Most people in Dallas haven’t heard of Jonny Butch yet. That’s going to change.
Butch works the pits at Goldee’s Barbecue in Fort Worth — the operation at 4645 Dick Price Road that Texas Monthly has ranked number one in the state, that the New York Times has called out, and that Food & Wine named among the best new chef programs in America in 2024. Being part of that crew is already a credential. But Butch’s path to a Fort Worth pit room is not the standard one.
His resume reads like someone who couldn’t decide between two completely different careers and decided to pursue both. He’s cooked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, one of the most influential farm-to-table restaurants in the country. He’s staged at Noma in Copenhagen, which needs no introduction. He’s worked at Gem NYC, Bosq in Aspen, Antler Room in Kansas City, Ends Meat Butchery. The through-line is craft — serious, precise, ingredient-obsessed cooking. At some point, that curiosity turned toward smoke and fire and hundred-year-old Texas technique, and that’s where things get interesting.
Butch spent the better part of last summer driving across eight states — Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas — eating at old-school barbecue joints, the kind of places that haven’t changed much since they opened and aren’t trying to. He came back with a clear point of view: the most exciting direction in barbecue right now isn’t forward. It’s backward. Classic methods, classic cuts, the kind of menu that fits on a short list and doesn’t need to explain itself.
That thinking produced Beef Lounge Bar-B-Que, his pop-up project, which held its first event late last year at Goldee’s. The menu was direct and specific — Elgin hot guts, German potato salad, sauerkraut, jaternice, the Czech pork-liver sausage you find in Central Texas hill country towns that most people have never thought to seek out. It was not a greatest-hits menu. It was a statement about what barbecue was before the influencer era got hold of it.
He’s done a second pop-up since, with more planned. No permanent address yet, no announced schedule beyond what surfaces on his Instagram. That’s the nature of it right now — Beef Lounge exists on its own terms and its own timeline. But the combination of background, obsession, and execution behind this thing is not something that stays a pop-up forever.
Goldee’s is at 4645 Dick Price Road in Fort Worth, open Friday through Sunday until sold out. Follow @jonny.butch on Instagram for Beef Lounge dates when they’re announced.
