John Mueller, the 'dark prince' of Texas barbecue, dead at 52

John Mueller, influential Texas pitmaster and one-time heir-apparent to the Louie Mueller Barbecue dynasty, died this week. He was 52. His family has not shared the cause of death. He was living in Frisco, and working with Hutchins BBQ there. John grew up working alongside his father Bobby in the eponymous barbecue joint his grandfather Louie opened in the 1950s in downtown Taylor. By the late 1990s, however, due to disagreements with his family, he left the business. When his father died in 2008, John’s older brother Wayne left his job as a sports marketing consultant in Houston to take over the business. John would go on to open his own barbecue joint on Manor Road in Austin in the early aughts where he perfected a technique known as hot-and-fast cooking in which the barbecue is cooked at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time.

Though the location would become a cult favorite among nearby University of Texas students and alumni, his time there was famously marked by who he hired as a kitchen assistant. In 2004 he brought on an inquisitive young pitmaster from College Station named Aaron Franklin to chop onions. Franklin would go on to open Franklin Barbecue in Austin, now the most famous and lauded of all Texas barbecue joints. Mueller opened the JMueller BBQ trailer on South First Street with his sister LeAnn in 2011. He invited a talented Franklin Barbecue alumnus, John Lewis, to help him out on the pits. When the partnership with his sister ended acrimoniously, LeAnn reopened the trailer without John as “La Barbecue” (her initials) with Lewis as the pitmaster. John and LeAnn reconciled in later years. La Barbecue is still one of the most highly-regarded barbecue joints in Austin, and John Lewis is now one of the foremost ambassadors of Texas barbecue in the United States, opening Lewis Barbecue in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.