BBQ List News

3 surprising Houston joints earn spots on new top 50 barbecue list

Tejas Chocolate is the Houston area's highest ranked entry.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Three Houston barbecue restaurants have earned slots on a newly-released best BBQ list. The list, Top BBQ Joints in the South, is from Southern Living magazine, a magazine fond of lists, and features 17 restaurants in Texas overall, including Houston-area restaurants Blood Bros. BBQ (Bellaire), Truth BBQ, and Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue (Tomball).

All three are critical favorites. Blood Bros. received a shoutout in the New York Times for its innovative blend of Asian flavors and Texas barbecue. Tejas Chocolate earned a spot in the Michelin Guide, and Truth is one two restaurants to make the top 10 of Texas Monthly's top 50 barbecue joints three cycles in a row.

The list was compiled and ranked by Southern Living’s Contributing Barbecue Editor, Robert F. Moss, who is based in Charleston, South Carolina. It's probably completely unrelated but the No. 1 "joint" on the list is City Limits Barbeque, which just happens to be located in West Columbia, South Carolina. Of the 50 on the list, 12 are in South Carolina.

Moss was appointed barbecue editor at the magazine in 2014 — one year after Daniel Vaughn was appointed barbecue editor at Texas Monthly. A release says that Moss dined at each restaurant on the list in person — no long-distance UberEats-ing — and has visited most multiple times. Geographically, Texas is as far west as the list goes, and it ventures as far north as Maryland.

"When compiling the list, he revisits as many previous honorees and as many potential new contenders as time will allow," it says. So: not all. Also, he doesn't use score sheets or grading systems — instead, it is a "qualitative ranking based upon the enjoyment of the meal and the overall experience of the visit."

Moss seems to prize history and experience as much as, if not more than, the way a restaurant's food tastes, which produces some surprising results. For example, Spring's Corkscrew BBQ is one of only four barbecue restaurants to earn a Michelin star, but it didn't earn a spot in Moss' list. Two other star holders — InterStellar BBQ and La Barbecue in Austin — are also absent from Moss' list. Similarly, buzzy Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin — which made No. 1 on the most recent Texas Monthly list — comes in at No. #31.

The Texas restaurants that made the list are as follows, with their ranking:

#2. Snow’s BBQ - Lexington
#4. Louie Mueller Barbecue - Taylor
#5. LeRoy & Lewis - Austin
#13. Kreuz Market - Lockhart
#15. Panther City BBQ - Fort Worth
#19. Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue - Tomball
#20. Franklin Barbecue - Austin
#27. Truth BBQ - Houston
#28. Barbs B Q - Lockhart
#31. Burnt Bean Co. - Seguin
#37. Goldee’s Bar-B-Q - Fort Worth
#38. Micklethwait Barbecue - Austin
#40. Dayne's Craft BBQ - Aledo
#42. Blood Bros. BBQ - Bellaire
#43. Cattleack Barbeque - Dallas
#46. Hurtado Barbecue - Arlington
#47. Smitty’s Market - Lockhart

Eric Sandler contributed to this story.

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New York Times critic awards Houston restaurant 2 stars in glowing review

Courtesy of ChòpnBlọk

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Let’s just call 2025 the year of ChòpnBlọk. In a review published Tuesday, December 16, the New York Times has awarded the Houston restaurant two stars (“very good”).

Written by chief restaurant critic Tejal Rao, the review touts many of the same qualities that the Times already praised when it included ChòpnBlọk on its list of America’s 50 best restaurants.

Rao writes that she usually avoids restaurants that serve food in bowls, but she’s impressed by the way that chef-owner Ope Amosu has put a West African spin on the concept.

“For inspiration, Ope Amosu looked to the kind of chain restaurants that were built to scale, where flavors are often subdued to appeal to the broadest possible audience, focus-grouped to death. But the delight of ChòpnBlok is in its sure sense of self, its lively, multidimensional cooking and clear, delicious vision for modern food from the Black diaspora,” Rao writes.

She singles out specific dishes, including the Nigerian red stew with short rib, the Black Star bowl with shrimp, and the signature Motherland, made with chicken, greens, and plantains. “It’s utterly simple, but draws you in for more with the mouthwatering twang of not-too-much MSG — an international shortcut to building umami that tends to be used carefully, and layered with other forms,” she writes.

The review also touches on the way Amosu switched the restaurant from counter service to full service — described as “warm, informal, and quick with the jokes” — and his time working at Chipotle to learn the basics of the restaurant operations.

A two-star review is only the latest instance of ChòpnBlọk receiving national attention. In addition to the Times 50 best list, Esquire recently named it one of America’s best new restaurants. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand designation for 2025. Amosu earned a semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Texas in the 2025 James Beard Awards.

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3 surprising Houston joints earn spots on new top 50 barbecue list

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