Franklin BBQ

A part of my third life crisis is doing the things in Austin that I never got to do.  One of the biggest draws in Austin is to wait in line for Franlin BBQ.  They are closed on Mondays so I decided to wait in line on the next day that they were open, Tuesday.  I ended up getting into line at around 8:50am that morning.  There were some veterans and they said that that was the worst that they had ever seen the line.  After doing some exploring and some detective work, UT had let out the prior week and many grads were graduating and moving out of Austin to jobs.  They had the same idea as me and of the first 50 people in line, maybe 6 were over the age of 30.

The waiting in line begins.

There were several cool people around me and we chatted to pass the time.  Since I'm a bit anti-social, I also brought some stuff to do there as well.  However, once I got into the whiskey a bit, I didn't care about the work anymore.

What happens is that there are a couple of staff members managing the line.  One person gives expectations about what is left and how long the wait will be.  Another person comes by and actually takes the orders.  The orders are just estimates to give people an idea of what is available.  Whenever I placed my order, ribs and turkey were out so I put in an order for 1 pound of brisket, 1/2 pound of pulled pork, and 1/2 pound of sausage.

There was a bit of rain off and on, but nothing too heavy.  I was in my official Austin gear of shorts and flip flops, so I was a bit chilly at times.  I'd rather have this weather instead of sitting outside when it is sunny and 95*.

At 11am, they opened the front doors.  That doesn't mean that the line moved fast though.  It was nice to get under the awning, but this was the view for a very long time.

The staff at Franklin is great.  They were friendly, helpful, and nice.  They were also walking around selling beer, wine, and water while people waited.  I went through most of my whiskey and had an additional beer as well.  I have to get as many of the Texas brews as possible.  The line moved very, very slowly.  I think it took me about 2 hours to go from under the awning to actually inside the restaurant.  This allowed me plenty of time to take pictures like this.

At around 2pm, we were finally able to get inside.  Once again, I was so happy that it wasn't hot this day.  We could smell the delicious meat and smoke inside.  Franklin BBQ is all about the "Keep Austin Weird" mentality and sold mostly local beers instead.  Here is a picture of Blue Owl Brewing which is a great Austin brewery that specializes in sour beers.

Franklin BBQ started out as a food trailer just like many of the other Austin icons such as Torchy's Tacos, Gourdough's, and Odd Duck.  One of their signature things was this huge garden gnome in front of their trailer.  Now that they have a big time place, the gnome still has a presence.

At this point, we are almost ready to order.  Much to my surprise, they still had all the meat although they said that ribs and turkey were out.  It was close, but when I was ready to order, I got 1 pound of brisket, 1/2 pound of pulled pork, 1/2 pound of sausage, 1/2 pound of ribs, 1/2 pound of turkey, and 1 pint of all the sides.  Yes, this is a lot of food and I have no regrets for ordering this much.

Total with tip was about $80, but I'm not worried about it.  I enjoyed it a bit later and here are my thoughts.

The ribs were easily the best thing that I had.  They were fall off the bone tender.  Brisket was the 2nd best thing followed by the pulled pork.  There was a bit of a drop, but then the sausage was the 4th best and the turkey was the worst of the bunch.  Don't get me wrong; the turkey was good, but if you had to rank everything, I enjoyed the turkey the least.  It was smokey and seasoned, but just a bit on the dry side.  I actually enjoyed the turkey more the 2nd day once it had sat in the paper and was moistened up a bit by the other meats.  I also got 3 sauces: a light vinegar sauce for the pulled pork, a typical medium BBQ sauce for the brisket, and a dark coffee BBQ sauce.  I didn't like the dark sauce at all, but the others were damn good.  The sides were good as well with the pinto beans having some brisket in them, cole slaw with cream, and really mustardy potato salad.


Looking back, I'm glad that I went one time since this is one of the cool Austin things to do.  The food was phenomenal, don't get me wrong about that.  But was it worth a 6 hour wait?  That's debatable.  If you have an opportunity to go through the experience, I'd say go for it, but if you don't want to wait in line, there is plenty of great BBQ around Central Texas to enjoy.