Kreuz Market sits in Lockhart, a town of roughly 15,000 people about thirty minutes southeast of Austin that has somehow earned the unofficial title of Barbecue Capital of Texas. The market’s own history stretches back to 1875, when Jesse Swearingen opened the town’s first meat market. Charles Kreuz Sr. bought it in 1900 and put his name on it, and by 1948 the business had passed to a longtime butcher named Edgar Schmidt, whom everyone called Smitty.
For decades under Smitty and later his sons, Kreuz Market did one thing and did it without apology: meat smoked over post oak, sliced and served on butcher paper, no sauce, no forks, no sides beyond crackers, pickles, and onions.
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