Calling all bacon-burger lovers: P. Terry’s is about to make your dreams come true. The megapopular Austin burger joint is introducing applewood-smoked bacon on its menu at its new location in The Village at Westlake shopping center. This new location will be P. Terry’s largest, measuring 3,500 square feet with a double drive-thru.

“This is a big deal for us,” Patrick Terry, owner of P. Terry’s, says. “We’ve been saying no for seven years. We’ve have probably said no ten-thousand times because we couldn’t find a bacon that fit who we are and what we are committed to. We didn’t want the kitchen to smell like bacon and we didn’t want to slow ourselves down. People like us because we’re fast and we didn’t want to sacrifice that experience.”

P. Terry's Cheeseburger with Bacon. Photo taken by Perry Hall.

Yet when Terry finally tracked down a Texas bacon that embodied the quality and flavor that P. Terry’s demands, he decided it was time to stick that thick applewood-smoked meat on the menu. “We’re going to start it at the Westlake location. We need to make sure we’ve got it down and from there we will expand it into the other stores over the next two to three months.”

P. Terry's Caramel Shake. Photo taken by Perry Hall.

Another item making its way on to the permanent menu is the caramel milkshake, which P. Terry’s has featured as a limited menu item in the past. ” We had a lot of people that got upset when we took it away,” Terry says. “The caramel milkshake is really subtle. You don’t drink it and go, ‘Oh my gosh, that is too much caramel!’ It’s got real appeal.” The Westlake location makes its grand opening at 7 a.m. on Friday, June 1. Terry says he is planning to open another P. Terry’s location somewhere in North Austin in the near future.

Tagged: austin, burger, Layne Lynch, P. Terry's

Good Samaritan that you are, if you saw a school bus on the side of the road with smoke billowing from its roof, you’d probably call 911. Now, it might seem counterintuitive, but don’t dial those digits. Pull over, whip out your wallet, and prepare for some of the best barbecue you’ve ever had, from Old School BBQ and Grill.

We ordered a bit of brisket but were overwhelmed with the enormous pile of melt-in-your-mouth meat and the accompanying velvety fat that arrived. With just the touch of a plastic fork, it fell into bite-size chunks, somehow both smoky and light. Kreuz Market claims their meat doesn’t need sauce, but this beef put theirs to shame. That’s not to say the sauce wasn’t worth it, though. The unusually sweet stuff, with caramelized red onions basking inside, only heightened our bliss. Helping, too, were the piles and piles of thick, hand-cut french fries doused with salt and whole peppercorns.

Sadly, the famous mac-and-cheese wedge and homemade potato salad were both off the menu due to the salmonella egg scare. But like Anthony Bourdain and visitors from Men’s Health magazine, we didn’t go hungry. Our generous heap of jalapeño sausage was spicy, salty, and supplemented with white bread, thick-cut pickles, and sliced red onions.

And don’t get me started on the steak burger, a towering beef patty with caramelized onions, plenty of pickles, ripe tomatoes, and yellow cheese (“yo’ant cheese awn it get it free” according to the menu) piled on a fluffy, grilled bun. The monstrosity dripped not with grease but with goodness.

“It’s a covenant,” says co-owner Dan Parrott, a large man sporting an apron and a yellow bandanna. “The shit we serve goes straight into your body.” Indeed. Cursing comes as naturally as cooking for Parrott, who has worked in the food industry for decades (most recently as a conceptual consultant in L.A.). He takes care in choosing his ingredients, many of which are local, such as the grass-fed Angus he uses for his brisket and burgers. But customers aren’t the only ones he’s made a covenant with: He’s inseparable from Big Momma, his yellow school bus. Together they travel around Austin (find them on Twitter), starting fires, cursing like crazy, and serving badass barbecue.

Tagged: barbecue, brisket, burger, school bus, Trailer Thursday