As a boy, Rodney Ludwig loved Jasper’s Bar-B-Q and he never lost the soft spot in his heart for the food joint that’s become a fixture of Waco restaurant history.

Jasper’s had gone through more than one change of ownership before closing for four months earlier this year.

So Ludwig, 47, former owner of the Rusty Star barbecue in Speegleville, jumped at the chance to buy the building from its current owner, Leonard Christianson, and reopen the restaurant.

Rodney Ludwig, the new owner of Jasper’s barbecue restaurant in East Waco, pulls a tray of meat from the pit at the restaurant.
Jerry Larson/Tribune-Herald

He sold the Rusty Star and went to work with Christianson getting Jasper’s up and running, opening the Friday before Thanksgiving.

Ludwig said although his restaurant business is on its feet, the real estate transaction for $132,400 is still in the works. He said he expects the deal on the 1,500-square-foot restaurant to close in January.

Jasper’s, 105 Clifton St., started as just a barbecue pit and a small dining room in 1919, but it’s been expanded over the years. The original pit put in by founder Jasper DiMaria is still in use in a side room visible through a window from the dining room. The roof and dining room are covered with years of soot from barbecue smoke.

“This is what the pit room is supposed to look like,” Ludwig said.

Some of the metal and diner tables and the chairs have been in the restaurant for more than four decades.

Christianson had leased it to a tenant who tried to run Jasper’s, but ran into financial difficulties. Customers who thought quality was declining quit coming, he said.

Ludwig said there are few barbecue restaurant names older than Jasper’s in Texas. The only older one he could find is Southside Market in Elgin, which claims a start date of 1882 on its website.

Although the restaurant name Jasper’s has been through a series of owners and the recent closure, Ludwig said he wants to live up to the name of the original owner, who built a strong and well-known food business. When it comes to success in barbecue, it’s all about serving good, quality food consistently, Ludwig said.

Lunchtime patronage is heavy with people who have been going to Jasper’s for decades. Some lunch visitors this week said Ludwig is doing well with the cooking and the business.

Doug Williams, who deals in farm and ranch real estate, first started eating at Jasper’s as a Baylor University student in 1966.

He was eating an “order,” Jasper’s code for beef, sausage and beans served up on a piece of butcher paper, instead of a plate.

Eating off butcher paper used to be a common practice at barbecue restaurants, Ludwig said.

Williams said he’s glad the restaurant has reopened, and that he has passed the tradition of eating at Jasper’s to his three sons, ages 28 to 32.

“I’ve eaten here so long that not only is it where I eat, but it’s become a habit for my three boys,” he said.

Aircraft mechanic Jeff Garrett, 42, has eaten at Jasper’s since he was a boy in the 1970s.

Jasper’s is as much a social fixture as a culinary one, Garrett said.

“You see a lot of the same people here all the time,” he said.

Phillip Black, 22, works with Garrett. It was his first time to Jasper’s. The food was good and the atmosphere appealed to him, he said.

“I like the old things, the mom-and-pop stuff,” he said.

bteeter@wacotrib.com

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