When I booked my trip to Austin, a visit to Franklin BBQ seemed both like a must and a very daunting task. For those that aren’t aware, this is a place where people start lining up at 8am when the restaurant doesn’t open until 11am. There is even a twitter account devoted to the length of the line throughout the morning. Because of all of this, I grappled with whether it was really worth it…but I decided I had to see what the hype was all about!

10am was a realistic arrival time for me, and I knew I would just have to deal with whatever sort of line had formed to that point. When I arrived, the line was out the door, under the building and through to the end of the parking lot. The thing is though, I had no reference point to understand whether or not this was better or worse than usual. After 10 minutes in line a Franklin employee worked her way through the crowd, taking preliminary orders and letting everyone know how long they’d probably be in line and what might be sold out by the time you got to the front (a really nice touch, I thought). Apparently I was looking at a 2pm eat time (yes, nearly 4 hours) and by then they would most likely be sold out of Ribs and Turkey (which normally I would never think to get but it’s supposed to be great here). Brisket is the thing everyone raves about here though, so despite not being able to get ribs I was in it for the long haul.

Part of the experience of the Franklin line is chatting up those in front of you. You can see from the pictures, that some people bring lawn chairs, others books and even their computers to wait it out. I was in line alone, with my Kindle in hand, but directly in front of me were 2 guys who I started talking to. We were pretty much convincing ourselves and each other that waiting until 2pm was the right choice. We witnessed a few people decide against the wait in favor of coming back another day (when the line would probably be just as bad), but we were staying, despite being a bit skeptical.

 

     

And then as we continued to chat, something amazing happened!! I had seen a couple at the picnic table just off of the parking lot, and they seemed to be eating something for a while now, but I didn’t think much of it. Well, about 20 minutes later I saw what I thought was them waving me over, but I didn’t know why they would be talking to me so I kind of ignored them. Eventually they came down to the line and told me, as well as the 2 guys in front of me, that they had preordered (preordering at this point requires advance notice of several months, a minimum order of 5lbs of meat, and must be picked up between 10-10:30am if you want to skip the line) and couldn’t come close to finishing all of the food- so did we want to give them a little bit of cash to take over where they had left off? They had brisket, ribs, pulled pork and a little bit of sausage…so we would get to try the ribs if we took the deal. What would you have done??

I had $11 cash but I was immediately willing to do this. The couple seemed like people I’d be friends with, and therefore I wasn’t worried about eating their food…plus, BBQ is easy to share because ribs are individual, brisket comes in slices, etc. The guys took a little more time to come around, but eventually we pooled our money together and gave the couple $50 total (they paid $130 originally). We took ourselves out of the line, sat down at the picnic table, finally exchanged names, and then dug in. We barely knew each other after only 20-30 minutes in line together, but this experience bonded us :). 

Now the most important question of all – was it worth it? For a 30 minute wait time and $11, YES! For a 4-hour wait, well, I don’t know if anything is worth that! The brisket was fantastic – both the fatty and the lean cuts melted in your mouth. The ribs were peppery with the meat falling off the bone, and so tasty that sauce wasn’t necessary. The pulled pork was good too, but didn’t stand out as being more than standard. There were two sauces that we got – one tangy and one coffee based. I was a fan of both, but the tangy seemed to be the favorite at the table…that is, when we even needed to use sauce.

We pretty much demolished all that had been left to us, and a long walk home was never more necessary! I wish I was able to get to another one of the much talked about BBQ spots in town, both for another experience and to be able to compare…but that will have to wait for my next trip to Texas!