The Texas BBQ landscape changes more often than you might think. In 2010 Franklin Barbecue, which was really just two trailers and some chairs in a former gas station parking lot, didn’t even exist two years earlier.

Summary graphic: Two teenagers outside Hephzibah's Burger Shack.

The truck screeched to a stop about ten yards from us. A voice came from the blackness behind the wheel of the pickup: “Y’all take a picture of us!”

Summary graphic: Keith Allen stands amid green trees wearing a blue apron.

Keith Allen, the founder of Allen and Son Bar-B-Q in Chapel Hill, taught us one of the most important lessons about barbecue that we have ever learned.