A Sneak Peek at Lynyrd Skynyrd Restaurant Excalibur

A Sneak Peek at Lynyrd Skynyrd Restaurant

Brisket

Yesterday, I got a sneak peak at the new Lynyrd Skynyrd BBQ and Beer, opening Thursday at the Excalibur. The restaurant has already gotten terrific advance publicity with a notice in the New York Times, perhaps because pit master Keith Schmidt, who owns Kreuz Market in Lockhart, TX, also has a barbecue joint in the Apple.

Homemade Sausage

Partners Michael Frey and Craig Gilbert traveled to barbecue places around the country to taste. In the end, it was about Schmidt. His ‘cue has a simple salt, pepper and cayenne rub, and is cooked low and slow over post oak, a hardwood with smoky flavors that impart a distinctive aroma impossible to describe. Don’t bother looking for the sauce. They don’t use any. The meats are spectacular.

ribs

Perhaps my favorite is a sausage that Schmidt makes from a recipe he inherited, grainy, juicy and delicious. There’s a second sausage with jalapeno and cheese in the recipe, with a subtle but firm kick to the finish. Have one of the house beers on tap, and you’ve got yourself a real meal, boy. Don’t stop there.

Pork ribs and loin are also excellent, and so is the brisket, which eschews cumin, the traditional Texas spice, so often the defining characteristic of barbecue in that state. This version is crusty on the outside, yielding on the inside, spurting juice. Who could dispute that this is the best brisket in the city? No one I know. I also tasted Prime rib (terrific) and chicken (barbecued chicken is rarely terrific-this one is fine, but the skin becomes rubbery during the smoking process, and can’t compete with a good rotisserie bird.) Side dishes, which I didn’t taste since the restaurant had not opened, will include three types of Cole slaw, mac n’ cheese, collard greens, a corn muffin made from a secret recipe, and several others. There’ll be sweet potato pie on the dessert menu for sure. But food won’t be the only draw here.

The restaurant is cutting costs, a trend I’m predicting for 2012, by cleverly limiting service. There are no food servers, per se. You’ll serve yourself from a carving line. But a team of sexy female bartenders double as entertainers, doing choreographed dance routines on the restaurant’s large stage, so look for a rowdy, boisterous evening when you come to eat here.

It’s something I personally am willing to overlook for ‘cue this good.

Lynyrd Skynyrd BBQ and Beer. Inside the Excalibur. Opens Thursday, Dec. 1st.

editor’s note: Lockhart Texas is known as the BBQ Capital of Texas. If you are ever in Austin, take the short trip outside of town and check it out. There, in a small town, you will find Blacks, Kreuz, Smittys and Chisholm Trail (most of them dating back over a century, with Chisholm being the newcomer at 30 odd-years in age). My favorite is Smitty’s Market; Kreuz might have won if they didn’t have a newer building. Park in the back and head around the front, where you will enter, as my Texan friend puts it, the Holy Tabernacle of Barbecue, a long narrow hallway with long wooden tables attached to the walls and aeons of smoke staining the walls, tendrils of brown dust hanging from the ceiling. The tables were communal at one point, with a hole in the wood where a knife was secured for customers to use. Pay inside but skip the air conditioned interior, which has little character. The majority of the Central Texas joints use open pit barbecuing, where the wood fire is open and smoke and indirect heat controlled. The service, for the most part, is direct from the grill and the pitmaster- which is similar to the cost cutting measures Max mentioned above.

I grew up in the South. Lynyrd Skynyrd were the source of most of the Southern Pride we felt in our youth. Free Bird had more airplay on the radio than Stairway to Heaven. Ronnie van Zant and the boys hailed from Jacksonville, Florida. Skynyrd were the stuff of legend, honing their craft in the Hell House, a small shack on the outskirts of town. The plane crash during their Street Survivors tour in 1977 essentially killed the rise of the band and, perhaps, the hope of Southern Rock entering and influencing mainstream radio. The Hell House burned some years later. The interior of the restaurant supposedly has a Hell House theme. I’m assuming most of y’all think Southern BBQ is Southern BBQ; this is Texas BBQ. Keith Schmidt, who I am assuming is Rick’s son (fourth generation?) knows what he is doing, and the place is more than likely worth a stop in any traveler’s logbook, especially if you have never experienced the epiphany of a proper Central Texas BBQ joint.

And Max, it’s spelled Lynyrd Skynyrd, (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-’nérd ‘Skin-’nérd).

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