Community Meat-up

Texas Monthly gathers 30+ top BBQ joints for Lockhart picnic

Festival-goers got to try smoked meats by Texas Monthly's No. 1 barbecue joint, Burnt Bean Co., at the last TM BBQ Fest.

Photo by Randi Reding

Texas Monthly is headed to Lockhart, 34 miles northeast of San Antonio, for its TM BBQ Fest on Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and 8. Tickets are now on sale to the general public for the day-after wrap-up event, the Top 50 Picnic, held Sunday.

Early bird tickets were only available to TM BBQ Club members, and are sold out. Today, July 1, marks the scheduled release of tier one tickets to the public; prices go up to the second tier September 7, Labor Day.

As an important source of news across the state, Texas Monthly covers everything from arts and culture to politics. It holds a special niche in barbecue, thanks to its definitive 50 Best BBQ Joints in Texas list, which comes out every four years.

The picnic happens more frequently, on an annual basis, giving Texans a chance to try 30-plus spots on the list in one place rather than having to traverse the state like barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn.

This year's lineup hasn't been released yet, but it's a good bet that locals on the top 50 list will come through. They include top-ranked Burnt Bean Co. in Seguins, and two more in unranked lower 40 positions: Reese Bros Barbecue and 2M Smokehouse.

Saturday's event, the BBQ World's Fair, is a free public event. Anyone can enter with an RSVP and enjoy an artisan marketplace, live-fire cooking demos, live music, and the festival atmosphere. But to eat, they'll have to purchase a $51 tray. Both events support the nonprofit Feeding Texas and its network of food banks.

Texas Monthly, which is based in Austin, travels to Lockhart for the festival because it is widely known as the Barbecue Capital of Texas. In barbecue's infancy as a cuisine, it was a way to use meats that hadn't sold at the market. Lockhart's longtime barbecue scene — including restaurants like Kreuz Market, Smitty’s Market, and Black's Barbecue — stretches back to those days. There's also tons of local lore about the different barbecue families and their public feuds, as detailed in the documentary Family Beef.

Although Lockhart looms large in barbecue history and culture, Barbs B Q is the only Lockhart restaurant that made Texas Monthly's current top 50 list. If visitors to Lockhart during the festival want to take barbecue home for later, there are several local spots outside the fest that would be happy to wrap something up.

texas monthly barbecue festivals

POUR DECISIONS

Acclaimed Phoenix cocktail bar pops up at San Antonio's Hotel Emma

Little Rituals/ Facebook

Little Rituals is stopping by Sternewirth for one night only.

One of the world’s best hotel bars is checking in at San Antonio’s Hotel Emma. Phoenix’s Little Rituals will stop by Sternewirth for a one-night-only pop-up between 3-8 pm on Tuesday, July 7.

In the desert city, Little Rituals is located on a property many may not associate with award-winning mixology: a downtown Residence Inn. But since bartenders Aaron DeFeo and Ross Simon opened the place in 2019, it has earned a string of accolades including a one-pin rating in the prestigious Pinnacle Guide and multiple Outstanding Bar Program nominations for the James Beard Awards.

In 2025, Tales of the Cocktail — America’s most prominent spirits conference — named Little Rituals the Best U.S. Hotel Bar at its annual Spirited Awards, often considered the “Oscars of the bar industry.”

In Phoenix, the bar is known for its exacting approach to barcraft, making all of its various tinctures, ices, infusions, and syrups in-house. Little Rituals squeezes all of its citrus daily, and it uses seasonal produce in both its cocktail and food menu.

While the lounge isn’t bringing along its snacks, it will feature a lineup of creative drinks. A white grapefruit and koji paloma is garnished with guajillo chile salt and “grapefruit paint.” The Crisp Martini is garnished with a pickled grape, a kimchi cocktail onion, and a Castlevetrano olive and flavored with something called “martini seasoning,” which would no doubt taste amazing on an avocado toast.

The bar is so devoted to its DIY ethos, in fact, that it even produces a proprietary spirit, a mezcal-based passion fruit liqueur called Maracuyá. At the pop-up, it will be mixed with joven mezcal in the Pazcal (Bartender’s Handshake), industry slang for a bar or shot served to a fellow bartender.

Still, no industry bona fides are required to get into Hotel Emma’s residence bar. The one-time event has no cover.

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