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| Lockhart Smokehouse pitmaster Will Fleischman. (Photo ©Daniel Goncalves/Fotobia.com) |
A while back, after the lunch rush and long before dinner, I was sipping a beer and talking to Will Fleischman, the pitmaster-philosopher at Lockhart Smokehouse in Dallas.
Is the Texas barbecue bubble going to burst? I asked. Will the culinary accolades from around the country and the long lines of customers here eventually go away?
Fleischman acknowledged that the frenzy for Texas barbecue might someday cool. But, he said, he was going to ride the wave of popularity as far as it goes. He had been employed at Lockhart since it opened in 2011. From his point of view, he said, he hadn't worked a day the whole time. It was fun.
There's no argument that Texas barbecue is hot. We have VIP tastings, $150-a-head custom bus tours of top Texas joints, and long lines of regular barbecue lovers happily queuing up for hours just to get served.
I know all that. You could argue that the Posse is just a byproduct of the Texas barbecue resurgence.
But the true extent of this phenomenon didn't become entirely clear to me until this past week.
