Lemon Grove's West Texas BBQ That Delivers
Coop's West Texas BBQ sits in Lemon Grove, a low-key East County neighborhood that most visitors to San Diego skip entirely, and that is exactly the point. This is not a Gaslamp restaurant with a marketing budget. It is a small, casual counter where the owner is often right there, and the food makes the drive off the 94 worth it.
The brisket is the anchor and the reason to go. It comes out tender enough to pull apart without effort, the kind of result that takes time and attention to get right. A pound to go is a reasonable move if the table is not enough. The Big Tex sandwich builds on that brisket base and layers in Texas sausage, which means one order covers both of the kitchen's signatures in a single construction. That sandwich is the clearest argument for what Coop's is doing: West Texas barbecue tradition, not San Diego-ified, not softened for a beach-city crowd.
Texas sausage also runs as a standalone item, and it holds up on its own. The overall menu is focused rather than sprawling, which tends to be the right call for a barbecue operation that wants to do a few things well.
The room runs casual and friendly. Families come through, the pace is relaxed, and the kind of spot where regulars who have not been in a while show up and find it exactly as they left it. Moderately priced for what lands on the table, which at a scratch barbecue counter in San Diego County is the right call.
For East County, Coop's is the real thing on the West Texas BBQ front.
