Black’s was disappointing from the first impression. No pit room and the entrance was a cafeteria line of cold salads (that look like they’ve been there a really, really long time). Then they made the ultimate mistake…they gave us forks! This was also the first place that looked like a ‘restaurant’, and not a ‘community hall’. A clammy atmosphere of dread began to envelope us. So we were already doubtful that they would be worthy of what little room we had left in our stomachs, even before we took our first bite. But a mission is a mission, so there we found ourselves staring down another big pile of meat.
The brisket was pedestrian. No crust (meaning no mopping), and cooked at too high a temp for too short a time, giving it a compacted, rubbery texture not unlike mozzarella cheese. Pleasing in your dairy product, not so much in your ‘Que. After one bite, Steven declared himself done and turned his attention to his Shiner Black beer, which he’d never seen.
The sausage was dry, mushy and overprocessed. Where is the gloriously intoxicating mouthful of exploding oil? Where are the cubes of melting suet that declaims loudly, “I am a hand-made artisan product!”? The fat had been overmixed into the meat via robo-coupe, resulting in a compact, grainy consistency reminiscent of seasoned sawdust. The ribs had the consistency of Smitty’s and City Market, but none of the flavor.
We poked at the largely untouched pile of meat, finished our beers and discussed how good we are getting at this. Somehow, this digressed into a discussion of reincarnation and whether there are an infinite number of souls and parallel universes…ah, tryptophans (or all the beers along the trail)…either way, good stuff.
All in all a sad, depressing experience, but one we were thankful for, as it served to gloriously punctuate how wonderful the previous places had been.
The rating: “Don’t sully your stomach with this cheap impostor’s trifling attempt to play with the Big Boys of Lockhart”.
No comments:
Post a Comment