AUSTIN, Tex. — At Franklin Barbecue, people pull up at dawn or shortly thereafter and spend their breakfast hours waiting for lunch.

Rain or shine, six days a week, hundreds of men, women and children wait three to five hours or longer to eat some of the most celebrated smoked beef brisket in America. The line has become a thing unto itself — a kind of pregame party for meat, 2,000 pounds of it daily — instead of sport, and the best visible evidence of the cult of Texas barbecue.

Texas has always obsessed over barbecue, but lately that obsession has gone global and viral. After all, you can get Texas barbecue in Paris at The Beast, in Tel Aviv at Texas BBQ and in Nha Trang, Vietnam, at Texas BarBQ & Steaks. Within Texas, barbecue’s center of gravity has moved from revered rural outposts to urban ones like Franklin or La Barbecue here, where pitmasters are celebrated like chefs at 25-course tasting-menu restaurants in New York.

One recent Thursday outside Franklin Barbecue, they came from Houston and San Antonio, but also from Kelley, Iowa, and Sydney, Australia. And it’s not just Franklin. Waiting a couple of hours for brisket has become routine around the state.