DINING REVIEW: Rudy's "Country Store" and Bar-B-Q does Texas-style barbecue masterfully right

Rudy’s “Country Store” and Bar-B-Q shouldn’t be seen as a theme restaurant as much as a museum restaurant.

The exhibit in this chain of 29 “stores,” almost all in Texas, is authentic Hill Country barbecue, reproduced in such minute detail that even Texas barbecue snobs give it a sauce-smeared thumbs up.

The massive restaurant, which can seat hundreds, has three locomotive-size smokers fueled entirely by pallets of oak trucked up from the hills of central Texas. The sooty perfume of smoldering hardwood pervades the cavernous dining area, which is designed to look like a community supper thrown together in a barn.

Long, cheap folding tables are lined with chairs of the same ilk. Diners spread out their eats on sheets of butcher paper on the red-check tablecloths. There are no plates. Don’t even ask for a salad. But there are endless napkins, slices of white bread and refills of sweet tea.

The masterpiece in this barbecue retrospective is the brisket. Whole briskets are slapped with handfuls of spicy dry rub, laced with onion and garlic powder and cayenne, until they appear cloaked in red velvet. They sit for a day in the cooler, soaking in the flavors, then go into the smoker.

What emerges 10 to 14 hours later is charred bat-wing black and penetrated with the incense of the oak. The fat cap on top has slowly melted down into the meat, carrying the spice rub with it, creating a complex, flavorful brisket that is never the slightest bit dry.

Each massive hunk of meat lands on the cutting board behind the counter with a heavy thump when you order, just as it would in a Hill Country barbecue shack, and a carver starts slicing.

Diners have a choice of ordering “moist brisket” from the fatty side or “lean brisket” from the leaner side ($5.89 for a half pound). There is a bit of unpredictably here. I’ve seen the moist absurdly fatty and the lean a tad dry, but I’ve also seen both hit my tray the picture of perfection — juicy and rich, with a smoke ring so thick and pink that it looks like lipstick. When Rudy’s does it right, and it usually does, this is by far the best brisket in town.

I’m not alone in this estimation. Rudy’s has hundreds of rabid followers in this town long before it had a store, and they packed the place as soon as it opened. There were so many cars out front that at first I thought the management had set up a Potemkin parking lot of employee vehicles to try to draw business. Then I saw the line inside — and there is almost always a line. Don’t worry, it moves fast.

A number of other delectable meats emerge from the smoker. The turkey breast ($5.69 for a half-pound), cloaked in a sage rub, is just as flavorful as the brisket without the fat. So is the lean, tender pork loin ($5.69 for a half-pound), though, since the pork cooks more quickly, it does not soak up as much smoke. The ribs, both spare ($4.59) and baby back ($6.49), are moist and flecked with the coarse pepper of the rub. Like every cut of meat, they are gloriously unsauced. Very good Texas-style, spicy barbecue sauce and milder “sissy” sauce wait on each table.

Beyond the meat, the star is the 1-pound baked potato, which is also smoked, then covered in cheese and chopped brisket ($1.69 for a small, $5.99 with meat.) It is sinfully heavy, but boy is it good.

Not everything lives up to the brisket. The pulled pork ($4.19) is slathered in a sweet mustard sauce that hides any nuance in the meat.

The sides suffer the typical barbecue-side blandness, with the added demerit that some of them (all of the deserts except the cobbler, the potato salad, the bean salad) are made off-site. You can taste the preference for shelf-life. The corn on the cob is just plain dismal — starchy and soggy and sad.

But other dalliances do just fine. Breakfast tacos ($1.50), served every day from 7 to 10 a.m., allow barbecue fiends to combine eggs, potatoes, cheese and that wonderfully potent chopped brisket with an alluringly tangy tomatillo salsa.

Theme chain restaurants like Rudy’s sometimes suffer from their own gimmicks. Here, the gimmick seems to be that there are no gimmicks, just Texas-style barbecue done right. That’s a theme I can get behind.

RUDY’S “COUNTRY STORE” AND BAR-B-Q

4 STARS out of 5Four out of five stars
(Best brisket in town)

Address: 315 S. 31st St.

Contact: 471-4120, rudys.com

Hours: 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; 7 a.m.-10:30 p.m Fridays-Saturdays

Entrees: $4.19-$8.99 (but could be more or less because everything is a la carte and sold by the pound.)

Vegetarian: Sides

Alcohol: Beer

Credit cards: Yes