Saturday-mornings-only barbecue from Tootsie Tomanetz, the nonagenarian pitmaster Lance calls the Queen of Texas barbecue. You’ll join the line, then watch Tootsie work the pits as she has for decades. Made famous beyond Texas after its appearance on Netflix’s Chef’s Table: BBQ, Snow’s remains wonderfully low-key — there’s no real website or social media presence, just a small roadside house where you order and pay before taking your tray to the covered picnic area beside the smokers.

A morning behind the pit at one of Austin's serious joints, before a single customer walks in. The owner walks you through the fire; how the wood is managed, how the brisket is trimmed and held, the hours that go in before service. It’s the working side of barbecue that the counter never shows. A seat at one of the few barbecue tables in the country cooking to a Michelin standard. You don't just eat the brisket and the beef-fat tortillas, you spend time with John Bates himself, hearing how a fine-dining discipline and a Texas smoker came to share the same kitchen. It's a conversation, and a level of access, that the line out front never gets.

Three BBQ stops in one day, beginning with two of Lockhart’s three historic pits before continuing to City Market in Luling. Lance and Bill Dumas — the Sausage Sensei — guide the crawl, calling the order, what to try at each stop and how to pace it so there’s room for the final tray. Expect sawdust floors, brick pit rooms and sausage rooted in the German and Czech meat-market traditions that shaped Central Texas barbecue. Brisket comes by the pound on butcher paper, with no fuss and nowhere to hide. With Lance and Bill alongside you, this is more than a list of famous joints: it’s a day inside the craft, history and people of Texas BBQ.

In Tomball, just north-west of Houston, Scott and Michelle have built something you don’t come across every day. Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue brings two very different crafts under one roof: authentic Texas barbecue and bean-to-bar chocolate, both made with the same care for provenance, process and time. Lance has eaten at Tejas before, and this visit goes beyond simply sitting down for a meal. You’ll spend time with Scott and Michelle in their production space, seeing how both the barbecue and chocolate are made and hearing the stories behind what they’ve built. It’s a chance to experience two sides of Texas craft, and meet the people behind them.

Will Buckman started tending the offset smokers at Corkscrew BBQ before most of the current generation of Texas pitmasters had picked up a brisket knife. His joint sits on the edge of Old Town Spring in a corrugated shed that smells of post oak before you reach the car park, and the line that forms by eight in the morning is not theatre: it is the honest verdict of people who have eaten here before and driven back. What Will does is not replicable by ordering a plate. You will order and the brisket you pull apart will mean something different.