Salt Lick BBQ- Bergstrom Airport, Austin

After visiting the family, my wife and I arrived at Bergstrom in plenty of time to grab supper before our flight out this past Sunday. To my dismay, Harlon's Barbecue in the airport was closed- presumably for Sunday. Despite myriad other places like a pretty decent Chinese takeout place and numerous sandwich shops, the wife wanted to give Salt Lick yet another try. To say our meals were disappointing would be to compliment them. She had the hot link sandwich, while I had the turkey sandwich.

Our trip to Austin followed a pretty normal itinerary: Catfish Parlor, County Line and Rudy's, and we had looked forward to finishing up at Harlon's. While Harlon's isn't as good, IMHO, as County Line or Rudy's, it's better than most airport fare.

Both our sandwiches ($9 and $10 for bare sandwiches) were served on oversized sesame seed rolls, slathered in a sauce that can best be described as Karo syrup mixed with mustard. The two flavors were sweet and mustard, and it was as terrible as the meats they had tried to cover up. I've had Danny Gauldin's sauce, and understand that for a mustard sauce, it's considered the best. However, even his sauce just isn't what I consider to be good barbecue sauce: I prefer the KC tomato based variety or a vinegar topping, like found in KC. IMHO, plain Hunt's ketchup would have been better than the Karo syrup/mustard gunk they serve at Salt Lick.

The undersized portion of hot link was similar to half about an Andoullie sausage found in a grocery store, and when I tried a bite, I could not detect any smoky flavor. The turkey was so dry that despite the Karo syrup drench, I felt like I could make a cloud of turkey dust, had I sneezed or coughed.

One of the things I pointed out to the bride, as we were trying to choke down the sandwiches, was that we were the only customers. The adjoining Schlotsky's had a line of at least 25 people waiting to give them an order, and other places had a smaller-but-still-substantial group of patrons. Salt Lick's "fame" had obviously spread among the Bergstrom airport passengers and flight crews.

They have a place here in Las Vegas- out at Sunset Station- as I recall, but I've not really heard anything complimentary about the place. Here, we have Memphis Championship Barbecue in several locations, and we really prefer their food to what we would anticipate at Salt Lick.

As I told Mrs. Nonny as we were departing Salt Lick, "Never again."
--
Nonny

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up
in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
If it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan



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