This week, two Texas barbecue joints have received serious accolades from national magazines. Barbs B Q, in Lockhart, was named one of Bon Appétit’s best new restaurants, and Jalen Heard, Lane Milne, and Jonny White, of Goldee’s Barbecue, in Fort Worth, were named to Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs class of 2024. The two joints represent modern takes on Texas barbecue in towns with long-standing barbecue reputations. They’re also both inextricably linked, thanks to the willingness of the Goldee’s crew to train future entrepreneurs such as Barbs B Q co-owner Chuck Charnichart. Goldee’s has built the best farm team of new pitmasters, and Charnichart now sits at the top of that roster.
Charnichart was the second full-time hire at Goldee’s. She joined the group of co-owners and quickly made her mark in the pit room. “I think she’s definitely the best brisket cook in Texas,” White told Garden & Gun for a profile of Barbs B Q that was published before the joint even opened. I first visited last July, about a month after the debut. After reflecting on the spectacular tray I shared with a few colleagues, I wrote that Barbs had “found ways to bring new flavors to the most basic building blocks of Texas barbecue.” The experience met my very high expectations, and Barbs B Q was an immediate lock for our best new barbecue joint list last September.
Unlike Goldee’s, which opened quietly on the outskirts of Fort Worth a month before the COVID-19 pandemic, Barbs B Q had to be great immediately. The Garden & Gun preview, coupled with a starring role for the joint in a New York Times story in early July, elevated everyone’s expectations. Charnichart, just 25 at the time, said lessons she learned at Goldee’s helped her withstand the pressure. She said some of White’s fearlessness rubbed off on her. “Seeing him be bold and truly not care what anyone was saying, and be unapologetically real,” she said, gave Charnichart the confidence to do the same. “From Lane, I got this relentless thirst to adapt recipes and try new things,” she continued, and “from Jalen I got this grounded mentality.” She channeled Heard’s attitude to remain calm through the challenges running the business brings.
And the challenges have not been small for Barbs B Q. Much of the early press centered around the team of three women who’d opened the restaurant together. Charnichart is the only one who remains, after Haley Conlin left the business in January and Alexis Tovias was asked to depart in February. Charnichart has built a new team, though the workers still require more training before the restaurant can open on Fridays, which is a goal for Barbs. (The joint currently serves only on Saturdays and Sundays.) All that attention also brought an assumption that Barbs B Q gets all the business it needs. Charnichart said this most recent distinction is even sweeter because last weekend was the slowest of the year, despite Barbs being named one of the South’s best new barbecue joints by Southern Living just weeks ago.
The Bon Appétit list is the first national nod for Barbs B Q since the split of the founders. Restaurant editor Elazar Sontag wrote, “Where traditionalists zig, Charnichart zags and this state’s barbecue is better for it.” In addition, the magazine profiled Charnichart individually, calling her the Chef of the Moment among this year’s group. “It’s reassuring because I was questioning myself a lot when all of that was happening,” Charnichart said of the recognition. “It was conflicting for me, but we’re back to me and my dream, and nobody can take that away from me.”
The new restaurant editor at Food & Wine is Austinite Raphael Brion. He took on the search for this new list of chefs as his first task in the position. Seeing a Texan with good taste recognize the skill of the Goldee’s pitmasters wasn’t a surprise, but barbecue had been absent on the magazine’s list since 2021, when Matt Horn of Horn Barbecue was included. And for those who know that Goldee’s isn’t exactly new, Food & Wine defines “new” chefs as those “who have been in charge of a kitchen or pastry program for five years or less.” Brion also acknowledged the influence of Goldee’s, writing, “Goldee’s almost functions as a smoked-meat talent incubator that’s training the next generation. There are no secrets here.”
That lack of secrecy is what drew Amir Jalali there in 2021. “I was trying to find somebody to learn from,” he told me when I reviewed his Redbird BBQ, which he opened last year in Port Neches. White invited him to come work at Goldee’s. Jalali made it clear that he planned to eventually leave for his own project, but that wasn’t a hindrance. His first day came the week after Goldee’s earned the top spot on our Top 50 barbecue list.
Goldee’s needed the help. “They kinda just threw me in,” Jalali said. He took out the trash, cleaned the pits, worked the door and the register, and trimmed the briskets. Eventually, he was smoking brisket on his own and slicing barbecue for customers. During off days, the Goldee’s crew let him use the kitchen to develop recipes for his own place. Milne would spend Mondays testing the sides Jalali planned to serve at Redbird. “He helped me learn how to season every step of every dish,” Jalali said, adding, “They really want Redbird to be successful because of how much they’ve invested in me.”
When I visited the Sabar BBQ food truck, in Fort Worth, on a Saturday just after New Year’s, it was a day off for the owners of Goldee’s, Redbird BBQ, and Barbs B Q. Rather than taking the time to rest, they all met at Sabar to visit another Goldee’s alum, Zain Shafi. I joined everyone at a picnic table, and they studied my reactions to the barbecue, trying to predict my review, but I told them all right away that I loved it. When I talked to Shafi afterward about the heartwarming show of support, he said, “That’s what makes Goldee’s what it is.”
Shafi worked in the pit room with both Charnichart and Jalali. “We all knew we were going to go do our own thing eventually,” he said, “but while we were there, we were one hundred percent invested into Goldee’s.” When it came to dialing in his own methods for smoking the proteins he planned to serve, Shafi used Goldee’s seasonings, smokers, and wood. “It almost feels like it’s in their DNA to help people,” he said, and he had a hard time leaving. “Lane almost had to push me out of there,” he said, and thankfully, Milne did. (Sabar and Redbird opened too late to be included on our list of the best new barbecue joints in Texas).
When I talked with Charnichart, she was at the airport in Portland, Oregon. Bon Appétit had held an event to celebrate its best new restaurants. The festivities had concluded, and she was headed back to Texas for what she hoped would be a surge in customers at Barbs B Q this weekend. She’s planning to bring a new M&M rotisserie smoker to Lockhart soon to increase output, but first she needs to lease the second floor space above the restaurant to get its dedicated parking space, as it’s the only place for a rotisserie to fit. It’s just another issue for Charnichart to solve.
My postannouncement conversation with the Goldee’s crew was brief. Heard, Milne, and White were in New York, and they returned my messages with a joint FaceTime call. They had arrived in town without the proper attire for the Food & Wine celebration, which was planned to take place at Daniel Boulud’s Le Pavillon restaurant, across the street from Grand Central station. The three were headed off on a shopping excursion, and, as if they were daring one another to go through with it, they joked about buying three toques for the event, now that they had been officially christened chefs.
