"A family-style meal at the Salt Lick keeps coming until you have had enough. At the front of the photo is a plate with pork, ribs, beef brisket, and sausage, pre-sliced. Above that, from the left, are German potato salad, beans, and cole slaw. And above them are a plate of pickles and raw onions and a couple of slices of white bread. Not pictured: the bowl of barbecue sauce that comes with the meal."
Michael Stern
"Salt Lick meats are kept warm on the grate above this oak wood fire, which perfumes the restaurant."
Michael Stern
"Salt Lick sausage is very porky. All alone on a plate, it might be too much; but as part of a multi-meat barbecue meal, balanced by brisket, it's terrific."
Michael Stern
"Long ago when we first came across the Salt Lick, it was famous for proprietor Hisako Roberts' green tea ice cream. The ice cream is no longer on the menu, but I was not complaining when I sunk a spoon into this excellent cobbler, the dough of which had a rich, almond essence."
Michael Stern
"I did not set my camera to do anything special when I snapped this picture of the fence that goes all around the vast Salt Lick property. But it came out virtually black-and-white, a fitting ode to a restaurant that honors the old ways of Texas cooking."
Michael Stern
"If you come to the Salt Lick on a weekend night, you will understand why signs like this need to be posted. It draws customers from near and far and is frequently overrun."
Michael Stern
"An iron gate opens onto a vast banquet facility that is just west of the restaurant itself."
Michael Stern
"One of multiple areas in which to dine at the Salt Lick, this porch features rugged picnic tables with bench seats."
Michael Stern
"The Family Style dinner arrives with brisket, pork ribs, and sliced sausage. We recommend asking for fatty brisket (the meat in this picture is pretty lean, but the refill was much juicier)."
Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle
"The family dinner comes with lots of sides. Clockwise from the bottom right corner: there's a bowl of slightly sweet and hot orange-colored, oily-textured barbecue sauce, unusual and quite good on the meats. Next is the very fine fresh cole slaw, the best of the sides, followed by saucy beans, rather dull German potato salad that was more like cold breakfast diner homefries, pickled jalapenos, good, moist sesame-topped white bread, and pickles and onions."
Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle
"The approach from the parking lot (or, in this case, to the parking lot after dinner)."
Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle
The Salt Lick is a vast restaurant, banquet facility, and outdoor pavilion with seats for 2000. Located in the Hill Country west of Austin, it is a theme park of barbecue, its limestone buildings surrounded by rough-hewn log fences, the air smelling of slow-smoked meats. Compared to the region's back-of-the-butcher-shop barbecue parlors, it's a fairly civil place with ambience I would call Rustic Deluxe. There is a printed menu; you are served at your table by waiters; food comes on plates rather than on butcher paper; utensils are supplied; and the kitchen's repertoire includes all sorts of side dishes and dessert as well as barbecued meats. Fancy, it is not, but neither is the Salt Lick primitive.
