The new joint in downtown Austin: Blue Ribbon BBQ
By pure luck we heard that there was a new BBQ joint in downtown Austin called Blue Ribbon BBQ. Since most of the EatsBBQ crew works in the area that’s awesome for us. It’s actually just across the street Mike’s office, and few blocks away from mine. It’s in the bottom of the Frost Tower (in the old WeFuse space) on 4th Street.
When you walk in it’s not your typical BBQ place. There aren’t pits anywhere to be found. Before you lose total interest, know that they actually smoke the meat in Taylor, TX. So there is some cred there, just not the full allotment. It looks like a restaurant that’s in an office complex. Walls are clean and untarnished by smoke, there are windows and they let a lot of light in, and their are pictures of BBQ pits, pitmasters, and meat on the walls. Very atypical of the every other BBQ place you’ve seen.
Even with the decor not what I was used to, I bellied up to the counter and placed my order. 2 meat plate with sausage and brisket, sweet corn, and potato salad. The rest of crew ordered and I think we got every kind of meat they had available. So there was a sampling of everything. One of the bright spots of day was the serving size. It was very large. In the downtown area you just get accustomed to paying a lot or small serving sizes. So nice surprise.
Photos by Ray Pierce - click on the images to go to the Flickr set
The brisket was well smoked and had a good flavor. It wasn’t as tender as I would have liked, but not bad none the less. It seemed to be a pretty lean cut of meat, and I suppose that is what lead to it. The sausage was a medium ground packed sausage. It was well above average. Not as good as Meyer’s sausage, but good. They serve it with a sweet BBQ sauce. Not as sweet as the Salt Lick though. From trying the other guys plates, we also found out that they do a mean smoked turkey. Next time that I go I will probably order it.
As for the sides, they had large serving sizes as well. The corn that I had was very good and seemed pretty fresh. The potato salad wasn’t as good as I was hoping for. It was like Rudy’s Potato salad, just not as good.
I was very pleased with the results of the lunch. Especially since it wasn’t overly expensive either. I spent under $15 for all of that and was more than I should have eaten. It’s not got the history of some of the out lying BBQ joints, but it puts up a decent fight. So in my opinion this was a very good value and would recommend it for anyone in the downtown area.
Lambert’s BBQ Brisket Sandwich
I had a craving for BBQ today and with my new office location Lambert’s is just a couple of blocks away. I was in the mood for a BBQ Sandwich so that’s what I ordered along with my side of Mac and Cheese. Sorry no pictures, only had the iPhone with me and not a lot of light in there.
Lambert’s is one of those places that serves cornbread before the meal. They are served as little mini-muffin size with real butter. They are a jalapeno based cornbread with pieces of real corn in them. They are quite tasty. The only problem is that they are served cold. The butter doesn’t melt, and a lot the goodness is lost in my opinion.
On the main attraction though. I’ve been to Lambert’s several times before, but this is the first time that I’ve actually ordered something other than the traditional brisket and pulled pork plate I always lean towards. The plate was called the BBQ Beef Chopped Brisket Sandwich. Sounds like a tasty mouthful. The bun was I believe your standard fare sesame seed bun, but they went to the effort of toasting it, which was a nice surprise. There was a pretty sizable quantity of meat on the sandwich as well. It was an $8 sandwich, the cheapest thing on the menu if I recall correctly. But that’s what I wanted. The meats wasn’t overly saucy, and it was a fairly large cut chopped brisket. Not the fine ground stuff a lot of places server. This was real sliced brisket that had been chopped. It was topped off with a bit of finely chopped relish.
The sandwich had a great flavor and great consistency. There was one piece in the sandwich that wasn’t cut enough to get in one bite and ended up on the plate. Lambert’s has a hot sauce on every table that is quite tasty, it’s a little more vinegar based than the regular sauce but is still a thick sauce. If you want add a bit of spice to your meat I would highly recommend it, it’s not going to “burn” you, but it just adds a little something extra. So I put a generous helping of it on the meat and applied the top half of the bun. I do like to add some regular sauce to pretty much each bite. Lambert’s sauce is well done. Not too sweet, not vinegary, and not to peppery.
If you like Mac and Cheese order it, it’s for you. There is plenty of melted cheese in the dish, and a nice crusted American cheese layer on top. I almost felt that it was too cheesy if there can be such a thing. I think a bit of gratin would have been nice, but it stands up well on it’s own.
The only draw back to coming here at lunch is the price. Today’s adventure was reasonably affordable for downtown, but if I order what I normally do it would have been well over $20. As it was with tip and everything it was about $14. I thought it was a pretty good value based quality and quantity of food that I got. I definitely recommend it to people, but beware that you will be paying downtown prices for BBQ. It’s well executed, and quite tasty.
