Top 5 BBQ Restaurants in Austin Texas

Trying to come up with a top five list of favorite BBQ places in Austin Texas is virtually impossible. I usually have two reasons to go to Austin. One is for the South-By-Southwest Music Festival, but truth be known, the real reason is for the BBQ. When I was a much younger man and my family was in the meat market business, I would travel within a days drive from Little Rock, Arkansas to find the best BBQ I could and then resell it at our market. Memphis was 5 hours closer than Austin was, but to get Texas BBQ is worth every bit of the five additional hours and then some.

So, when I left the family business to go into the music business, I found myself drawn to Austin for the music scene, but deep down, I was going for the BBQ. Often, I would not even wait until I got to Austin. I would stop at one of the many roadside portable BBQ smokers and buy whatever they were selling at that time. My favorite was the mesquite grilled, pulled pork BBQ sandwich with the best sauces anywhere. I don't care where you go in Texas, their sauces are basically the same ketchup based sweet sauce, or sometimes mustard based, It really matters not, it's the best you can get!

I would consider myself an expert on Austin's BBQ scene for two reasons. First, I love the smoked flavor BBQ that comes out of that region, I talking about real smoked flavor. Whether it's smoked with hickory, mesquite, apple or oak, it matters not, it's all good to me. Second, I have eaten at most of the BBQ joints in Austin over the past 30 years. I do have my preferences as to pork over beef, ribs over brisket but I really do like it all. I have compiled a list of my top five favorite BBQ restaurants, as hard as that was to do. I hope it will give my readers a good overall picture of the diverse BBQ scene in Austin. There are several that I could take replace on this list and I can assure you, many local Austonians, would agree with the replacement as well.