Remembering Ruby’s: Barbecue was family tradition, link to old Austin
A couple of Sundays ago, I chatted with friends and family over the scant remains of what may have been my last lunch at Ruby’s BBQ. After almost 30 years anchoring what is for me a particularly nostalgic corner at the north end of the Drag, this wellworn Austin smoke joint is closing its doors Feb. 17.
The restaurant was crowded with loyal patrons anxious to get in one more meal, and as we stood up from one of the long tables on the small outdoor deck, reluctantly getting ready to leave, a woman hovered nearby.
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to steal your seats,” she said apologetically. “I just want to take a photo for my friend — Ruby’s catered his wedding, and he’s scratched his name somewhere into this table.”
The wooden surface of the picnic table was shiny from the greasy, eager fingers of years of barbecue fans and cross-hatched with their names, etched into the wood like lovers’ initials. There were too many to count, and after a brief, unsuccessful hunt, the woman snapped a few vague, bittersweet pictures and withdrew.
I grew up in the neighborhood behind Ruby’s, roughly 300 yards from its esteemed brick pits, and I had my wedding’s rehearsal dinner catered by the restaurant. At my older sister Stefanie’s wedding eight years earlier — celebrated, like mine, under a tent pitched in the backyard of our childhood home — Ruby’s barbecue was also on the menu. When my parents approached the late, lovely Luke Zimmerman, who founded Ruby’s in 1988 with his wife, Pat Mares, about that gig, he insisted on taking them out to hear various local acts he knew to help find a band for the party.
A few years later, my father carried 40 pounds of Ruby’s famous chopped beef in a suitcase on an airplane to London for my brother Ben’s wedding to an English girl, waltzing the delicious