The legendary Snow's pitmaster is still cooking barbecue for shipping, but the best joint in Texas has been closed to customers for a month.
Snow's BBQ
Plus: The barbecue pit so long it required an official highway escort.
The charming, historic property is an ideal base from which to enjoy the area’s top-notch barbecue.
Newcomer Brett’s Backyard Bar-B-Que was a close second in the battle for smoked-meat supremacy.
The massive Bartonville barbecue and steak restaurant uses too much seasoning and butter, but the pitmaster knows what he's doing.
In the first episode of 'Fire & Smoke,' Daniel Vaughn tells us the story of one of the most celebrated—and humble—pitmasters in Texas.
When it's on the menu at a barbecue joint, you'll want to order this underused cut. Trust us.
For the third time in four years, the prestigious restaurant and chef awards recognize a pitmaster.
Houston and Austin got the most nods, but the biggest surprise is that the revered Tootsie Tomanetz of Snow’s BBQ is up for Best Chef: Southwest!
It’s early morning and the air is not yet blistering, so you roll the car windows down. You turn off the highway onto a farm road and meander through pastures and farmland, anticipation growing with every mile. Thirty minutes later you arrive in the micropolis of Lexington (population 1,200) and…
This story about the amazing Tootsie Tomanetz originally ran in our October issue. We’re posting it here in its entirety along with a collection of photos from Wyatt McSpadden. He was assigned with capturing the essence of Tootsie for the story, which he did masterfully, but we could only run so…
On Saturdays Tootsie Tomanetz cooks barbecue the old-fashioned way for legions of loyal fans. That doesn’t mean she’ll ever give up her day job.
Tootsie Tomanetz has been cooking barbecue for fifty years, an art she didn’t start practicing professionally until she was in her thirties. When she began her career in Giddings, offset smokers weren’t nearly as popular as they are today. Then, barbecue was cooked directly over wood coals, and that’s the…
Not all briskets are created equal. That much is obvious to anyone who’s had a great one—or a bad one. Those experiences are easy to contrast, but what about when it’s not a question of good or bad? When it’s a matter of simply being different? I was struck by the variety…
Two weeks ago Cranky Frank’s Barbeque in Fredericksburg finally bit the bullet. They raised their prices for barbecue and posted a sign on the door explaining the change to their customers. Not two days later I received a question over Twitter with a photo of the sign.
“Line are overrated.” This is the conclusion of economist Tyler Cowen in a recent article where he shared some of his principles for finding good restaurants. For Cowen, standing in line is a conformist activity, and the presence of a line is a not a good indicator of the…
Every month we’ll bring you a profile of a photographer who has captured the people, the food and the spaces that make up the world of barbecue. Wyatt McSpadden – Austin, Texas I’ve been shooting pictures at BBQ places around Texas for better than 25 years. I’ve had the…
Pitmaster: Snow’s BBQ; opened in 2003. Age: 78 Smoker: A steel smoker with an offset firebox for briskets, a direct heat pit for everything else. Wood: Post Oak Tootsie took her lunch break to talk with me while working her day job with the Giddings school district. After Texas Monthly named Snow’s BBQ…
Kerry Bexley (center) at the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival Owner/Pitmaster: Snow’s BBQ; opened in 2003. Age: 46 Smoker: A steel smoker with an offset firebox for briskets, a direct heat pit for everything else. Wood: Post Oak It was Friday afternoon and Kerry was getting ready to start the…
For some in the small town of Lexington (population roughly 1,200), Saturdays are as holy as Sundays. It’s hard to miss these devotees. They congregate at the end of Main Street, within view of some grain elevators dressed in a gingham rust—a line of farmhands, ranchers, well-off weekenders, and groggy…
After driving three hours from Dallas to arrive in Lexington at nine in the morning, it’s hard not to suffer some validation bias no matter what you sink your teeth into. But it helps when it’s perfectly smoked and silky tender brisket. I invited a friend on a…
A small wood-frame restaurant, open only on Saturdays and only from eight in the morning until whenever the meat runs out, usually around noon, Snow’s is remarkable not only for the quality of its ’cue—“outlandishly tender brisket, fall-apart-delicious chicken”—but for the unlikeliness of its story. The genius behind this meat…