Where to find barbecue every day, all day in Arlington: First, find somewhere to park
Fort Worth and Arlington have 50 restaurants open and serving turkey on Thanksgiving, but there’s only one place to get brisket.
True, you’ll have to wade through a football crowd.
But every day of the week, Arlington is the home of Texas’ most famous barbecue legacy.
Lockhart Smokehouse, inside Texas Live! at 1650 E. Randol Mill Road, is open for lunch and dinner every day. The brisket, pork ribs and original Kreuz Market sausage uphold the spirit of Lockhart, the city south of Austin famous for Central Texas-style barbecue.
The restaurant opens at 11 a.m. Thanksgiving and every day, although on Dallas Cowboys game days, parking isn’t easy.
But then, it’s easier to park at Lockhart Smokehouse most days than to fight the lines at Goldee’s, Hurtado or Zavala’s, all nearby barbecue restaurants ranked on the Texas Monthly Top 50 list.
Lockhart Smokehouse rated in the “second 50” based on judging at a Plano location.
“We say we were Number 51 on the Top 50 list,” said Jill Bergus. She’s a granddaughter of a 40-year pit boss at Kreuz, one of four legendary barbecue restaurants in the city of Lockhart. “We are all going to claim we were Number 51 tied.”
Lockhart Smokehouse opened two years ago along with Texas Live! and went through staffing and consistency problems, along with the pandemic.
It’s not surprising when a barbecue restaurant that’s open 67 hours a week serves something that’s not perfect. After all, some of the Top 50 barbecue restaurants are barely open seven hours a week.
But Lockhart continues to serve Central Texas-style brisket, old-fashioned shoulder clod (which was “barbecue” until the 1960s switch to brisket), ribs, chicken and turkey, plus specials such as prime rib, pork chops, smoked salmon and burnt ends.
The restaurant got a boost when the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger name-dropped the Dallas location during a Nov. 2 concert.
“We assume somebody told him, ‘Hey — here’s a place to check out,’ “ Bergus said.
She asked staffers if Jagger had actually come in.
“But asking millennials if they know Mick Jagger does not always yield the responses you would think,” she said with a laugh.
The Kreuz and Lockhart legacies are the most storied in Texas barbecue, along with Louie Mueller’s barbecue palace in Taylor.
At the old Kreuz Market, customers stood in a long line to get to a fire pit, where they were handed slices of brisket on brown butcher paper with white bread.
If you needed a knife — which wasn’t often — the few in the dining room were shared, all kept dangling from a chain at the end of each long table.
There were no other utensils. And there was no sauce. Just meat and bread, which could become a glove to pick up slices.
Bergus had married and was living in New York when she saw a regular Texas visitor open a Garment District restaurant serving Central Texas-style barbecue.
“We figured — surely if this can work in New York City, Dallas can do this,” she said.
So her family started the first Lockhart at 400 W. Davis St. in Oak Cliff, where patrons raised eating Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse barbecue quickly insisted on both utensils and sauce.
When Aaron Franklin launched the Austin barbecue scene at Franklin’s, Lockhart was ready in Dallas.
“We were very lucky to hit on the wave,” she said
The restaurant was one of the first barbecue joints with upgraded side dishes such as blue-cheese slaw, brisket deviled eggs and spicy macaroni-and-cheese.
“We all do something different,” Bergus said.
Lockhart is open daily and also sends barbecue to your house locally through delivery services and nationally through Goldbelly.com; 817-769-1747, lockhartsmokehouse.com.
