 40 years, it will have faded to a dark brown like the rest.

It's not a surprise that the closest "real" 'cue to Austin is by the far the most touristy 'cue shop in all of Texas. The Salt Lick in Driftwood has been featured on so many Food Network shows they might as well build Kitchen Stadium in the parking lot. There is, of course, a good reason for this. If you're in Austin and don't have a lot of time, you can get one helluva Texas experience here. In true fashion, everything they do here they do big. Big parking lot. Big restaurant. Big tables. Big meat. (yes, really). Even a big firepit where they keep all the big meat warm.
We came in on a Sunday night after visiting the nearby vineyards (yes, there are vineyards nearby...not quality vineyards, but vineyards). Sunday is supposed to be the only night of the week where they serve their famous beef ribs house special. After four days of purely brisket and sausage across hill country, I can't tell you how badly I wanted to try the beef ribs instead. But...they were of course sold out. So, I settled for...everything else. Brisket, sausage, pork ribs, turkey, chicken. You name it they 'cued it. And I ate it. And almost passed out. I even saw one poor kid, probably about 12 years, passed out on his daddy's lap from a food coma right next to us. It happens here.  
All that said, the food is good. It's really good. But it isn't great. I loved the experience, but unless I can make it early enough on a Sunday for those beef ribs, or I'm with wine-snob friends, I'm not feeling the need to run back here given the other options in hill country.

Lockhart is the self-declared "barbecue capital of Texas". In my mind, makes it the "barbecue capital of Earth", as no 'cue beats Texas 'cue. Needless to say, the short drive south from Austin was nearly unbearable - I couldn't wait to just drive in, sit in the city square, and let the brisket wash over me in some weird creepy fantasy sequence. The city square of Lockhart is a pretty amazing place. It's a small town with a disproportionately huge town hall in the middle, featuring the best of german architecture from the 18th century or so. It was pretty fancy for a town out in the middle of nowhere. It seemed deserted too, yet I feel like the 105-degree heat in the middle of August had something to do with that. Across the street from the town hall building is Smitty's. You could literally follow your nose there.
When I stepped inside, I was expecting a warm, Texan reception with happy old ladies welcoming tourists. Nope. The entrance of Smitty's is the most impressive thing about the place - a completely stark, black, smoky hallway leading into an even more stark, black, and smoky room where the brisket is cooked. It seemed like you were descending into some delicious attic of hell. It was 105 degrees outside, probably pushing 120 degrees inside, with enough smoke to make you hack up a lung.
Nevertheless, you order, by weight onto butcher paper as usual. You pay. And then you're let "inside" the air-conditioned dining hall where you can resemble a normal person and go about your eatin'. The brisket is straight-up honest Texas hill country 'cue. No frills, just smoked meat done right. And that's exactly what it tasted like. When you're eating it, you know you've arrived, and it's gonna be alright.

Driving into Luling from the north, I wasn't quite sure what to make of the town. Plenty of people live here at this odd crossroads of a railroad stop and a new major interstate, midway between two major cities (Austin and San Antonio). But it's still a perfectly small Texas town and there's no way to deny it. City Market, it seems, is one their greatest pride and joys.

This was decidedly the most german-immigrant influenced town and barbecue stop that I visited. One bite of the house sausage said as much as looking around the dining room at the white people around me with long lost Germanic-Texan surnames like Voigtlander and Brockhammer.

In any case, the brisket here was my actually my least favorite of the five famous stops I made on this trip. Don't get me wrong, it still completely and totally blew away anything I've found outside of Texas and I'd take it any day of any week. But comparatively, this brisket just didn't have the smoke magic in it. Still, they serve it in classic Texan style (by weight, on butcher paper), you order it straight from the smoke room in the back, and you take seat with the locals and dig in. The sausage here though was my personal favorite in the "traditional" category. No weird meddling with jalapeno cheese nonsense - just straight up great german sausage. Overall, it's worth the stop in your barbecue travels, but it shouldn't be the only place you go.

I loved Mission Beach Cafe. Downright awesome. It's exactly the essence of fine dining in San Francisco. In the outer Mission, near the duboce triangle or the Castro (depending on your neighborhood naming preferences), this restaurant is on the first floor street corner of your stereotypical victorian san francisco apartment building. It's unassuming...I must have driven by it for two years without noticing it was even there. The interior is this amazing blending on modern interior design with classic San Francisco architecture. Simple, elegant, understated, with perfect lighting and accents. It's such an inviting place to eat, especially at night. It's hard to resist.

And then there's food. My friend are have been searching for the city's greatest burger and Mission Beach Cafe was on our hit list, it's reputation preceding it. We both ordered it, and while we were waiting, we got the appetizer of fried green tomatoes. They were excellent, perfectly fresh, fried just crispy, with an amazing cayenne aoili that was so good, we asked for more so we could dip our fries in it later. The burger that arrived was very large, juicy, and incredibly delicious. The bread was dead-on moist, slightly grilled so that it wasn't soppy. It's hard to describe what makes a burger great beyond top-quality ingredients, so I'll just tell you - this is the best burger I've ever eaten in San Francisco. It really, really is.

And from the expressions on the faces of everyone else in the restaurant, it looks, feels, sounds, and smells like everything on the menu matches up as well.

I've never had consciously had Cambodian food before, so I've got no frame of reference for attempting to review Battambang. As a complete novice who only stumbled in here with his friends after spending too much time at The Trappist across the street, here's what I know:

This food is not bad.

We had the #66 eggplant/ground beef dish that people have been raving about. This was my favorite dish of the night. It's somehow sweet and savory, and curry-like without being curry. It was also a good sauce for rice, but I found myself needing their spicy red pepper flake sauce to "jack it up" a little bit. We also had the red curry, which wasn't much special (but still OK), and the house special noodles, which were like a milder version of singapore-curry noodles. All of it was good, solid, southeast asian food. But none of it led me to say "wow" either.

Solid, unique food, good prices, easy location, and surprisingly great service lead me to recommend this to anyone...who spends too much time at The Trappist across the street.

A pretty fun if contradicted high-end FiDi hangout. Midi, which always has me thinking of original nintendo video game soundtracks, is actually a pretty neat place. It's youth-swanky and shows that to you right up front. All the uber-modern furniture, the bar with lights embedded into it, the wall-size silent projection of movies on the back wall clue you in pretty fast. Typically, you won't find me in place this "nice" unless I was dragged there by coworkers for a Friday happy hour. I generally don't like the people that are attracted to what Midi has to offer.

However, Midi is keeping a secret...one which justified my visit. They deliver one of the best burgers in San Francisco. That's a tall order...and it's certainly not THE best, but I was shocked when we went to try it out and they actually executed on it.

My two friends and I are burger-surfing this town and this night was Midi's turn. We got there late by this place's standards...about 8.30pm, when the FiDi is a wasteland of empty streets and overworked cube-dwellers. We ordered three burgers. The bartender says "we only have two" and comically offered to facilitate us drawing straws to see who would be left out. The manager, seeing this and noticing that we weren't your regular FiDi peeps, rushed over and said "wait! we DO have three burgers". In truth, they were just making three out of the meat of two. But he gave us a discount for it and it was worth it. The burgers themselves are extremely straight-forward. No fancy sauces or special ingredients. Just beef, lettuce, tomato, bun. The fries were excellent. The whole meal was oddly excellent. My one friend claimed it was #1 in SF on his personal list. Now, I can't go that far in the presence of NOPA, Mission Beach, and maybe even Zuni. But I can say it's high-enough praise and it's worth it to explore what Midi has to offer.

One of the premiere Belgian beer bars in the nation and probably the hemisphere for that matter. This place has one mission in mind - to serve the best belgian beer possible. When your mission is that simple, it's easy to focus on getting it right. And they really, really get it right.

Their selection rivals only that of La Trappe across the bay in SF. I'd say they are equal in size and quality, yet they compete for certain beers so the harder-to-find ones can't be found at both. We are spoiled lucky for having both of these places so nearby.

Their service is impeccable. All the proper stemware, proper belgian taps (no marks or funny decorated handles), even the refridgerators are segmented off into different zones so that you're getting the right beer at the right temperature. The bartenders are all very well-versed. The most well-versed being Nicole, aka beer encyclopedia goddess. The girl has a Ph.D in beer and it's freaky, in a good way. If you can't find a beer you like with her help, you don't like beer.

And now that they took over their neighbors and open the "back room" on weekends, there's actually enough space to breath and have a civilized conversation with your friends there. Perfect.

Please support your local brewers! Linden Street was founded close to two years ago by a guy named Adam. Adam's practical intentions were simple - brew great traditional California-style beer and make a small and decent living doing it. But if you talk to Adam, you realize his ambitions and intentions are far greater.

The way he puts it, he is "reclaiming California Common lager for the people"...taking on Anchor Brewing (who makes the only other California Common lager...called Anchor Steam) is typically not the wisest choice. Anchor and Fritz Maytag have the respect of brewers nationwide, they were the last and first bastion of microbrewing in the middle of the 20th century. OK - this is a bit dramatic, I don't think he's got anything against them, but Adam does feel he needs to "bring it back to Oakland". Also, he feels like he is part of the Oakland Renaissance, which a vague reference to the mission/brooklyn-like "gentrification" taking place there. But in a more unique and honestly Oakland kinda way. The man loves Oakland. He doesn't even sell his beer on the other side of the bay. Really!

As for the beer itself, if you're lucky enough to find it at an east bay bar or restaurant, or if you visit the brewery itself...you realize he makes a damn good Steam beer (CA common). It's comparable to Anchor, but a bit brighter, a little less hoppier, and verging on a pale ale-like floral nose. Their website says the now make a black lager, which really excites me. Given Adam's ambition and honest intentions, I'm sure it will be awesome.