BBQ News
One Fort Worth-area BBQ joint makes Southern Living's best new list
Dayne's BBQ ribs
A new list that ranks Texas barbecue joints against other Southern states puts one Fort Worth player in the top 10.
Southern Living magazine has published its list of the South’s Best New Barbecue Joints of 2024, and Dayne's Craft Barbecue — the mom-and-pop shop that opened its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Aledo in 2024 — made the top 10, coming in at No. 6.
To be eligible, a restaurant must have opened after Southern Living’s last best new list, which was published in September 2021.
Texas and South Carolina tie, with five restaurants each on the list. The Texas winners are:
- No. 2: Barbs B Q (Lockhart)
- No. 6: Dayne’s Craft Barbecue (Aledo)
- No. 9: Brisket & Rice (Houston)
- No. 13: LeRoy & Lewis (Austin)
- No. 17: Reese Bros Barbecue (San Antonio)
Written by contributing barbecue editor Robert F. Moss, the list includes 22 restaurants from seven states.
At Dayne’s, Moss finds exceptional brisket, a standout smash burger and “Fritos-pie beans — savory cowboy-esque pintos that are topped with cheese, crunchy Fritos, pickled jalapeños, and squiggles of lime-infused crema.”
Barbs gets hailed for its brisket, beef ribs, and turkey as well as smoked lamb chops and the signature green spaghetti in a poblano-cream sauce.
At Reese Bros, Moss recognizes the restaurant's Tex-Mex touches such as queso fundido sausage link, flour tortillas, and poblano mac & cheese.
LeRoy & Lewis' brick & mortar location, open since February, gets a shout-out for preserving the best dishes from its food truck days while adding cocktails, and, perhaps even more importantly, air conditioning.
Brisket & Rice makes the list for transforming a former Church’s Chicken into a destination-worthy joint serving barbecue fried rice (natch) and “ Poor Man’s Macaroni — noodles wok-fried with bacon and a sweet tomato sauce,” Moss writes.
While each restaurant approaches barbecue from a slightly different perspective, Moss finds some common threads for all of his choices.
“For starters, most are traditionalists in at least some sense. Most cook on wood-fired pits, and many have embraced and championed the long-running specialities of their particularly regions,” he writes. “At the same time, each is doing their own thing, experimenting with new flavors and techniques, adopting less-common cuts of meat, and drawing upon family recipes and their own culinary heritage.”
