As a thrifty traveler, I try to save as much money as I can when I’m traveling. The food budget is often the first to suffer: many nights I snack in my motel room on granola bars and peanut butter, rather than invest time and money on a visit to a restaurant. But on this trip, I knew I’d be missing out on a big part of the Texas experience, if I started skipping meals.
Choosing my first restaurant was a no-brainer.
Even before I left home, I had plotted out the locations of all of the Rudy’s Bar-B-Q restaurants in Texas, the chain’s home state. I had discovered Rudy’s in Colorado Springs a year earlier. Lucky for me, they had just opened up a new Rudy’s near the Garden of the Gods, and I just happened to give it a try.
Rudy’s has seating indoors and outside. There’s a fire pit to help warm up chilly nights.
There’s also a gas station and store attached, where you can buy take-home bottles of Rudy’s “Sause”, seasonings, and other souvenirs.
This is not a fancy place. Seating is on benches, and napkins come out of a paper-towel dispenser on the wall.
You place your order at a window in the kitchen. Meat cutters are at the counter in the middle of the kitchen. They will give you samples of everything, sometimes even if you don’t ask.
Menu choices include brisket, smoked turkey, ribs, sausage, cole slaw and creamed corn. You order by weight, and the meat is put on a scale, to make sure you’re not paying for more than you get. For my first visit to Rudy’s on this trip…
I loaded up on a half-pound of brisket, an equal amount of smoked turkey, and half a sausage link (something I had never tried at Rudy’s before, but once they gave me a sample, I was hooked).
No comments