I met Lilli at her gate, and she told me that as
her flight didn't have in-seat power, all her
devices were out of juice, and she didn't have
her car reservation number, and so we spent a
couple hours charging her laptop and phone and
figuring out how to print her confiration from
the Admiral's Club printers. By the time we were
copacetic with that it was too late to visit
Micklethwait, which had been our plan, so we just
went to the hotel and freshened up for our meeting
at Stiles Switch with William Robert, aka Billy
Bob, who, as it turns out had a family emergency,
so we had to go in and eat alone. Stiles Switch
was never my favorite, but William likes it, and
it was convenient to our hotel. We ordered moist
brisket, cheerfully cut by a very young counterman,
plus a rib for tasting - I seldom get ribs in Texas,
as when I lived here, pork aside from breakfast
sausage and bacon was considered a strange and
terrible alien thing. The rib turned out to be
excellent, rubbed with a pepper, hot pepper, sugar,
and salt rub and done just so, the meat having just
the right tooth tug. The brisket was point, fairly
tasty, but also quite lean, this accentuated by a
strange diagonal cut through the grain. Lilli didn't
care for the texture of either meat, finding the pork
a little tough (it was more resilient than southerners
like but fine for others) and the fibers of the
brisket showing too prominently. The sauce, a takeoff
on the Mueller sauce, was necessary for the beef. A
glass of bad wine cost almost twice as much as my
Shiner Bock. The cashier sized us up and asked Lilli,
would you like a nice glass for that and forked over
a pretty classy-looking knockoff of a Riedel stemless.
I guess they jack up the prices of the wine to make up
for loss and breakage of the crystalloid.

--

Taylor Cafe is about half an hour east in Taylor,
and I wanted to visit Vencil Mares, who is 95 going
on 96. Also his barbecue is good and also kind of
neglected, in the shadow of Louie Mueller's up the
street a couple blocks. Mr. Mares is still around,
in a wheelchair now; he didn't know me from Adam, of
course, but being a chivalrous knight, at least
pretended to recognize Lilli. Me chattedd for a few
moments, and he went back to sleep.

We ordered a 3-meat plate to split; the waitress came
back with the welcome news that the potato salad wasn't
made yet, so would double beans be okay?

The bad news: the white squishy bread I could smell
from halfway down the counter. That was partially
because it was 90 out and nearly that in this not air
conditioned place.

The good news, besides that Vencil is still alive,
was the food. The sausage was a loose mixture of beef
and pork, moderately smoked as all these meats are, in
a snappy popping casing, more peppery than salty, pretty
good. Moist brisket was very, very good, fattiest I've
had in a while, about the same level of graininess as
at Stiles Switch but expertly cut. There was a whiff of
corned taste that the modest smoking did not overcome.
These two offerings came drizzled with a tomato-based
sauce (similar to but sweeter than the Mueller sauce).
The third meat was a rib, done more the way Lilli likes
it but with enough pull to make it interesting for me.
It was rather salty but delicious. Double beans were
so enjoyable - peppery, bacony, not too salty - that the
waitress, seeing my face as I ate, brought a spoon for
me to catch all the juice with. I had more Shiner Bock,
and as there was no wine, Lilli asked for a Diet Coke.
No such thing, but would Diet Dr. Pepper be okay? It
was, and it was - less diety tasting than artificially
sweetened drinks tend to be. I felt good about the whole
event and gave the girl a 40% tip.
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