Showing up early — say about 11:30 — at Phat Hatties Smokehouse Barbeque is a lovely thing. Because you might just catch the first brisket of the day.

That means you can watch as owner Anne Morris or window master Lisa Matiski peels back the foil from a steaming, juicy hump of beef the size of a snapping turtle and pulls out a long knife.

“You like it fatty or lean?” they might ask.

And when you stammer for a second, then say “both!” they’ll slip the knife into the tender meat and nick off the burnt end — that charred, smoky, salty, wonderful tip of the brisket, slathered in rub and fat. Then they’ll hand it across the counter on a napkin.

Sucking the greasy morsel down with your fingers feels so good that it should probably be illegal.

And the sliced brisket that follows is no slouch either. It is moist and tender, cooked for 16 hours, bathed in applewood smoke, or occasionally hickory.

Hatties is a little barbecue wagon with a big reputation. The pint-size trailer with a smoker on the back has no tables and no chairs. When you pull up into the Big Lots parking lot on Academy Boulevard, you order at the window and take your messy, wonderful lunch to any perch you can find, whether car seat or office or park bench, and just hope you don’t emerge covered in sauce.

But the smoked meats that emerge from this little box of a kitchen easily stand up to the best and biggest ’cue joints in the region. In fact, Hattie’s has won best brisket at Old Colorado City’s Old Town Showdown for two years running.

Usually, you can count on a barbecue joint to do brisket well or pork well, but not both. Here, both types shine. There is no regional allegiance. The brisket ($6 for a sandwich), dry rubbed and sliced, is decidedly in the style of Morris’ home state, Texas. It is moist and rich even without the sybaritic fat cap.

Cooking brisket to slicing consistency is a trick. Cook it too long, or pick the wrong brisket, and it will simply fall apart. Undercook it and it will be too tough. Perhaps that is why so few places in town attempt sliced brisket. Here, it is near-perfect.

The pork ($5.60 for a sandwich), hand-pulled into long, colorful strands flecked with tasty bits of smoke-browned rind and deep ruby-dark meat, is a winning example of good Memphis-style hog.

Hot links are snappy and juicy with a solid spice.

Sauce? Hatties doesn’t overthink it. You get either a tart-sweet “Phabulous Sauce” with the right mix of ketchup and cider vinegar and just a hint of heat, or a Carolina-style mustard sauce with the same pleasant yin-yang of sweet and sour.

Buns? Just the spongy, mass-produced rounds that serve as little more than a delivery device.

Sides, too, are simple. Sometimes in a fabulous way, as with the flavorful beans ($1.50) flecked with specks of diced jalapeño and cooked in the smoker until the smoldering wood permeates every bite. These are easily the best barbecue beans in town.

Sometimes, though, simple is too simple. The coleslaw ($1) on a recent morning tasted like nothing more than sliced cabbage. No vinegar. No dressing. It was not bad atop pulled pork, but on its own was much too bland.

Dessert here is nonexistent. Even the canned peach cobbler that seems to haunt every barbecue joint is absent. But since there is a crepe stand next door, it’s a moot point.Besides, if you are a real barbecue hound, dessert and bread and sides are not the point. It’s all about the meat. And the meat here is very, very good.

It’s worth bringing your own tables and chairs and dining in, tailgate-style. Or buying a sampling of meats by the pound ($9-$12) with sides by the pint ($3-$4) and heading to nearby Palmer Park for one smokin’ picnic.

PHAT HATTIES SMOKEHOUSE BARBEQUE3 STARS out of 5(award-winning brisket)Address: 5085 N. Academy Blvd. in the Big Lots parking lotContact: 338-9439, phathatties.comHours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, weather dependentEntrees: $5-$15Vegetarian: Slaw and little moreLiquor: NoCredit cards: Yes. Thanks, iPhone

Anne Morris, owner of Phat Hatties Barbeque, serves her barbecue out of a food wagon at the southeast corner of Union and North Academy boulevards. Photo by JERILEE BENNETT, THE GAZETTE