Goldee's Was Named the Best Barbecue in Texas. Its Real Legacy Is the Pitmasters It Sends Away.
Since 2020, Goldee's Barbecue in Fort Worth has been called the best in Texas. Its founders give away their recipes, teach classes, and cheer when cooks leave to open their own places. The result is a family tree of acclaimed pitmasters, from Lockhart to Orlando, all tracing back to one corner.
On Friday mornings in southeast Fort Worth, a line forms outside Goldee's Barbecue hours before the doors ever open. People set up lawn chairs along Dick Price Road, play games, and wait for trays of brisket, pork ribs, turkey, and house-made sausage. The wait has been part of the ritual since Texas Monthly named Goldee's the No. 1 barbecue joint in the state in 2021, a ranking that turned a modest weekend smokehouse into an international destination almost overnight. But the most important thing Goldee's makes is not sitting on any of those trays.
It is pitmasters. Over five years, this restaurant has quietly become one of the most influential kitchens in Texas, and not because it guards what it knows. It has become influential because it gives what it knows away. The founders teach classes, published a cookbook, and openly cheer when a cook leaves to open a rival. The proof is scattered across the map now, from a Michelin-honored joint in Lockhart to a smokehouse in Orlando, and almost every branch of it traces back to this one corner.
Five Friends From Arlington
Goldee's was not built by a single star chef. It was built by five friends who grew up together in Arlington: Jonny White, Jalen Heard, Lane Milne, Dylan Taylor, and Nupohn Inthanousay. Before they opened a place of their own, several of them worked at respected barbecue businesses around the state, picking up fire management, meat preparation, and service from a range of different kitchens. “We covered all of our bases in Austin,” co-owner Jalen Heard said. They carried that education back home and built the restaurant together, opening it on February 15, 2020.
There is no head chef barking orders across the pit. “There is a real democratic sense to them. I couldn't tell you who is the leader,” D Magazine food critic Brian Reinhart said of the group. Cooks, owners, and students rotate through the same tasks, sharing the work of preparing the food and running the counter. Goldee's serves customers for only twelve hours each weekend, yet those two services take roughly 150 hours of combined labor to pull off. The team splits that load on purpose, building schedules meant to spare everyone the burnout that hollows out so many restaurant kitchens.
“At the root of it, every business has to make money,” co-founder Lane Milne said. “But we want to try and make sure the people that come here, the people that work here, and us are all happy and want to do it, because inherently that makes better food.” The philosophy sounds soft until you notice how many hard results it has produced.
A Growing Tide Raises All Ships
That generosity runs against the grain of modern craft barbecue, a scene that grew competitive and sometimes petty as the money and the fame arrived. Goldee's chose the opposite posture. After watching the infighting that had shaped parts of the Texas barbecue world, the team decided not to perpetuate it. “We kind of think of it like, a growing tide raises all ships,” Milne said. “It creates an environment where you can all learn from each other. It turns into more of a friendship rather than just a transaction.”
They turned that idea into an actual curriculum. The restaurant runs focused classes on brisket, ribs, and sausage, plus a five-day intensive that walks students through sausage making, trimming, seasoning, live-fire cooking, testing for doneness, slicing, and side preparation. The classes draw home cooks, would-be restaurant owners, and working professionals from across the country and abroad. In 2025 the team went one step further and released a cookbook, putting the methods behind its counter into the hands of people who will never work a single shift there.
The Barbecue Family Tree
The clearest measure of Goldee's reach is the roster of restaurants its people have gone on to run. Chuck Charnichart trained at Goldee's before opening Barbs B Q in Lockhart, a women-led trailer that became one of the most talked-about openings in Texas the moment it started serving. Garden & Gun profiled her as a young pitmaster reshaping the state's barbecue future, and in 2025 the Michelin Guide named her its Texas Young Chef. Jonny White does not hedge about what she can do. “I think she's definitely the best brisket cook in Texas,” he has said.
She is not the only one. Former Goldee's cook Amir Jalali opened Redbird BBQ in Port Neches. Zain Shafi worked at Goldee's, left to open Sabar BBQ, which married Central Texas smoke to the Pakistani flavors of his family, and after Sabar closed he came back to Goldee's as a co-owner. The mentorship has reached well beyond Texas, too. In Orlando, Smokemade Meats + Eats owner Tyler Brunache credits the Goldee's team as both mentors and friends who helped him find his craft. Redbird, Sabar, and Barbs B Q have all landed on Texas Monthly's Top 50 list, and none of them is a copy of Goldee's. Each one reflects the person who built it.
Passing It Down
The founders have collected plenty of their own honors along the way. In 2024, Food & Wine named Jalen Heard, Lane Milne, and Jonny White to its Best New Chefs class, a rare nod for a barbecue team in an award that usually goes to fine-dining kitchens. The recognition did not change the approach. Inside the restaurant, current pitmasters Joseph Bastian and a cook known as Butch are already developing and testing recipes for places they hope to open one day. The farm team keeps restocking itself.
That is what separates Goldee's from a restaurant that simply cooks well. A great joint feeds a city. Goldee's has been teaching the next wave of pitmasters how to build joints of their own, and it treats each departure as a graduation rather than a defection. Redbird in Port Neches, Barbs in Lockhart, Smokemade in Orlando: the coaching tree grows a little wider every year.
Why It Matters
Barbecue has always run on knowledge handed from one person to the next. How to tend a fire. When to wrap a brisket. What properly rendered fat should feel like under a knife. Goldee's took that old, informal tradition and made it a system, and then it made the system generous. “The kind of people who go out and open their own shops were probably going to do that whether they came to us or not,” Milne said. “But hopefully, we helped alleviate some of the growing pains.”
The restaurant will be remembered for what comes off its smokers every weekend, for the brisket that earned the No. 1 ranking and the line that still forms in the dark on Dick Price Road. It may be remembered longer for the pitmasters it kept sending out the door, and for deciding, in a business that often mistakes secrecy for strength, that giving the craft away was the surest way to keep it alive.
Sources
Texas Monthly names Goldee's the No. 1 barbecue joint in Texas, Top 50 BBQ 2021.
How Goldee's Barbecue Trained Some of the Best New Pitmasters in Texas, Texas Monthly.
Goldee's founders named to Food & Wine's 2024 Best New Chefs, Dallas Innovates.
Chuck Charnichart of Barbs B Q named 2025 Michelin Guide Texas Young Chef, MICHELIN Guide.
Goldee's Barbecue founding and February 15, 2020 opening, Wikipedia.