Houston barbecue fans are buzzing about the arrival of Terry Black’s Barbecue, which opens in the Heights (1329 N. Shepherd) this Tuesday, August 18.
Touted by Texas Monthly as “the most impressive barbecue chain in Texas,” the restaurant is known for serving its full menu seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Six, 1,000-gallon offset smokers — the first thing diners see once they walk in from the parking lot — help ensure that diners will never have to pass on brisket, beef ribs, pork ribs, turkey, and two kinds of house made sausage. They’re paired with sides, desserts, and the restaurant’s signature black frozen margarita.
Houston comes in the middle of a growth spurt for Terry Black’s and its parent company, Black Family Hospitality. It’s already preparing to open a Terry Black’s in New Braunfels. By years end, the company will add a San Antonio location that will also include a boutique hotel and a bathhouse that may be called The Depths.
Eventually, Black Family Hospitality will add a hotel, bathhouse, and steakhouse to its Houston property. Eager to learn more about the company’s perspective on Houston and its future plans, CultureMap spoke to Terry Black's co-founder Mark Black. Read on for details about the other Houston neighborhood he and his brother Mike considered for Terry Black’s, a few details on the hotel (coming in 2028), and what he recommends first time visitors order.
CultureMap: How did you decide on the Heights as the right location for Terry Black’s?
Mark Black: We looked all over Houston for the perfect location. I really liked a lot of things about EaDo, but unfortunately they were doing a big highway expansion project. So we found this property in the Heights and we just kind of fell in love with it, fell in love with the area, too.
CM: Houston has a well-established barbecue scene. How do you see Terry Black’s fitting in?
MB: When we opened in Austin, there was a ton of good barbecue restaurant. Same thing with Dallas, Fort Worth, even the smaller areas. My hometown of Lockhart is known as the barbecue capital of Texas.
I think we can be very successful here. And of course, there's a ton of other successful barbecue restaurants and really, really good barbecue in Houston. So we're excited to come join the market.
CM: Tell me about Terry Black’s commitment to being open for lunch and dinner every day, because I think of that as a big part of your identity.
MB: Absolutely. It's definitely part of our brand identity. Being open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. When we first went into Austin, everyone was kind of following that Franklin's model. And what I refer to as the Franklin model was, I'm going to be open limited days for lunch. I'm gonna sell out and we're gonna shut down for the day.
We said, we've got to do something different. We want to separate ourselves. Not only that, there's two of us. So we're young, we're hungry, we're gonna grind. My brother and I would split shifts. The first year, year-and-a-half we were open, we worked about 400 days straight. We're putting anywhere from 12 to 16 hour days and we would split shifts.
We would just grind it out, and there was 2 of us, and we could do that. We knew we needed to separate ourselves and be different than some of the other barbecue restaurants there. That's how we would find our nature. It worked out really well for us.
CM: For people who've heard about Terry Black’s but haven’t tried it yet, what do you have to get on your first visit?
MB: When you come to Terry Black’s, it's traditional Central Texas barbecue. You've got to get the Texas trinity — brisket, pork ribs, and sausage. With that being said, what we've started to become known for is what we refer to as the Cadillac of barbecue, the beef ribs.
Personally, my favorite side, shockingly enough, is green beans. It's our second biggest seller. It's a fresh green bean that we actually go direct to the farm. It's a high quality green bean as opposed to something that may come out of a can
CM: We're focused on the restaurant, but I've read that there's a hotel component. Can you tell me anything about that?
MB: There is gonna be a boutique hotel here. It'll have 14 rooms, give or take, and it'll have a steakhouse that we've already branded. Can't release that quite yet, but it has been branded. And there's other elements. We'll have a members aspect of it. We’ll have a bathhouse, a gym, things of that nature. That's still in the in the planning stages.
CM: What's it been like kind of diversifying Black Family Hospitality beyond barbecue?
MB: Growing Black Family Hospitality has been fun. The barbecue's something that we've done all of our lives. So when we jumped into Opal's Oysters [in Waco] and the bowling alley and Glory Roll Sushi [in Lockhart], it was a challenge, but they've been fun and I really enjoy those now at this stage of our career.
The project that most excites me is the bathhouse. We're at a point where we want to do fun concepts that we enjoy going to. Of course, we enjoy going to the barbecue restaurants and the other restaurants that we have, but more experiential type stuff like the bathhouse and jumping into the hotels and things of that nature are what I'm really excited about. It's going to be a challenge, but we've got a really good team.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
