Even though the old restaurant won't be closing, and even though the beef shoulder at the new restaurant will presumably taste the same, the move unsettles people here, as if the state's borders had shifted in the night. Numbers reflect the emotions barbecue provokes. The state hosts over 200 separate barbecue competitions, more than the rest of the nation combined, judged by seven different official state panels, compared with three in the rest of the country. 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.