These days, you have to take out a mortgage to get a full spread of barbecue perfect for your next Instagram post. With beef prices climbing to over $7 per pound nationwide, brisket has become so expensive that Texas barbecue joints are selling it just to get people through the door. But if you want to show your favorite smokehouse some love and save a little money, delicious non-beef options are waiting to be discovered.
Take InterStellar BBQ for example. Opened in 2019 by pitmaster John Bates, the Austin staple now sits at No. 6 on Texas Monthly’s Top 50 BBQ Joints list, drawing fans from across the state to cram into its shopping center home. If you want something other than brisket, Bates recommends the peach tea-glazed pork belly.
“They are just a beautiful, tender, smoky, sweet, salty, rich bite of barbecue that we think hits all the marks,” Bates said to MySA. “It’s literally the dish that put us on the map in Texas barbecue. It’s our most important signature item.”
InterStellar is currently charging $36 per pound for peach tea-glazed pork belly. By comparison, brisket is sitting at $42 per pound. When the restaurant first opened in 2019, brisket was at $24 per pound. Plus, Bates tells MySA that he’d have to sell brisket at $65-70 to make a profit on the famed meat. The peach tea pork belly stands out as a delicious bite that also saves customers a few dollars.
Consequently, Bates has been aware of the threat of a recession for years and has diversified InterStellar BBQ’s menu so it doesn’t rely entirely on beef and brisket.
“We bring in different types of poultry, different cuts like duck and chicken and turkey,” Bates said to MySA. “Right now we’re offering a chicken sausage. So we’ve done a lot of work in the past just to make sure we have a full lineup to go if at some point the public says, you know, we’re not going to pay for brisket at this price point.”
Find it: 12233 Ranch Road, 620 N., Suite 105, Austin, TX 78750
