 "Photo: Erik Reyna/The Daily Texan")
The smokey aroma of barbecue wafts up from the small wooden Texas Picnic Company next to Dobie Center, clinging to clothes and spurring memories of passionate football games with close friends and family. In many ways, it’s that same smell that serves as an olfactory lighthouse to safe harbors and great comfort food.
Immediately, travelers are greeted by a simple menu of meats: pulled pork, barbeque chicken, chopped beef or sausage.
The Texas Picnic Company’s only seemingly unique menu item is the “Texas 2-Step,” which is really just a combination of barbecued meats.
After selecting which meat you prefer, the only thing left to do is decide whether you want it as a sandwich or wrap with chips and a drink.
“The food is really simple but really good at the same time. It doesn’t have to be really complicated to be good,” said Thomas Wang, UT biology sophomore and Texas Picnic Company enthusiast.
At first bite, the rich flavors immediately shock the senses.
Texas Picnic has not only mastered the fire of barbecue pit, but it perfects it to a science; all of its meats are smoked overnight at their store on sixth and Sabine Street over pecan wood, bringing out sweet and tender flavors and then enhancing them with inimitable sauces.
Take, for instance, their juicy, succulent barbecued chicken.
This already beautiful meat is further enhanced by the restaurant’s 12-ingredient white sauce. Although the sauce is really just dressed-up mayonnaise, Texas Picnic expands on it with numerous spices and vinegars until it becomes an entirely new complimentary flavor that bears no resemblance to its original form.
Texas Picnic Company’s other popular meat, the pulled pork, is equally flavorful and topped with a rich, sweet, spice-enhanced barbecue sauce. Even though the sauces can be a bit messy at times, they are so sweet that simply wiping, rather than licking them off, feels like some sort of atrocious waste.
The only complaint could be that they do run out of certain foods or sauces from time to time.
“Usually, when they don’t have one of my favorites, I’ll just order something else off the menu,” Wang said. “Everything on the menu is great, so in the end it all balances itself out.”
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