Texas Monthly's Top 50 BBQ 2025: How Texas Barbecue Got So Ridiculously Good

Texas barbecue has undergone a seismic shift since Franklin Barbecue opened in 2009, and Texas Monthly's latest ranking reveals just how dramatically the state's smoking game has leveled up. When the magazine's barbecue team set out to compile their 2025 Top 50 list, they faced an embarrassment of riches: 120 solid contenders instead of the typical handful beyond the 50-slot threshold. This explosion of quality is staggering—only 7 joints from the 2013 list (the first compiled by the article's author) made it onto the 2025 roster, not because they failed but because the competition has become brutally fierce.

The transformation is real and measurable. First-rate brisket, once a rarity requiring devoted searching, is now commonplace. Sausage, historically outsourced even at top-tier joints, is now made in-house and made well across most establishments of note. To determine the final 50, Texas Monthly's taste testers drove thousands of miles across Texas in late 2024, with barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn revisiting the most promising candidates unannounced (and the magazine footed the bill, including for brisket at those "crazy prices"). The author himself spent January and February re-revisiting more than 100 joints, describing the experience as simultaneously tedious, exhausting, thrilling, and energizing—a crash course in barbecue mastery where he repeatedly found himself saying "This is the best __ I've ever tasted."

But here's where it gets interesting: Texas barbecue isn't just incrementally better—it's fundamentally expanding its repertoire. The list includes innovative additions like brisket fried rice, smoked koobideh sausage, and jerk chicken alongside exquisitely executed standards. Lamb, a Texas barbecue staple from centuries past, has made a resurgence. Beef cheeks appeared multiple times this year, suggesting they could challenge brisket's dominance in future rankings—though at $40 per pound, brisket shows no signs of disappearing anytime soon.

The featured establishments showcase this evolution perfectly. Evie Mae's in West Texas, helmed by Arnis and Mallory Robbins for the past decade, delivers smoky, juicy brisket alongside innovative items like green chile–cheese sausage and a chopped rib sandwich. Truth in Houston opened to literal cheers from the line, featuring bark-encrusted, salt-and-pepper briskets carved tableside and creative touches like brisket boudin in gossamer casings and fiber-forward sides like garlicky kale Caesar. On the Gulf Coast, a converted gas station with a turquoise cow statue serves Tex-Mex–inflected barbecue featuring serrano-and-cheese links, barbecue gumbo loaded with brisket chunks, and smoked tamales. The author notes that Texas is big enough to support both first-rate traditional and first-rate innovative barbecue simultaneously—and there's plenty of both.