I’d like to hear Iain Sinclair’s thoughts on the psychogeography of Texas. How important is barbecue?
I’m trying to be vegetarian but I took a one day lapse on a rare visit to Austin. My brother in law (and Radio Mary Executive Producer) Irl drove me to Lockhart, Texas for barbecue.
Some barbecue joints stretch back a hundred years and have a history worthy of the Borgias. In Lockhart, a family feud split Kreuz’s (which kept the name) and Smitty’s (which kept the building, off the town square).
The walls of Smitty’s are a deep purple-black, the closest thing in the natural world to the somber palette of the late Rothkos (in the Rothko Chapel in Houston). Nothing quite like the chiaroscuro of a 100 years of mesquite smoke.
The meat tradition of the town is that a hunk of smoked flesh is sliced to order on to butcher paper. The meat is served with slices of white bread. As a point of local pride there is no fork. Fingers, knife, meat.
We had barbecue at 3 places and I promised myself to never eat meat again (until my next trip back to Texas).
Smitty's Barbecue, Lockhart, Texas