Smitty's Market

“Walk through the fire to get to the meat.”

Smitty's Market occupies the original Kreuz Market building on Commerce Street in Lockhart, home to brick pits that have been burning since the early 1900s. The arrival is the most dramatic in Texas barbecue: you enter through the pit room itself, walking past open fire and swirling smoke before you ever reach the counter to order meat sliced to order. The experience is primal, and the food lives up to the theater. The pork chops, smoked over post oak, are among the best smoked cuts in the state — thick, juicy, and deeply flavored. Brisket comes with a hard, smoke-blackened bark, and the sausage carries the coarse, peppery snap this building has produced for over a century. The heat hits you at the door and the smoke fills your lungs before you taste a thing; by the time you sit, you've already earned the meal.