Franklin BBQ Reviews

Seriously some great barbecue. I placed a pre-order about three weeks out for a pound of each type of meat (5 pounds total). It cost about $75 total, but we split the order between four of us. The upside was that we didn't have to wait in line. Just walk in at the date and time they told us and picked up our order. If you have the time, pre-ordering is the way to go. If not, just wait in line. It's worth it.

Are you a tourist? You should just preorder your barbecue a month in advance like we did. Worth the hype. I am now sweating brisket.

Good food and good view of a part of the city. Highly recommended

Can I give it 6 stars? Because I would. Not only the best bbq I have ever eaten, it may be the best thing I have ever eaten. Brave the line! It is worth it

Food was great but the wait is very very long if you go during prime eating time. I highly recommend trying the food if you can

I miss Franklin Barbecue something fierce since moving to UT. Our family makes sure to visit every time we are home.

First this must be the best BBQ in Texas and hence the World. I'm an Austin native and I've never eaten here after 7 attempts. Most recently on a rainy Tuesday morning I waited outside in line with an umbrella for 45 minutes before an employee came out to tell us the wait was still another 1:45 and that there was no guarantees there would be any meat left by then. I finally gave up at 11:45 am.
The BBQ must be orgasmic but I'll never know.

Worth the wait. Waited 4 hours and would do it again. That should tell you enough about the food. Literally to die for.

Only place I've woken up for at 4am where I don't regret it and would do it again.

Unreal. Absolutely the best brisket I have ever had. Sausage not the greatest but who cares. Got there about 1130 and took about 45 minutes in line.

Didnt eat but had to stop by and see it. Food looked awesome. It was pouring rain and there was still a line.

Absolutely the best tasting meats I have ever had. Bravo.

I live in SC now but was in TX for a visit. Found out we could order my husbands favorite bbq on line and pick it up. So easy and such a great surprise for my husband.

Almost didn't get to try this place cuz they close Mondays. So rushed here on a Sunday afternoon but thankfully just made it. They close 3pm! Only had brisket and sausage left by then but the brisket was solo fork-tender and heavenly!
We got moist and lean, but the moist is always best!

Wait was long,but it was worth it. Everything was delicious.

It was worth standing in line for 4 hours in a rainstorm. Best meats I ever ate!

Ate here a few times before the pandemic.

Decent BBQ, but nowhere near worth the wait. Who keeps smoked food warm in a steamer? The brisket was somehow sopping wet on the outside, bone-dry on the inside, and flavorless all at the same time.

The best I've ever had and I've traveled the world looking for good barbecue.

The wait was as expected, but luckily so was the BBQ. I'm a bit ashamed to admit I've lived locally for 4 years now and just got around to checking this place out. Glad I did. Possibly the best brisket I've ever had. Had the brisket sandwich and it was stunning. Had a few ribs and pulled pork also, all of which was 5/5.

Awesome brisket, ribs, pulled pork, sausage, and turkey.

Waited in line for almost 4 hours for this great BBQ. they Smoke with post Oak. the brisket was outstanding! this is bar non one of the better bbq places in TX.

A little confusing at first but they really try to help you get in and out quickly all in all a positive experience

Amazing. It was truly an experience. The barbecue was very good, one of the best in Texas and America as a whole. We went on a Thursday and got there at 9am and waited until opening and got food at about 11:20. The brisket is so well seasoned and smoked; the fatty is melt-in-your-mouth smooth and the lean is also amazing. Pie is also a great addition. Turkey is surprisingly also very good. Would definitely recommend coming, though be warned, you won t want to eat lesser barbecue after this. Sorry Killen s.

This is absolutely the best BBQ in Austin...and in Texas! There was a long line....but it moved quickly and we were cooled off by water misters outside! I don't normally eat red meat......but the beef brisket was absolutely the best food I have ever put in my mouth!
We tried everything Franklin's offered and everything was delicious!
We're going back to Austin!!!

My boyfriend and I ate there yesterday. Got there around 7:30am with our lawn chairs, drinks, and handheld consoles (lol) and got our food around 1:30pm. O-M-G... The barbecue was TOTALLY worth the wait. We'll definitely be back. We got brisket, pulled pork, turkey, and sausage. Couldn't afford ribs that time so we didn't get any. My favorite meat is the brisket. It's so tender and juicy and it just melts in your mouth. I'm salivating right now just thinking about it lol. I TOTALLY recommend it!

Long line. Believe what you read. The food was good but i believe it would it have been better if we would it have arrived earlier. We got there around 10:15 am and were the "last man and last woman standing"

Best brisket ever! Juicy and flavorful with a nice salt and black pepper rub. I didn't give Franklin's five stars because I wasn't that impressed with their ribs and sides. The sides are somewhat bland and the ribs are missing pizzazz. Overall though this place is great and is definitely a place to try for the serious BBQ enthusiasts.

It is good, but not so great to wait 1.5 hours to go in

The best bbq in the world the only words that can be used to describe the masterpiece barbecue served at this establishment.

What's there to be said that hasn't been said thousands of reviews later? Nothing. We can all add our anecdotal evidence to either lend credence to the claim that the famous Franklin Barbecue line is worth it or to make a case that it is not. I'm not going to get into that argument because that's one I don't see ever getting resolved.

You just eat this stuff and you know who is the daddy!!!

Even though there was a long line, we enjoyed the the food and price is totally reasonable. Very clean place and delicious food. The sides comes with food, so don t worry about that.

Well worth the wait. The BBQ here is the best I have ever had.

Incredible BBQ well worth the wait. We arrived at 9:15am on a Friday, and were eating at 1:15. This Brisket is the best of the best. 10/10.

Best brisket on our BBQ trip. We got a tour of the pits and met the mastermind too!

Not impressed. Had poor customer service after walking miles to try to enjoy Franklins. And they ran out of brisket less than 45 mins after opening. Waste of time. Terry Blacks was much better for food and service!

Came to Franklin's straight from the airport. Yes, the line is long, but it's a hoot. We got some Texan beer and a cooler from a neighboring store, and chatted away with fellow customers. An employee took pre-orders down the line to gauge what would be left by the time we were up to the food. We ordered way more food than necessary, and it was all tasty. The brisket was melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness. They do take online pre orders in large amounts to avoid the line, but everyone should experience it once.

Best BBQ ever! We came from Germany and got to know a lot of nice people from everywhere while waiting and eating. Who is in Texas has to go to Franklin's!

I waited in line for 20 minutes, couldn't stand the volume of the music. Also didn't want to wait another 20 minutes to possibly find the good stuff sold out. I walked away, it must be good food for people to endure the trouble. There ARE other BBQ joints nearby.

Best barbecue in Texas. Personally, I don't like having to wait in line for 5 hours, but for a lot of people, this seems to be part of the experience. It's like tailgating at a football game.

Hands down the best brisket I think might exists on the planet. If I could buy the fat that renders off of the brisket I would. Their turkey is low key the second best thing there IMO. Ribs were okay, a little salty for my taste. My group got there at 720am and sat down to eat at 1230, and I would wait that long or more to go back. I recommend taking plenty to drink (adult beverages or otherwise), and maybe a lawn chair you are willing to leave outside with the line of 150 other waiting guest. Meals are a bit pricey but absolutely worth it. I got .5 lb of brisket and ribs, .25 lbs of sausage and turkey, and a pint of pintos and it came out to around $45 (not bad for 2 lbs of food :P) 100% recommend if you are visiting Austin, but I wouldn't go if you're not willing to wait in line and get there early!

This can't really be called BBQ. It should be its own genre of food

Really great tasting BBQ! Fantastic job on the brisket, ribs, and sausage!

It's not as if Franklin's really needs any more reviews, but here's one anyway:

So this is Austin's most famous BBQ spot. It's only open for lunch (opens at 11), but you need to get there hours early to stand in line. If you plan far in advance (a month or more), you can order online and skip the line. There's a minimum of 5 lbs of food for that.

As for the BBQ... it's awesome. Duh. Whether or not it's worth standing in the line I'm not sure. But definitely delicious.

Best food I've ever eaten, period. Flew in from MN just to have it again.

It was worth the long lines! Brisket was to die for!

As good as it can get. The average wait on the line is 3 hours. Go there on a Saturday, when they serve the beef, which is even better than the brisket. The Brisket is marvelous, Turkey is good, sausage is ok and we didn't touch the sides. There's a big parking area around the block. It is expensive but it is worth it. And it is by far my the Best Texan BBQ..

Go on a Tuesday or a Thursday. Get there by 930 and you're guaranteed brisket. When you order brisket and they ask you if you want fatty, lean, or a little bit of both, TRUST ME... get me fatty. It isn't marbled or anything nasty... It's fall apart buttery soft delicious meat. This food is fantastic.

This is my first time in this legendary place. It was almost 3 PM. Without waiting in line I was the lucky last customer. I explained that to them and additional to my order they gave me 2 pounds of sausage free as courtesy just because it was my first time there. Brisket is very tender and moist. Like Franklin says, BBQ is not rocket science just slow cooking time (proper manage of temperature & humidity) the right meat and the right spices.

Looks good. Didn't have the time to wait in line for this.

Great BBQ. You will wait in line though so be prepared for that. To those who said the food was nasty do everyone a big favor and go to McDonald's and order yourself a mcrib because you don't know JACK about BBQ.

This was good Bar-B-Que but the wait is famously horrendous and the whole thing reminded me of the soup guy on Sinefeld. No saving a place for friends in the long and longsuffering queue. YOU GO TO THE BACK OF THE LINE. The owner is a long time Austin semi-celebrity. Again, this is good food, but the whole thing seems contrived around the ego of one person.

Come prepared! Check out pre order availability or wait in line.Lawn chairs are provided but limited, cards or games, have your phone charged, bring a partner for trips to available portapottys. Definitely worth the wait!

Incredible brisket, probably best I've had - extremely tender and moist. Drive through service was great as I've always wanted to try Franklin's while in town but the long wait time scared me off. My only complaints were the turkey (dry and flavorless - maybe a fluke going by other reviews) and the cost being double that of most other BBQ joints ($35/lb).

Franklin BBQ is some of the best BBQ in Austin, with wonderful BBQ at totally reasonable prices. But it's also a perfect illustration of supply and demand, and before heading there, you should be familiar with what it will take to grab some of their food.

The supply is superb. Franklin, or Franklin's, as everyone seems to call it, has a small menu that concentrates on the basics: brisket, ribs, pork, and sausage. A 2 meat plate is $9.75, and a sandwich is $5 or a few quarters more, depending on what's in it. They charge 35 cents for jalapenos, which is lame but not a big deal. They've got the typical sides of potato salad, cole slaw, and beans, plus pickles, onions, and of course the requisite terrible bland white Wonderbread, a barbaric custom which has inexplicably survived to the modern civilized era. If there's a good reason why we still blindly eat some of the best meat you can buy wrapped in what tastes like a mixture of cotton swabs and dryer lint, I've never heard it.

Anyway, the barbecue itself is well worth the trip, and competes well with any other barbecue place in Austin or in the surrounding BBQ cities like Lockhart or Elgin - you can of course argue indefinitely over your absolute #1 favorite place, but Franklin is undeniably excellent. The sausage is of the thick casing variety, but is really juicy and deliciously spiced once you've gotten through. The brisket is heartbreakingly tender (and can be gotten lean in case you want to pretend that you're eating BBQ for your health), the ribs have the requisite "meat falling off the bone" quality, and the pork is unimpeachable. On any kind of Personal BBQ Rating System all of their meats would have to score extremely highly. I'm not a fan of all of their sauces (some are too vinegary, etc), but some of them are quite good, and after you try them you get to play the fun game of deciding whether to enjoy the meat on its own, or just pouring lakes of sauce to drown the stuff in.

The only problem is the demand. Franklin BBQ is both compulsively edible and surprisingly cheap, so that means demand is high. Now, as any self-respecting BBQ place should, it closes not at a specific time, but whenever they've run out of meat; this means that in order to be served right when they open at 11am, you've got to park yourself outside their front door several hours beforehand and wait in a shockingly long queue that reminds you of a 70s-era gas station, a Soviet bread line, or some other relic of the era of price controls. Bring a good book! Franklin is centrally located a few blocks up the street from I35 on E 11th street, in a neighborhood that's quickly being gentrified, but there will still be plenty of drunk homeless dudes wandering around inexplicably drunk at 9am on a Saturday morning. Depending on your point of view, this is either Austin being Kept Weird, or just a pack of bums.

When demand for a product outstrips the supply and the price doesn't rise, other ways to allocate the product will emerge. In Franklin BBQ's case, you will pay for your awesome BBQ in the medium of time. I've heard of people being able to walk right in at about 1pm on some days without trouble, but I've also heard of people getting there at 11:30 and having to wait for hours, only to be told there's no more left. In theory, this means that Franklin should raise their prices to weed out the people who aren't truly gung-ho about their brisket sandwiches, until supply and demand are in equilibrium once more and wait times are measured in minutes instead of hours. I actually hope they don't do this, because I think good food + cheap prices = a sweet deal, and I'm willing to deputize a friend to go stand in line and bring me something. Consider doing this unless you have lots of free time, but either way, you should definitely check this place out, since if you had to take an out-of-town visitor somewhere for "good Austin BBQ", this would be the place. Now I'm hungry again.

Your pickup experience is to be commended. I spent so much time in other places ordering and picking up but you've mastered it. It makes me think of the advanced that Chick Fil A is when it comes to drive through. You guys know a lot about innovation.

*THE* place to go for brisket and pulled pork in Austin. Or maybe all of Texas. The wait is long (several hours at least), so bring chairs, bring friends, a cooler with your favorite beverage and make an event of it. You won't be sorry when you taste the food! :D

Pandemic pickup and service is outstanding. Be sure to wait until you park to rearrange your vehicle or do it before you arrive. Be prepared for a short wait. Parking spot #6 is fantastic because it is next to the smokers. I was drooling. It smelled so good I went into a euphoric daze and they startled me when plopping the box into the open hatch of my rent car.

Wow, best barbecue I have ever had in my entire life. We fortunately pre-ordered in advance but I can understand why people wait hours in line

Excellent bbq, theres nothing left to write that hasnt been written.

Best BBQ in the US. The first time I went there I was skeptic. I was joking with a friend in line that we just had to get it over with so we didn't need to go back, ever. Wow, we were so wrong! Best melt in your mouth brisket, and the most fantastic falling-off-the-bones ribs! The only problem is that it kind of ruined other BBQs for us (a little). And of course, I have returned.

Not much to say about this place besides you must try it. Best brisket around. The line is always out the door and for good reason. They sell out fast every day so get there early. Incredible food. There's a reason its always on the food network and in movies as well.

I have eaten there several times and it's delicious and you'll be stuffed. I don't wait in the line what I normally do it's just when I'm driving by I see how long the line is and then stop to eat. They are real Texas friendly there. :-)

Never came here because the line is so long but gave it a try with some friends from out of town and by far my favorite BBQ!

I've had BBQ in every BBQ hotspot and many out-of-the-way places around the country...hands down, the best brisket anywhere! The sausages are good too!

Pro Tip: I arrived Sunday at 1.15 pm, and had my food about 45 mins later. When it was my turn to order, they still had all meats available except turkey. When I got in line they said that they may run out more meats by the time I get to order, but when I left at around 2.15pm, I still saw people get brisket, so I recommend coming a bit later if you don't want to to wait in line for hours.
I had brisket and ribs which were both great, but I wouldn't wait 3-4 hours in line since the other great barbecue spots in town such as La Barbecue and Micklethwait are on the same level (if not slightly better even), but with a much shorter wait. I also prefer the brisket from La Barbecue.

Best brisket I've ever had... Definitely worth the wait. Here's to hoping they reopen soon!

I really don't get all the hype about this place. The BBQ was fine, but not better than what I've had at The Salt Lick, and the sides and dessert options are especially weak.

Worth it, however, it is best to come on a weekday morning or preorder. Ribs, turkey, brisket, sausage... It's all good. If you can score some habanero sauce from their breakfast taco truck . Also try Austin cider; the acid helps break up the fat. Skip the sides and bread.

The answer to everything is YES! Yes, it s worth a drive. Yes, it s worth a multi-hour wait in line (on a cold Friday morning we got in line at 9 AM and were eating at 1 PM and nothing had run out yet).



The staff are super friendly and everything is well organized. The building opens at 8 AM for bathrooms and to purchase merchandise and drinks. They have a nice selection of TX beers, we opted for the bucket of Lonestars with our meal.

The line experience was like tailgating, bring a chair and a blanket and a drink and have fun chatting with other BBQ enthusiasts. Overall top notch Austin experience and were glad we got to partake!

Found this place on accident in Austin for work we got out early and went to lunch. Franklin was close had good reviews. The wait was long but so worth it. Had a coworker try to order a chopped sandwich was given was talked in to a sliced sandwich and was given more than enough chopped to make 2-3 sandwiches and only charger for the sliced. I ordered moist he started cutting realized he was cutting trimmed brisket gave me what he cut and more than what I ordered in sliced. The food was excellent but there are cons wait worth it I would wait again but only open for lunch. When I have to go to Austin to work I will not have the flexibility to eat here again but if I did I would!

Great brisket and pork ribs. Bbq sauce is aight, not the best imo. But definitely check it out cuz worth the hype. During covid you have to order online and pickup. Went at 11 and had no problems. All instructions was clear and easy to follow. Very safe approach for them on handling it. I would say it does get congested over time so be careful when entering the lot.

Franklin Barbecue is of course about the barbecue and especially the brisket, but meeting and interacting with the staff is also part of the experience. Nothing about this place falls short of 5 stars! Aaron Franklin and his restaurant are one of a kind.

Got 5lbs for carry out. 1lb of each meat was great but the brisket and turkey were my favorite!

Delicious BBQ. Not sure I'd go back and wait in line for 4 hours though!

Don't be fooled. There's more food on the plate than you expect! Great experience.