City Market - Luling, TX

Posted by Michael Stern on January 15, 2009

Luling has two great claims to culinary fame: the annual watermelon thump, a festival presided over by that year’s Watermelon Queen, and the City Market, which is one of the defining barbecue parlors of the Southwest. The meats to eat are succulent pork ribs, beef brisket, and beef sausage rings with chewy skin and coarse-chopped filling.

Unlike many of the great, rough-around-the-edges barbecue restaurants in this region, the City Market is actually comfortable, including nice tables, clean tile floors, and a super air-conditioning system that keeps the dining room cool.

Despite such amenities, you still fetch your meat the old-fashioned way of the traditional Texas pit. At the back of the dining room a swinging door leads into a shadowy, cave-like chamber illuminated by the glow of burning logs in pits underneath the iron ovens where the meat imbibes the flavor of wood smoke. This is the pit, and here, in heat that feels something like a fireplace gone amok, the pit men take your order, cut and section the amount of meat you want, and assemble everything on a big sheet of pink butcher paper. They gather the edges of the paper together so it becomes a boat-like container that serves as both carrying device and eating surface. Once you get your paper-wrapped order of meat, you leave the pit and carry it back into the comfy pine-paneled dining room.

Eat your meat plain or sauced. While sauce is generally not part of the equation of great barbecue in Texas, City Market does make significant barbecue sauce – a spice-speckled, dark orange emulsion that is so coveted by customers that signs on the wall above every booth implore “Please Leave Sauce Bottles on Tables.” One-serving Styrofoam sauce containers are available to go for forty cents apiece; if you need more, the management finds a clean empty jar, fills it, and charges you accordingly.

Overall: Worth driving from anyplace

17 out of 17 people found the review helpful. Was it helpful to you?

Reviewers "Must Eats" List

sausage ($8.00)

brisket ($10.00)

mutton ($8.00)

"Sausage rings, brisket, and ribs: life is good at the City Market!"
Michael Stern

"Inside the pit room, you watch as your brisket and sausages are severed to order."
Michael Stern

"This close view of a City Market sausage ring shows how succulent it is packed inside its natural casing: ready to burst!"
Michael Stern

"Not pretty, but pure pleasure for tastebuds, this assortment of Luling City Market meats includes brisket, mutton, and sausage. Saltines, jalapeno peppers, and onions are for occasional tastebud-diversion. And of course there is no plate: pink butcher paper serves as a means of carrying food from the pit, a tray/platter, and a means of gathering all your bones and scraps at the end of the meal to discard them."
Michael Stern

"Pickles are like peppers on the barbecue tray: a good way to slap tastebuds awake when lulled into a happy stupor by a few pounds of delicious meat. The bread helps tamp down fires ignited by hot sauce."
Michael Stern

"Service is most informal. Here's our carry-it-yourself tray of beverages, beans, sauce, bread, and pickles."
Michael Stern

"Brisket, sausage, onion, white bread, and Big Red!"
jtoops

"This is a shot of the staff inside City Market in Luling."
jtoops

"One of the staff at the City Market pauses while sorting beans at a restaurant table."
Michael Stern

"If you insist on utensils, there's a box of them from which you can grab a flimsy plastic knife. It barely has the strength to sever the casing of a sausage. A good set of teeth in your mouth works better."
Michael Stern

"An inauspicious location for a great Texas eat-place"
Michael Stern