Nearly Four Years After a Fire, Austin’s Oldest Barbecue Joint Reopens

Matt Sullivan was awakened by a text message in the early morning of December 1, 2020. “Your place is on fire,” it read. “It always is,” Sullivan responded, referring to the brick pit inside Central Austin’s House Park Bar-B-Que, where the briskets cook overnight. He thought the texter was joking until he learned from a phone call that fire trucks were outside his restaurant. After rushing to the scene, Sullivan saw the devastation. “Everything was trashed in there,” he said. “Totally destroyed.”Sullivan’s livelihood was gone, but he didn’t panic. He assumed the rebuild would be swift, but delays stretched out the timeline longer than he could have imagined. First he had to get through an arson investigation. “Because it was during COVID, they thought I…

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