Goldee’s Bar-B-Q Won Fort Worth’s First Michelin Star. More Than Half the Line Had No Idea.

Goldee’s Bar-B-Q started with five friends from Arlington, Texas, who learned barbecue at five different restaurants and compared notes on their days off.

On October 8 that habit earned their six-year-old joint a Michelin star, the first ever awarded to a Fort Worth restaurant.

The people in line that morning mostly had no idea. A Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter talked to them and found that more than half had not heard the place had been honored.

They had come from California, North Carolina and East Texas for the reason people have been coming for years. They had heard about the barbecue.

Who Owns Goldee’s Bar-B-Q

The story begins in Arlington, the city between Dallas and Fort Worth. According to The Dallas Morning News, Nupohn Inthanousay, Lane Milne, Jalen Heard, Dylan Taylor and Jonny White grew up there together.

Some had been friends since elementary school, and all of them grew close at Martin High School.

After graduation they moved to Austin for college. Around 2013 and 2014, each of them took a job at a different barbecue restaurant in the city.

That turned into a school of their own. “We would come together on our days off and show each other what we have learned and try new things,” Nupohn told the paper.

They saved for a place of their own by teaching barbecue classes and catering. In 2019 they came back and found a small building with a weathered sign by the road.

Lane said it had the feel they wanted, and it let them start small and build from there.

Two of the five, Dylan and Jonny, later left for other ventures, and Zain Shafi joined. Today Nupohn, Lane, Jalen and Zain own Goldee’s together.

When Did Goldee’s Open

Goldee’s opened in February 2020 at 4645 Dick Price Road, on the southern edge of Fort Worth. CBS News Texas describes it as a no-frills barbecue shack wedged next to a diesel machine shop.

The timing was hard. The pandemic closed the dining room the next month.

The restaurant stayed dark for about a month. Then the friends served customers at the curb for a year and a half.

Recognition came anyway. A Dallas Morning News article in February 2021 put the place on the map.

That October, Texas Monthly, the magazine that ranks the state’s barbecue joints, named Goldee’s No. 1 on its list of the 50 best in Texas.

In 2024, Food & Wine put Jonny, Jalen and Lane in its class of Best New Chefs in America.

Along the way the pit room became a classroom for other cooks. BBQ United told that part in August, in a piece on the pitmasters Goldee’s has trained and sent out to open their own places.

What Is on the Menu at Goldee’s

The brisket made the name. The rest of the menu shows who is cooking.

Lane pointed the Star-Telegram to a Laotian pork sausage and lamb ribs with a Sichuan rub. A rotating sausage slot currently holds a Serbian link, and on a lucky day there is a tandoori turkey leg.

Nearly all of it is made in the building. The Morning News reports that the team bakes its own bread and makes its own pickles, potato salad, mayonnaise, beans, sauces and almost all of its sausages.

“Our menu is a living thing,” Nupohn said. The recipes on the tray today are not the ones the restaurant served a year ago.

What Michelin Said About Goldee’s

The Michelin Guide is the French restaurant guide whose stars are among the highest honors in dining. It relies on anonymous inspectors who eat as ordinary customers.

For the past two years Goldee’s held a Bib Gourmand, the award Michelin gives for good food at a moderate price.

This year the inspectors moved it up to one star, which the guide defines as cooking that is “worth a stop.”

Their notes read like a regular’s order. Michelin’s entry for Goldee’s says the Black Angus brisket, cooked low and slow over local post oak, is “meltingly tender with a rich, clean flavor.”

The turkey is “notably juicy.” The jalapeño-cheddar sausage has “a satisfying snap.” The inspectors tell readers not to skip the banana pudding.

Then the guide endorsed the line itself. The food, the inspectors wrote, is “absolutely worth the hours-long wait in the Texas sun.”

Zain gave the Star-Telegram a plain reason for the step up. “Barbecue is a lot of hard work,” he said, and he credited the whole staff, top to bottom.

Which Texas Barbecue Joints Have a Michelin Star

Goldee’s joins a short list. Michelin had never given a star to a barbecue restaurant anywhere until its first Texas guide in 2024.

That year four joints earned one each: CorkScrew BBQ in Spring, near Houston, and InterStellar BBQ, la Barbecue and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in Austin.

This year’s guide named only three new one-star restaurants in the whole state. Goldee’s was the only barbecue joint among them. The other two, Fabrik and Kappo Kappo, are both in Austin.

Texas now has 19 one-star restaurants and none with two or three. By CBS News Texas’s list, four of the 19 are barbecue joints: CorkScrew, InterStellar, LeRoy and Lewis, and Goldee’s.

For Fort Worth the math is simpler. The city had waited through two editions of the guide without a star of any kind.

Its first one went to a barbecue joint that closes at 3 p.m.

How Long Is the Wait at Goldee’s

The award lands on a restaurant that is already full. Goldee’s seats 48 people at eight tables inside, according to the Morning News, and the wait can pass two hours.

More than 40 people stood in line on the morning of the announcement with the dining room packed.

Jalen told the paper the kitchen goes through about a ton of meat each week, and he expects the star to bring more people.

The first two at the door that day were Joel Vienneau and Martin Hamel. They had come from Quebec to eat their way through Louisiana and Texas for their 50th birthdays, and they found Goldee’s on YouTube.

“I will be able to say that I was here the day this happened,” Joel said.

The second man in line, Karl Finke, drove in from Abilene, in West Texas. He had tried to eat at Goldee’s years ago, saw the length of the line and turned around.

This time he waited.

The owners have talked about expanding. Nupohn said they do not want to lose the atmosphere of the small room that people drive out to find.

Zain said the goal does not change with the guest. “At the end of the day, if it’s a local customer, international customer, we want to serve the best food possible,” he said.

Goldee’s is open Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday is new. The restaurant added it the week before the star arrived, and Lane called the timing “pure coincidence.”

Five friends who used to trade notes on their days off now have one more day to cook. The line forms early.

Sources

The Dallas Morning News, Imelda García, “Goldee’s BBQ makes history with Fort Worth’s first Michelin star” (Oct. 8, 2026); Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ella Gonzales, “Customers in line for Goldee’s Bar-B-Q had no idea the joint won a Michelin star” (Oct. 8, 2026); CBS News Texas, “Fort Worth barbecue joint Goldee’s BBQ earns coveted star in new Michelin Guide Texas” (Oct. 8, 2026); MICHELIN Guide, Goldee’s Bar-B-Q; Tasting Table, “The Very First Michelin-Starred BBQ Joints Were In Texas”; Dotdash Meredith, “Food & Wine Unveils Its 2024 Best New Chefs in America” (Sept. 10, 2024); Goldee’s Bar-B-Q.

Images: all photographs courtesy Goldee's Bar-B-Q.