Yesterday, Texas Monthly published its annual list of the Top 50 Barbecue Joints in Texas, alongside 50 Honorable Mentions. It’s a mouth-watering list, a bucket list for some, and for a lucky few of us, a prod to try out that food truck we’ve often driven past unaware.
While our palates are far from the most refined, we enjoyed reading through the lists, and, again, we were struck by how many of the names on them are in our neighborhoods, or in towns like Pflugerville we pass through often without a second glance. This got us wondering: If these are the best barbecue joints in Texas, what does that say about which are the best barbecue towns in Texas?
We built as fair of a scoring system as we thought we could, awarding 200 points to the first-place joint on the list, 190 to second, 180 to third, 170 to fourth, 160 to fifth, 150 to sixth, 140 to seventh, 130 to eighth, 120 to ninth, 110 to tenth, 75 to those in the top 50 that went unnumbered (implicitly ranked between 11th and 50th), and 25 to the honorable mentions (implicitly ranked between 51st and 100th). The idea was that as the list gets near its top, like most rankings, it stratifies, with the difference between first and second wider than the difference between, say, 75th and 76th. Doing that, here’s what we got.
| Rank | City | Points | Top-100 Joints |
| 1 | Austin | 840 | 11 |
| 2 | Fort Worth | 510 | 6 |
| 3 | Dallas | 435 | 6 |
| 4 | Houston | 280 | 5 |
| 5 | San Antonio | 200 | 4 |
| 6 | Lexington | 190 | 1 |
| 7 | Wolfforth | 180 | 1 |
| 8 | Seguin | 140 | 1 |
| T-9 | Arlington | 100 | 2 |
| T-9 | Beaumont | 100 | 2 |
| T-11 | Bellaire | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Belton | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Brenham | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Brownsville | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Crockett | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | El Paso | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Fredericksburg | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Frisco | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Gonzales | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Grand Prairie | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Katy | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Marfa | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Mathis | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Olton | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Pearland | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Pflugerville | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Port Lavaca | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Rockdale | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | San Marcos | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Spring | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Taylor | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Tomball | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Tyler | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Waco | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Weslaco | 75 | 1 |
| T-11 | Woodway | 75 | 1 |
| T-37 | Abilene | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Argyle | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Bayou Vista | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Bryan | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Cedar Hill | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Cleburne | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | College Station | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Cresson | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Eagle Pass | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Fulshear | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Garland | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Graford | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Greenville | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Hallettsville | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Hallsville | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Hearne | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Hebbronville | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Jefferson | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Junction | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Lockhart | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Lubbock | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Lufkin | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Luling | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Marathon | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Matagorda | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Pecos | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Pharr | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Plano | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Richmond | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Royse City | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Sisterdale | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Slaton | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Smithville | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Sulphur Springs | 25 | 1 |
| T-37 | Wimberley | 25 | 1 |
Austin does take the crown, contributing eleven of the top 100 joints. Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio—four of the other six big cities in the state—give us a combined 21 more. El Paso is conspicuously short on barbecue, and smaller towns Lexington, Wolfforth, and Seguin are carried as one-hit wonders. Arlington and Beaumont each put two joints on the list to round out the top ten, but from there, it’s a big wide mix, with 61 more towns holding at least one joint deserving of pride.
If you want to check out the real list, the links are above. We can’t speak for all of them here in Austin, but we’ll get working on that.
