The Venn diagrams of how different people intersect in which food and restaurants they do and do not like is always interesting to me. For example, you and I have eaten in enough of the same places by now to be pretty sure that we have very similar tastes in food and that if you like a place, the odds are very high that I will like it too.
I like doing the same with food critics too. For example, I have eaten in a lot of the same places that Washington Post critic Tim Carman has eaten in, so I have a good sense of how much our personal tastes overlap – which is basically random chance. I probably like only half the places that Tim highly recommends. It’s not like I find his reviews to be a negative predictor for me. That is, I can’t say that if Tim likes a place, it makes it more likely that I’ll dislike it. Instead, whether he likes a place is basically a neutral factor in predicting whether I’ll like the place. By contrast, I have a solid overlap with the tastes of Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor of the Texas Monthly. If he likes a place, the odds are very high that I’m going to like it too. If he dislikes a place, the odds aren’t quite as high that I’ll agree, but I’d chalk that up to the inherent variability of barbecue places.
The one area in which your tastes and my tastes significantly differ is barbecue. I’ve eaten in both Texas Jack’s and 2Fifty Texas often enough (more than five times at each) to eliminate natural variations as a factor, so we genuinely differ on this one. I view 2Fifty Texas, especially the brisket, as worthy of being included in a discussion of the best places in the country (if not quite making the cut for the absolute top tier). I’ve never enjoyed a single one of the half-dozen or more meals I’ve had at Texas Jack’s.
Daniel Vaughn actually poked fun at Tim Carman over this very issue. Tim had written in the Post in 2017 that the brisket at Hill Country in DC was better than the brisket at Franklin in Austin, which Tim described as “mediocre brisket eating.”
This was barbecue trash talking that Daniel couldn’t ignore. In 2018, he came to town and visited several local barbecue places (2Fifty wasn’t in business yet). He quickly shot down the claim that Hill Country was better than Franklin (Tim publicly conceded his error on this one) and gave some pretty high praise to Federal Pig, especially the ribs, about which he said, “Each tender bite demanded another.”
But the punchline of the whole article in Texas Monthly, which was basically one long mocking of Tim Carman’s taste in barbecue, was about Texas Jack’s:
“I decided to check out Texas Jack’s Barbecue. Out of mercy or laziness, I didn’t even bother to post a photo of the thin, dry ribs, which had as much cracked black pepper as meat, or the crumbly slices of parched brisket before boarding my plane back home. Little of the barbecue I ate in D.C. would warrant a return visit, and I was glad to get back to Texas. A week later, Texas Jack’s was at the top of Carman’s revised barbecue list, and Federalist Pig was relegated to second. Let’s hope the slight keeps your wait a little shorter for the best barbecue joint in D.C.”
Anyway, I’m certainly a believer in “live and let live” where taste for barbecue is concerned, but please don’t let John Tanner know that just yesterday for breakfast, I had a Jimmy Dean’s patty sausage sandwich with mustard, Kewpie mayo, sweet relish, and, yes, even ketchup. I’m afraid he would be judgmental.
