The smoke gets you before the building does. Turn onto Springdale Road in East Austin on a weekend morning and it’s already in the air, oak and rendered fat drifting out over the parking lot before the line even comes into view. That smell has hung over this part of the city since 2012, first out of a trailer parked in a lot on Rosewood Avenue, now out of a building that used to be a church.
Tom Micklethwait started Micklethwait Craft Meats the way a lot of Austin’s better barbecue names got their start: out of a truck, with nothing but a smoker and a stubborn commitment to making everything from scratch. He served his first plate in December 2012. Twelve years later, the operation moved two miles east into a converted church, with indoor seating now and a big outdoor dining area under native pecan trees. The truck’s gone. What it was actually selling never really changed.
The reason people made the drive in the first place still holds up. The brisket comes out sliced clean, the fat rendered soft enough to fall apart under a fork, with a smoke ring that tells you the pit crew knew exactly what they were doing. The pork ribs and the Saturday-only beef ribs carry a heavy bark that makes a mess of the paper underneath. The Tex-Czech sausage snaps the second a tooth gets through the casing, and the kitchen keeps rotating seasonal versions through — a Thai chili one has been showing up recently — which says the place isn’t just running the same four items on autopilot.
The sides do something most barbecue joints don’t bother trying. Jalapeño cheese grits sit next to smoked meat in a way that shouldn’t work on paper and does anyway. The potato salad leans on cider vinegar instead of the usual mayo-heavy sweetness, and the mac and cheese is built on white cheese rather than the standard orange, a small choice that changes the whole dish. Even the pickles and the bread are made in-house, something that barely registers until the first bite makes clear none of it came out of a bag.
Dessert is where the kitchen loosens up a little. Banana pudding closes out most trays, but the homemade moon pies and the chili frito pies are what regulars order specifically to catch first-timers off guard.
The Michelin Guide gave Micklethwait a Bib Gourmand in its first Texas selection, which is about as official as recognition gets for a place that never needed the validation to draw a line out the door. Police officers, families with kids, and Austin’s more dressed-up crowd all end up standing in the same line here on a Saturday, which says more about the food than any award could.
The new building has high ceilings and real light coming through, things a trailer never had room for. But the address was never really the point. The smoker’s still doing the same work it’s always done. There’s just somewhere better to sit while it finishes.
