Mad Jack's Hill Country Barbecue threw open its doors in Johnson City on Saturday at 11 a.m., ending more than a year of anticipation for a restaurant that owner James Jackson once hoped would be serving brisket months earlier. The smokehouse sits at 624 N. US 281, beside the Pedernales River, inside a home formerly owned by friends of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The opening caps a winding road first reported by MySA, which noted the restaurant had originally been scheduled to open November 7 before Jackson pushed the date back by one week to avoid a scheduling conflict with Texas Monthly's BBQ Fest. The Johnson City location is an offshoot of Mad Jack's Mountaintop Barbecue, Jackson's long-running operation in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, which has drawn visitors from around the world, according to the same report.
Jackson, who is originally from Lockhart, Texas, said the Hill Country expansion was launched in part to be closer to his family, per MySA's reporting. He wrote about the Johnson City opening on Facebook, and told the outlet that the original team members have supported him for years and that he wanted them present to celebrate the milestone.
A Long, Costly Road to Opening Day
Getting to Saturday's ribbon-cutting wasn't cheap or simple. Jackson told CultureMap, “I've sold property and some pretty cool cars to make this happen.” The outlet's coverage described funding challenges, a complex new septic system, and permitting issues with Jackson's neon sign as hurdles along the way.
Those permitting fights spilled into public view in September, when Jackson had to appear before Johnson City's City Council on September 15 to request a variance to keep his rooftop sign, according to a separate mysanantonio.com report. The $20,000 sign represented a small slice of the roughly $2 million Jackson had poured into the restaurant overall, the same report noted. The property sits outside Johnson City's actual city limits but within its extraterritorial jurisdiction, which the report said is controlled by local leaders — a distinction that put the sign dispute squarely in front of the council despite the restaurant technically being outside town.
Jackson had also cited issues with a state-required septic system and what he called an “extravagant” filtration system for the business's water well as reasons for an earlier postponement, per that report. Those compounding delays meant the $2 million renovation commitment Jackson first announced in a November 2025 mysanantonio.com story — when the project was described as taking over an old farmhouse on US 281 North — took roughly a year to reach its grand opening.
What's on the Menu, and Who's Running the Pits
Mad Jack's Hill Country Barbecue is serving brisket, pork ribs, sausage, and mac and cheese, along with a Hill Country pork steak and sausages that honor the team's New Mexico heritage. The New Mexico original, Mad Jack's Mountaintop Barbecue, serves Texas barbecue staples including brisket, Kreuz Market links, dino ribs, and turkey, giving Hill Country diners a rough sense of what the new kitchen is drawing from.
To get the Texas location up and running, the Mountaintop Barbecue team traveled from New Mexico to train the new Mad Jack's pitmasters, and the Cloudcroft restaurant closed for the week of the Johnson City opening so staff could make the trip. Jackson said he expects some issues to resolve but is excited and grateful to open and welcome customers, according to MySA. Both the New Mexico and Texas locations are expected to remain open going forward.
