There is no barbecue sauce on that spot on my shirt at the top of my belly that seems to be the place where sauce always lands. For the first time ever, I felt a twinge of disappointment to find my shirt clean as I stood up from the table at Franklin Barbecue in Austin.
Let the record show that was the only disappointment I felt during my first adventure to Franklin.
This place has been at the top of my restaurant to-do list for months and months. More than a year. It's extremely popular, but I'm usually suspect of the masses. "Two and a Half Men" is currently in its 10th season. But if people will line up for barbecue and wait for more than an hour every day that the place is open, then there's a level of commitment there that I have to appreciate. On Tuesday morning, my friends Cameron Weed and Brian Patterson arrived a little after 9 a.m. I arrived a half hour later with coffee for them and took my place a little more than an hour before the doors opened at 11.
There's a reason why this blog includes only a picture of the Franklin sign. If you want to see the barbecue, you're going to have to wait in line for it like we did (or find another blog that has pictures of Franklin's barbecue). On top of that, barbecue brisket, sausage and ribs usually look good. Now, I'll admit, when I looked over the bar at the cutting board and peered on the slab of ribs and brisket, my salivary glands kicked in like pistons on an Indy car. So let's stick with the idea that you're going to have to earn it.
That's part of the appeal of Franklin. By waiting in line, you feel like you're paying your dues. And by waiting in line on a morning that was overcast and cold, we extra earned it. I reckoned the weather would make it a sparse crowd. About 9 a.m., I suggested to the boys that we could wait till 10 or 10:30 to show up. Cameron told me we were going ahead with the plan to line up at 9:30 and he was right. I would have been wrong. When we finished lunch, we walked past the people who arrived at 10:30.
The three of us passed the time in line, discussing Brian's rock show the night before at a place called Hotel Vegas, and movies we had seen. We watched a crane operate on a construction site nearby. I chatted with a passer by who wanted 21 cents for the bus. After I gave him a quarter, he regaled us with a story of going to a Texas football game once upon a time when the Longhorns defeated Alabama, 47-0. That never happened.
It's a good thing we did our chatting in line. Because once we had plates of barbecue in front of us, it was all business. I think we all had two-meat plates with brisket and ribs with an add-on link of sausage. I don't know. I only know what I had on my plate. I was focused.
Normally, I like to sample each of the meats at first. But once I took one bite of rib, with the meat sliding off the bone and with a salt and pepper rub that took it to the next level of deliciousness, I couldn't stop eating the ribs until all the meat was gone from the bones.
The sausage snapped when I bit into it, then the filling almost fell out. Sausage should taste like it was made just for you that morning. That's was the essence of Franklin sausage. Cameron instructed me to eat it with my hands rather than trying to cut it. It doesn't stand up to slicing, and that's a byproduct of quality. Once again, he was correct.
And the brisket, well, you've had good brisket. But no matter how good of brisket you're accustomed, Franklin brisket won't be disappointing. Tender and juicy in the middle, flavorful on the charred edge. We encourage you to try Franklin's barbecue sauces, but you don't need them. There's plenty to taste in every bite without unscrewing the lids from the sauce jars.
Maybe that's why I don't currently have the remnant stain from dripped barbecue sauce on my shirt, just below my sternum.
