The 50 Best BBQ Places in Texas

The pool ran to 63 barbecue places individually gate-checked: all 50 of Texas Monthly's 2025 Top 50, its honorable mentions, and the heritage institutions the canon rotates around. Every published entry passed the same gate: Google Places status operational, plus a trading signal inside 90 days — dated October 2026 reviews, the business's own posts, live reservation pages, or dated local news. The final 50 verified 50-for-50 under the published weights — and the gate was still moving four days before publication (see the swap below).

The kills: Sabar BBQ (Fort Worth), Texas Monthly Top 50 in 2025, announced its closure in December 2025 and its listing now reads permanently closed. Valentina's Tex Mex BBQ, a 2021 Top 50 joint, closed April 25, 2024. Brotherton's Black Iron Barbecue served its final day on August 30, 2026. Heffernan BBQ in Cypress closed after service on June 19, 2026. Crossbuck BBQ in Farmers Branch closed in July 2026, and Buzzie's BBQ's Kerrville restaurant closed August 3, 2025, continuing as catering only. The moves: B4 Barbeque is listed in Rhome, not Mabank; Butter's BBQ in Sinton, not Mathis; Brisket & Rice at its new Highway 6 home in Houston. LaVaca BBQ is listed at Port Lavaca — its Bay City location is permanently closed — and Killen's Barbecue is the Pearland original, not the unrelated Houston Heights restaurant of the same family name that closed in July 2026. The last change came in the publish-week re-check: Mimsy's Craft Barbecue of Crockett had been ranked #41, but the re-check caught its September 2026 rebrand as Pecan & Sage Supper Club — its owner says it is no longer a barbecue restaurant — so first reserve Rossler's Blue Cord Barbecue of Harker Heights, verified trading the same week, took the #41 slot.

Three judgment calls are worth printing. Franklin Barbecue takes #1 on the composite — a James Beard Award-winning pitmaster and the heaviest review gravity in Texas barbecue (4.8 stars across 5,000-plus Google reviews) — with Burnt Bean Co., Texas Monthly's own current #1, at #2 and Goldee's, which took Fort Worth's first Michelin star in the 2026 Texas guide, at #3. Five Texas Monthly names sit on the reserve list on thin review volume — Slaughter's, Jennings & Co., Rejino, Smokey Joe's, and North Texas Smoke — all verified open, all documented in our research file; the sixth reserve, Rossler's Blue Cord, was promoted to #41 in the swap described above. And the spread is disclosed, not hidden: the Austin metro corridor (Austin, Lockhart, Taylor, Lexington) holds 14 spots because that is where the canon and the history concentrate; Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston hold 9 each, with the Rio Grande Valley, the Golden Triangle, East Texas, and the Panhandle all represented. Limited hours are disclosed rather than penalized: Snow's BBQ cooks one day a week, Cattleack opens four lunch services a week, and a dozen ranked spots are lunch-only or sell out by mid-afternoon.