Most Texas towns, no matter how small, have a joint. Definitions of barbecue vary around the country and according to where one exits Interstate 35 in Texas. Nuances abound and are taken seriously. Sauce can start fights. Sauce is a cover, Rick Schmidt insists, for poor meat.
Atmosphere plays a huge role in the business.
Customers flock to Lockhart from around the world to enter Kreuz down a long, dark, wooden hall, drawn into the back of the building by the sound of meat sizzling over stone pits. There, in a room ablaze with post-oak fires, lie slabs of pork chops, rings of sausage, and hunks of glistening shoulder. People buy by the pound, a ton or more on busy days. In a vast, cool room up front, diners sit on long benches beneath a portrait of Smitty and his two sons and eat their meat on crackers or between slices of white bread. The elder Schmidt bought the business in 1948 from the family of Charlie Kreuz, who had run it since the turn of the century.