4 hours in line for some BBQ, is it really worth it?

I’m gonna give you the answer straight away. Yes, as a matter of fact it can actually be worth it, but don’t get me wrong, it took me all of those four hours to realize it too.

If you continue to follow our posts or have visited our home turf, nevergrowupmag.com, you’ll soon notice that we’re nerds when it comes to food. When I say nerds, I really mean nerds. First time we were in New York, the only thing plotted out on my (physical) map were restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries and other places where you can get good food, all color-coded by type of place, of course. So when we set out for a new day, we have a complete plan for where we’ll have breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon coffee, etc. yeah you probably get the picture. All places are of course evaluated and prioritized before we leave home ground to ensure we only eat at places that looks interesting and that are highly regarded.

During our American Southwest road trip, we arrived in Austin on a Monday afternoon and were leaving on Wednesday morning. That meant we, for all practical reasons, had one day in Austin and for the sake of drama I’m repeating, ONE day in Austin to fully experience the capital of Texas and live music. Now I must admit that one of our missions when driving through Texas was of course to eat as much BBQ as possible, but when Anders suggests we go to the most hyped up place of them all and queue for hours I wasn’t really that psyched.

I’m still a nice wife though and agreed to start our morning with the 40-minute walk to Franklin Barbecue from South Congress. During these 40 minutes we more or less convinced ourselves that this was just an ordinary Tuesday, no holiday or spring break, just Tuesday, and that such an ordinary Tuesday could not possibly mean that many other foodies would want to queue for hours to get some meat.

Well it turned to be more food geeks than us out there and since we arrived at 9am we ended up far back in the queue. So far back the things started to be sold out by the time we actually reached the counter.

So, I wasn’t overly excited to begin with going on this adventure and you can probably imagine that four very slow hours in a line doesn’t really help either. I had my heart set out for the pulled pork so my mood dampened even more when we finally actually got to go into the building only to be reached by the news that pulled pork was among the items sold out. I was then “forced” to eat a brisket sandwich and boy am I happy about that. It was the juiciest, softest and most flavorful piece of meat I’ve had and most definitely worth the wait! It’s hard to describe what makes it so special unless you’ve tasted something similar, and in most parts of the world there’s simply nothing that comes close to the kind of meat alchemy that good american barbecue produces. Franklin definitely lives up to the hype and the four hours in line is just the ticket to admission!

For more on Franklin Barbecue, read the full Franklin Barbecue restaurant review.

/Jessica