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March 11, 2007
Times Reporter Dares to Buy Sliced Brisket
I've been thinking about this New York Times article since it came out a few days ago -- an article on the barbecue craze in New York and whether the barbecue there meets Texas standards, or has to.
But that part's not what I'm thinking about.
What I'm thinking about is this line describing Kreuz Market, the legendary barbecue joint thirty down the road from here (page 3 of the article, fifth paragraph from the bottom):
A friend related a story of visiting Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Tex., one of the high holy shrines of Texas barbecue. He tried to describe the vibe in the room while he was eating: a low, throbbing, violent, ready-to-rumble hum that he felt and felt part of.
Well, gosh dang. I've been to Kreuz Market numerous times, some of them with my 65ish mother-in-law, and it's about as violent and ready-to-rumble as the local supermarket. It's a big, multi-room place with almost no decor, and you wait in line to order your meat from a counter in front of a smoky pit, and it's sliced and weighed and wrapped by polite, quiet Mexican experts, and you pick up a sampling of the minimal side dishes, maybe a tomato or an avocado and some jalapenos and pickles and onions, and you sit with your family at a wood-stained formica table, eating off butcher paper and wiping your hands and mouth with paper towels from a roll on a spindle. There are kids and parents and elderly couples and young couples, black and brown and white people, and maybe some groups of workers breaking for lunch or a solitary worker at a small table thinking about his relatives on the other side of the border. (Was he the one the reporter thought was about to kill someone?) Nobody is starting anything. Nobody is looking sideways at anyone. They're just a bunch of ordinary Texans. But they've got the Times writer all aflutter.
You are not a simmering street fighter or an in-the-know sophisticate by virtue of buying a slab of pork ribs in a place listed in every guidebook, in a town where you don't have to look before you cross the street....
One wonders if the writer would have the guts to use the same Ready To Rumble lingo when describing Flints or Everette & Jones in Oakland.
Probably not.
