A pork chop too far

I've been hearing for years about how great the barbecue is at Cooper's in Llano, Texas, but I've never been able to make the trip there.  I was thus quite pleased to learn that Cooper's had opened a place in Austin.  Now, friends have cautioned me that the Austin Cooper's wasn't quite up to the original, but it was still supposed to be excellent.

Tonight, two of us headed downtown to find out for ourselves.

The name of the game at any good Texas barbecue joint is, of course, the meat.  We knew we had to try the brisket and the sausage, the king duo of Texas 'que.  When I saw beef ribs on the menu, though, I immediately decided a pair of them had to join our order.  At that point, we remembered our colleague and pal, Bruce, saying the pork chop was excellent, so we caved and ordered one of those.

Little did we know at that moment just how big that chop would be.

We quickly found ourselves with all of this meat.

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What you can't tell from this photo is that chopzilla in the upper left was going on two inches thick.

Needless to say, we could not finish all of the food.  It truly was a pork chop too far.  We ended up leaving a third of the sausage, a fifth of the brisket, and all but a quarter of the chop.

That waste was the bad news.

The good news was that the brisket was the second-best brisket I've ever tasted, better by far than any other brisket I've enjoyed save for the all-time champ, the brisket at Franklin Barbecue.  Franklin's brisket is still the best, but Cooper's is mighty damn fine--and I could walk in on a Thursday night and order it after only a five-minute wait.

I will definitely return to Cooper's.

I was already downtown, so of course I had to head to the nearby Amy's for an ice cream dessert.

Tomorrow, I work in the morning and then journey home.

From obsession comes great barbecue

As I wrote the first time I had the privilege of tasting Aaron Franklin's barbecue brisket at Franklin Barbecue, that brisket is the truth, by far the very best I've ever tasted.  When I asked Franklin the secret to his great barbecue, he shrugged and said, "We just cook it 'til it's overcooked."

The truth, of course, is more complex.  As you can see in this great Lucky Peach article (which I strongly encourage all barbecue fans to read), what really makes Franklin's meat so great is the obsessive attention to detail and the constant quest to improve his work that he brings to every piece of meat he cooks.  As the article shows, he notices and cares about every detail of what he does.

Well done, Aaron Franklin.  I cannot wait to eat your food again!

On the road again: Austin, day 3

Beautiful weather, with highs in the low eighties.  Wow.

Great meetings with clients and with our team here.

A client thank-you dinner at the world-famous Franklin Barbecue, home of the very best brisket I've ever tasted. 

Ice cream afterward at Amy's.

Lots and lots and lots of work.

Another day, a good day, on the road for work.

On the road again: Austin, day 6

If you ignore the fact that I had to get up before seven a.m. and got very little sleep, today went about as well as a travel day could.

It started so early because I was determined to see if my one previous amazing meal at Franklin Barbecue had been a fluke or if the barbecue there was just that good.  Thanks to a colleague who arrived even earlier, we were only about 40th in line (at 8:30 in the morning).  Check out the view from where we waited. 

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We passed the time in conversation and with some work; I did phone meetings from my rental car while others held our place in the line.  We were sitting down to eat a little less than four hours after we arrived.  Several of us shared this feast.

After my first visit to this barbecue mecca, I declared its brisket the best in the world.  Today's brisket was even better than last time's.  It is just that damn good, so far above everything else I've ever tasted that it has no competition. 

What surprised me more, though, was that the pork ribs, which last time were very good but no more, had ascended into the same rarefied air as the brisket.  They were simply the best I have ever tasted, hands down.

This meal was absolutely worth the lost sleep and the long wait. 

Thanks to friends of friends, we were privileged to go on a tour of the cookers with Benji, Aaron Franklin's right-hand guy.  Here, Benji is standing in front of the cooker nearest the restaurant. 

The folks at Franklin make these cookers from used thousand-gallon propane tanks.  We were seeing them at one in the afternoon; by then, the cookers had already been working on Saturday's meat for four hours. 

Of course, that wasn't the only cooker.

No tour of the place would be complete without a shot of Aaron Franklin's first cooker, which now sits apart from the others but is still in use.  (The cooker is on the left; the thing on the right is a new rotisserie they're going to bring into service soon.)

If you at all like barbecue, you should not miss Franklin Barbecue.  It is rare that a place is the absolute best in the world at anything, much less something as widely cooked as barbecue brisket, but Franklin's simply is. 

After the meal, I headed to the airport, checked in smoothly, received upgrades for both flights, did a bunch of work in the Admirals Club, and even had time for a bit of Amy's. 

My connection in DFW was in the same terminal and only a dozen gates away.  My flight home arrived a tad early.

As I said, about as good a travel day as one could have.

All that said, I am very, very glad to be home and to sleep in my own bed.

On the road again: Austin, day 5

Today was a travel day, with many of the usual fun (not) aspects of such days:  lots of traffic on the roads, a delayed flight, an extended stay working in the Admirals' Club, a mad rush to make the second flight, and, hurrah hurrah, an upgrade on that flight.

All of that is just background noise, however, to the true story of this day:  I made my first visit to the world-famous Franklin Barbecue in Austin. 

If you're not one of the people to whom this restaurant is famous, you'll have to trust me that in foodie circles and among barbecue lovers, it most definitely is.  Anthony Bourdain proclaimed its brisket to be the best in the world, and he's not alone; about the worst criticisms of its brisket I've heard yet are that on some days it's not quite as great as others, and it might be only the second best in the world.

As you can imagine, I was eager to try the brisket.

Doing so requires some dedication.  Chef/owner Aaron Franklin doesn't open his doors until 11:00 a.m.  He serves only lunch.  When they run out of meat, he closes the doors.  People start lining up about 7:30 a.m.  One of our group showed up at 8:30 a.m. and secured a spot under the cover of the restaurant's overhang--but it still took us until nearly quarter past noon to get our food.

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Ours is the second-to-last group on the left.

By about ten o'clock, the line was down to the end of the block.

Once you get inside, you see a simple dining room with space for something like 40 folks.

The menu is on the same butcher-block paper they use to wrap the cooked meats.

As you'd expect from a good Texas barbecue house, when you ask for a meat, they cut it right in front of you.  Here he's cutting the fatty brisket--always go for the fatty brisket--for our group. 

Seven of us ate family style from a huge pile of meat, quite a bit of which went home with our local friends. 

Here's a close-up of my brisket and the little bit of sausage I got; they ran out of sausage temporarily just after we bought the last two links.  (They were able to produce another round of sausage before they closed.)

Forget the lines, forget the hype, forget the national reputation.  It all comes down to this:  How does that brisket taste?

As I said aloud after I took my first bite, Franklin's brisket is the truth.  It is the embodied essence of everything barbecued brisket can possibly be.  It is far and away the best brisket I've ever tasted--and I have eaten brisket in a large number of top barbecue joints over the years.  If there was a Maslow's hierarchy for brisket, Franklin's would be sitting alone at the peak, fully self-actualized.

It is just that damn good. 

The sausage is among the best I've ever tasted.  The pork ribs are smoky and wonderful and also among the very best I've ever had.

The brisket, though, is simply the best.  Period.

Periodically, Franklin wanders the tables and talks to folks.  When he came to ours and asked after our meal, we sang the brisket's praises.  "It's what we do," he said, with evident pride.  When we talked about all the places I'd eaten brisket and how this one was far and away the best, he smiled and said, "The secret is, we cook it until it's over-cooked," and then he moved on.

I will wait in the line at Franklin any chance I get.