Betty Zentner was working in a department store in 1974 when she was presented with the opportunity to open Zentner’s Daughter, her San Angelo restaurant. By then, the Zentner name was well known in West Texas because Betty's father, John Zentner (1899-1994), opened a number of popular steakhouses throughout the region. True to the Zentner family tradition, the restaurant primarily focuses on its steaks. The restaurant’s interior pays tribute to the Zentner legacy, with rooms named after Betty's relatives and walls adorned with paintings and pictures of family.
Read moreBlue Bonnet Cafe
This Marble Falls landmark originally opened on Main Street in 1929, and was moved to its current location on Highway 281 in 1946. Upon relocating, the restaurant failed once and changed ownership four times before John and Belinda Kemper bought it in 1981. The restaurant is widely known for its pies and southern comfort food. Although Blue Bonnet Cafe has undergone a few updates since the Kempers began running it, careful measures have been taken to preserve its Texas cafe mystique.
Read moreJoe T. Garcia’s
On July 4, 1935, Joe T. & Jessie Garcia opened Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant in part of their home in Fort Worth, Texas. Upon opening, the tiny house had a maximum seating capacity of sixteen. The Garcias served their famous enchiladas in the front room while they slowly expanded their home over the next few decades to accommodate more customers and their growing family. Today, the restaurant encompasses most of a city block and can serve around 2000 customers on the weekends.
Read moreWheatsville Co-op
Wheatsville Food Co-op is the longest established grocery cooperatives in Austin, opening in 1976. While it began as a small, cash-strapped venture depending on volunteers to run its store, the cooperative has grown into a respected member-owned business in its own right, grossing $14 million a year and enjoying over 10,000 members. Wheatsville employs a paid staff, and unlike some cooperatives that require members volunteer their time, it operates as a consumer cooperative, in which members buy shares in the business. Wheatsville’s success has depended on its hybridity: in order to satisfy a broad range of customers, it sells not only specialty, vegan, vegetarian, and natural and organic goods, but it also serves as a neighborhood grocery for daily shopping. In contrast, says General Manager Dan Gillotte, other food cooperatives’ mission is to supply goods that are strictly “natural” or organic; “most co-ops are more ‘pure,’…Wheatsville promotes local and organic, but we’re very responsive to our members in what we carry” (Dan Gillotte interview in Eat and Drink Austin Magazine
Read moreThird Coast Coffee Roasting Company
Interviewer: Anne Gessler
Location: Third Coast Coffee Roasting Company, 4402 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78745
This interview is a production of Foodways Texas
Freetail Brewing Company
Interviewer: Niko Tonks
Location: Freetail Brewing Company, 4035 N Loop 1604 W, Ste 105, San Antonio, TX
This interview is a production of Foodways Texas.
Live Oak Brewing Company
Interviewer: Niko Tonks
Location: Live Oak Brewing Company, Austin, Texas
This interview is a production of Foodways Texas.
Live Oak Brewing Company (audio file via Foodways Texas Archive at the Briscoe Center for American History).
Saint Arnold Brewing Company
Brock Wagner is the founder and brewer at Saint Arnold’s Brewing Company in Houston, Texas. Growing up in Cincinnati and then Brussels, Belgium, Wagner gained an appreciation for wine and beer which carried through his college days at Rice, where he was introduced to home brewing. After a stint in Investment Banking, Wagner realized he needed to follow his true passion, brewing. For more than twenty years Wagner had been creating an institution that Houston and the region is proud to call their own.
Read moreKreuz Market
As a child, Joe Sullivan ate at House Park Bar-B-Que and thought to himself that someday he wanted to own this restaurant or one just like it. In 1981, he fulfilled his childhood ambition by purchasing House Park, which sits near the Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where he was born and much of his family still lives. Sullivan cooks all of the restaurant’s meat himself, on the brick pit, which has been in place since 1943. Those wishing to try their first taste of House Park barbecue need to keep in mind that the doors are open only between 11am and 2:30pm Monday through Friday.
Read moreBarbecuties
As a child, Joe Sullivan ate at House Park Bar-B-Que and thought to himself that someday he wanted to own this restaurant or one just like it. In 1981, he fulfilled his childhood ambition by purchasing House Park, which sits near the Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where he was born and much of his family still lives. Sullivan cooks all of the restaurant’s meat himself, on the brick pit, which has been in place since 1943. Those wishing to try their first taste of House Park barbecue need to keep in mind that the doors are open only between 11am and 2:30pm Monday through Friday.
Read moreCooper’s Old Time Pit BAR-B-QUE
Terry Wootan worked at Cooper’s when he was in high school. After spending some years away from barbecue while focusing on his real estate business, he took over Cooper’s in 1986. In his first years operating the business, Wootan did all the cooking and his wife operated the cash register. They have since expanded to thirty-eight full-time employees, who serve the thousands of hungry customers who descend on Cooper’s each day. While Cooper’s is a favorite of both Texas Hill Country locals and road trippers, dedicated eaters also fly into the tiny Llano airport for lunch by the hundreds each month.
Read moreLouie Mueller Barbecue
Bobby Mueller was born in Taylor, Texas, in 1939. Louie Mueller was Bobby’s father, who opened the restaurant and grocery store in 1949. When not in school or in the service, Bobby worked with the family business, which he bought from his father in 1974, around the same time Louie Mueller stopped selling groceries. It was about this time when Bobby, himself, learned to barbecue. Today, Louie Mueller Barbecue remains a family business. After Bobby’s passing in 2008, his son Wayne took the helm to continue the tradition of quality barbecue in Taylor.
Read moreThe Salt Lick
Lolo Garcia claims to be the architect of both the smoked brisket-filled tortilla and the brisket and egg taco. He’s certainly one of the first to present the combo to customers. Garcia’s Plantation BBQ (since 1987) is a food trailer parked along a busy industrial highway in Richmond, Texas. The twelve-hour briskets are prepped, smoked, and sliced in the tiny confines of the trailer. Fresh scratch-made tortillas, pico de gallo, and fried eggs, round out one of the most inventive tacos in the area.
Read moreHouse Park Bar-B-Que
As a child, Joe Sullivan ate at House Park Bar-B-Que and thought to himself that someday he wanted to own this restaurant or one just like it. In 1981, he fulfilled his childhood ambition by purchasing House Park, which sits near the Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where he was born and much of his family still lives. Sullivan cooks all of the restaurant’s meat himself, on the brick pit, which has been in place since 1943. Those wishing to try their first taste of House Park barbecue need to keep in mind that the doors are open only between 11am and 2:30pm Monday through Friday.
Read moreChurch of the Holy Smoke
Born in 1944, May Archie had a career with the telephone company. When she married her husband, Horace Archie, in 2002, she joined his church, the New Zion Missionary Baptist Church, famous in Huntsville for running a barbecue restaurant. In 2004, the original operators, Mr. and Mrs. Ward, needed to step down from running the restaurant they had started as a fundraiser more than twenty-five years previously. After learning the secret recipes and practices, Mr. and Mrs. Archie took over the business and have run it ever since.
Two interviews, May and Horace Archie, are featured for this establishment.
Read moreBurton Sausage
Interviewers: Marvin Bendele and Andrew Busch
Location: Burton Sausage, 11700 Hwy 290, Burton, TX 77835
This interview was originally produced through a collaborative effort of the American Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, The Central Texas Barbecue Association, and The Southern Foodways Alliance.
It is shared with Foodways Texas as part of a collaboration with the Southern Foodways Alliance to document food stories in Texas.
Describing himself as three-quarters German and one-quarter Bohemian, Jerry Schultz learned the meat business in central Texas’ Czech and German traditions.
Today he owns and runs Burton Sausage, a company that is part slaughterhouse, part sausage producer. Along with his daughter, Nicole Harmel, who also sat down with our interviewers, Schultz has more than twenty employees in the family business. Born in 1945, Schultz says he got into the meat business in 1972; two years later Nicole, the first of his three children, was born. The company started seriously producing sausage in 1982.
City Market
Born in 1947, Joe Capello started to work for the Ellis family at City Market in Luling when he was twelve years old. He has managed the restaurant since 1969, overseeing the post-oak-smoked brisket and sausage Mr. Howard Ellis learned to make at Kreuz Market in Lockhart. Known today for its Watermelon Thump festival that creates lines around the block for City Market, Luling has changed around Joe, but City Market has remained much the same—from the recipe for the barbecue sauce to the absence of forks in the restaurant.
Read moreD. Wiley Inc.
Since 1981, Don Wiley has built over 1000 custom-made barbecue pits for businesses, college football teams, and individuals in and around central Texas and as far away as New Jersey and Colorado. Each pit is numbered and built to customer specifications. Some of his pits can cook up to 90 briskets or 1000 turkey legs at a time, depending on the needs of the customer. When asked what qualities distinguish a Texas-made pit from others, Wiley is quick to point out that Texas pits just “cook right.”
Read moreMeyer's Sausage Company
As a child, Joe Sullivan ate at House Park Bar-B-Que and thought to himself that someday he wanted to own this restaurant or one just like it. In 1981, he fulfilled his childhood ambition by purchasing House Park, which sits near the Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where he was born and much of his family still lives. Sullivan cooks all of the restaurant’s meat himself, on the brick pit, which has been in place since 1943. Those wishing to try their first taste of House Park barbecue need to keep in mind that the doors are open only between 11am and 2:30pm Monday through Friday.
Read moreRuby's BBQ
As a child, Joe Sullivan ate at House Park Bar-B-Que and thought to himself that someday he wanted to own this restaurant or one just like it. In 1981, he fulfilled his childhood ambition by purchasing House Park, which sits near the Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where he was born and much of his family still lives. Sullivan cooks all of the restaurant’s meat himself, on the brick pit, which has been in place since 1943. Those wishing to try their first taste of House Park barbecue need to keep in mind that the doors are open only between 11am and 2:30pm Monday through Friday.
Read more