Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [228]
The lunch counter dates back to 1938, and although this new location is in a modern strip of stores around the corner from the original, the inside looks ancient, especially the booths upholstered in out-of-date, white-piped green leather. While there is a full menu including the likes of smothered pork chops, chicken-fried steak, mustard greens, and candied yams (as well as the Dixie favorite, pimiento cheese sandwiches), the Avalon is known for consummate lunch-counter hamburgers. They are modest-size, just thick enough that a hint of pink remains in the center, and their crusty outsides glisten with oil from the griddle. The configuration is deluxe, meaning fully dressed with tomato, lettuce, pickle, onion, mustard, and mayonnaise. The bun has been butter-toasted crisp on the inside but is ineffably soft outside. Burgers are available with American cheese, of course, as well as with Swiss, and their possible companions include French fries, chili fries, chili cheese fries, wet fries (topped with brown or cream gravy), and onion rings.
Avalon is one of our favorite Houston breakfast spots, mostly because it serves elegant, small-tread waffles, all the better to hold countless pools of swirled-together syrup and melted butter. Not-to-be missed beverages include vibrant squeezed-to-order lemonade and handsome milkshakes served in the silvery mixing container.
Beans ’N’ Things
1700 Amarillo Blvd. E
806–373–7383
Amarillo, TX
BLD | $
We came across Beans ’N’ Things a few decades ago when it was run by Wiley Alexander, a marine whose no-nonsense personality dominated the barbecue parlor. Mr. Alexander is gone, but this Amarillo lunchroom is still a fine stop for plates of hickory-smoked brisket with sides of pinto beans and coleslaw. Two sauces are available—hot and mild; beer is the preferred beverage.
It’s good barbecue, but a recent visit reminded us that Amarillo is also a significant Fritos pie place. Beans ’N’ Things’ version is a Southwest classic, heaped with cheese that melts into the meat, which softens the chips directly underneath.
Beans ’N’ Things opens at 7:00 A.M., so if you’re blasting along old Route 66 and need a quick breakfast, it’s a good place to stop for egg-centered burritos.
Black’s Barbecue
215 N. Main St.
512–398–2712
Lockhart, TX
LD | $
Most barbecue restaurants sell little more than meat, bread, and beans, but at Black’s, you can stroll through the cafeteria line and choose hardboiled eggs stuck on toothpicks, little garden salads in bowls, and fruit cobbler for dessert. You can even have the man behind the counter put your meat into a sandwich and your sandwich on a plate—a “deluxe” presentation unheard of in more traditional barbecues where meat is sold by the pound and accompanied by a stack of white bread or saltine crackers. Furthermore, Black’s dining room actually has décor—another smoke-pit oddity—in the form of game trophies and pictures of the high-school football team on its knotty-pine walls.
All these luxuries, nice though they may be, have no bearing on the superiority of Black’s pork ribs, the meat of which pulls from the bone in weighty strips, sausage rings that burst with flavor, and brisket slices bisected by an ethereal ribbon of translucent fat that leeches succulence into every smoky fiber of the meat. Black’s has been one of Lockhart’s great smokehouses since 1932, and if you want to know why Texas barbecue inspires rapture, here is a place that will make you understand.
Black’s will ship ribs overnight to most places in the United States. Although the cost of sending them is nearly as much as the ribs themselves, this is a good emergency source to know about when the craving for great barbecue strikes.
Blanco Bowling