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Those rumors about Franklin Barbecue closing aren’t true, but the lauded smoked meats restaurant is opening a taco trailer outside the 900 East 11th Street restaurant.
Texas Monthly reports that the trailer will serve breakfast tacos and coffee, which explains the departure of the Legend Coffee trailer this week, which operated from Franklin’s parking lot. The set to open before the end of 2018. Franklin is a noted taco enthusiast, as he’s a big fan of Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ and Veracruz All Natural. He’s also a noted coffee obsessive, to the point where he travels with an espresso machine.
The shuttering rumors started because of the latest episode of barbecue podcast Tales From the Pits, where co-hosts Bryan Norton and Andrew Martinez speculated about the demise of the barbecue shop. That was based on staff departures like pitmaster Braun Hughes to Stiles Switch BBQ & Brew and longtime general manager Benji Jacobs. They took down the podcast and issued a statement on Twitter. They wrote that they didn’t “present as fact” that Franklin Barbecue was closing. They adding that “[t]his has been a lesson [... that] we should have made it clearer to our audience that these were our opinions.”
However, Franklin did confirm that he is doing something somewhere on 6th Street to Texas Monthly, which Norton and Martinez talked about.
Along with working on his hand-built smoker business, Franklin is keeping himself busy on a steak cookbook, publishing next year. The restaurant is currently on its annual summer break, reopening on Friday, August 10.
