Mike Fritts is an unconventional pitmaster. Instead of pulling his trailer-mounted, thousand-gallon Austin Smoke Works offset with a Ford F-150, he does it with a Porsche Cayenne. He bought the used car because it had adequate towing capacity and the rear—with the brake lights illuminated at night—reminded him of Darth Vader’s helmet. The aesthetic of his favorite bespoke tailor in London (Huntsman, of Savile Row) inspired the signage design for his joint, Mythic Barbecue, which he opened with his fiancée, Sally Sosa, in Cottonwood Shores, outside Marble Falls, last year.
Fritts didn’t like the sound of his surname as the joint’s name. His goal was to make people happy with his food, and a YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning had brought him much happiness over the years (hosts Rhett and Link once held a live version of their show at Kreuz Market, in Lockhart, in 2012), so he chose the name Mythic Barbecue. It’s housed in one of the several repurposed shipping containers that anchor Fresh Air Park.
Fritts and Sosa recently added Thursday hours, during which they serve an abbreviated version of their usual Friday-through-Sunday menu. They’re testing to see what kind of weekday traffic they can attract, and with the barbecue they’re serving, more folks should be making the detour.
The food is about as classic as Texas barbecue gets, which is refreshing to find at a new place. Every item is carefully prepared without unnecessary embellishments. Juices dripped from the thick slice of fatty brisket I picked off the back end. The smokiness of the bark hit first, then the salt and black pepper that clung to it like pebbles on hot asphalt. A thick cap of properly translucent fat topped the tender lean slice, which was a good match for the peppery tomato-based barbecue sauce Fritts makes alongside a thicker mustard sauce.
For beans to steal the show, they’ve gotta be good. Fritts simmers his with plenty of salt and pepper, but not with big chunks of leftover barbecue, as is common. He pulls the beans off the heat before they’ve fully broken down, so their texture is creamy. “No mushy slaw” is a rule at Mythic, so the staff dresses it lightly in small batches. The crunchy cabbage-and-carrot mixture is available with a classic dressing or a chipotle version.
Sosa and Fritts are both from Austin, but Sosa’s family in Lockhart developed the potato salad that served as the inspiration for Mythic’s. There’s enough mustard to tint the mayo-based dressing bright yellow. A hint of sugar and more than a hint of dill and black pepper round out the seasoning mixture. The texture of the chunks of potato held together by lightly mashed potatoes gives the side dish body and a texture that’s almost fluffy. I loved it.
Though he’s a novice at sausage preparation, Fritts puts out a solid beef link that’s coarsely ground and exceptionally juicy. The seasoning on the smoked turkey breast would come through better if he removed the skin, which flops off as the meat sliced. There’s plenty of smoky bark mixed in with the pulled pork, which is best enjoyed in a tortilla with slaw and barbecue sauce. The big spareribs have a stout bark from salt, black pepper, garlic, and cayenne and a very light coating of sauce that’s applied during the smoking process.
The only thing I missed out on was the banana pudding, the making of which is a two-day process from Fritts’s pride-and-joy recipe. I forgot to order it, and he forgot to remind me, so now I have a great reason to return. Fritts said there would be more items to choose from next time. “I need to get the basics down and get it good enough before I start going out of my comfort zone,” he said, which is always a good strategy for a young joint.
Like many others, Fritts developed his barbecue obsession after his first meal at Franklin Barbecue, when the joint was still in a trailer. “What just happened to my mouth?” he thought after that meal. He coveted a five-hundred-gallon smoker parked outside La Barbecue when he lived across the street from its previous location, inside Quickie Pickie, in East Austin. He asked co-owner Ali Clem if he could buy it, but she helped him secure the rig from Austin Smoke Works instead.
A smoker that size was an odd purchase for someone with a career in finance. That came into focus for Fritts when he smoked a half dozen turkeys for friends on Thanksgiving soon after the smoker’s delivery, in 2021. There was so much empty space left, he said, “it felt like an insult to my pit.” Fritts fired up the smoker maybe five more times before he got an order for twenty briskets. The idea was pretty daunting. “I did not know what I was doing,” he said, but it was a better use of all that real estate.
After choosing the barbecue path a couple years later and leaving his old career behind, Fritts met the owners of the food park in Cottonwood Shores. They asked him about his goal with the business. “To make Marble Falls barbecue-famous,” he said, and his confidence sold them on taking a chance on the unknown. After less than a year in business, Mythic might not yet have made Marble Falls a barbecue destination, but following my impressive meal there, I’ll be sure to remember the way to Cottonwood Shores.
Mythic Barbecue
4350 Cottonwood Drive, Cottonwood Shores
Hours: Thursday–Saturday 11–10, Sunday 9–3
Pitmasters: Mike Fritts and Sally Sosa
Method: Post oak in an offset smoker
Year opened: 2024
