Angelo George opened his barbecue joint on White Settlement Road in Fort Worth in 1958 with four dining tables, a stand-up counter, and not much else. He ran it with his wife, June, and his brother, Orville. It was as much a beer joint as a restaurant in those early years, the kind of place where the smoked meat was the reason people showed up but the cold beer was the reason they stayed.
Angelo’s son, Skeet, grew up working the place alongside him. When Angelo died in 1997 at 71, Skeet didn’t have to learn the business from scratch. He’d already spent his whole life in it. Skeet took over and built what had been a neighborhood beer joint into one of the most recognized restaurants in Fort Worth, the kind of spot people plan a trip around rather than stumble into.
Skeet passed away in December of 2017 at 67. His son Jason now runs the pit as the third generation of the family to do it, working from the same recipes and techniques his father and grandfather built the business on. Jason didn’t inherit a formula so much as a set of hands-on lessons passed down at the smoker, which is a different thing, and it shows in how little the food has drifted over almost seven decades.
Walk in today and the room still looks like a hunting lodge that got into the barbecue business. Deer, caribou, elk, and a mounted buffalo cover the walls, alongside exotic fish and a seven-foot black bear that greets people at the door. None of it is staged for effect. It’s the accumulated result of three generations of George family hunting and fishing trips, hung up over the years the way a family actually hangs things up, not the way a designer would arrange them.
The food is the reason the room full of taxidermy has stayed relevant instead of becoming a novelty. The sliced brisket is the anchor, offered lean or wet, with a dark, peppery bark giving way to meat soft enough to cut with the edge of a pickle spear. Jason George, the current pitmaster, has said the kitchen smokes anywhere from 20 to 30 briskets a day, more on weekends, all cooked low over hickory the same way his father and grandfather did it. The chopped beef sandwich has its own loyal following separate from the sliced plates, piled high enough that it needs both hands.
The ribs come meaty rather than fall-off-the-bone, which barbecue people are divided as the best way to serve them, but many love the more tender version. On the side, the pinto beans, potato salad, and smoked mac and cheese hold their own rather than functioning as an afterthought to the meat. The peach cobbler closes things out for anyone who still has room, which after a full plate here is not a guarantee.
Then there’s the beer, served in schooners kept in a freezer set to roughly 28 degrees. Pour a draft into one and the beer freezes along the inside of the glass on contact, a thin skin of ice forming before the first sip. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of thing regulars mention before they mention the brisket, because it signals the place hasn’t cut a single corner just to move people through faster.
Texas Monthly put it plainly once, calling Angelo’s the yardstick against which every new barbecue joint in the state gets measured. That’s not nostalgia talk. Fort Worth has no shortage of barbecue competition, old and new, and Angelo’s has held its position through all of it without changing what it does to chase a trend.
The family has also built a retail line out of the restaurant’s dry rubs and bottled sauces, now sold in area grocery stores including Albertsons, Kroger, Minyard, Brookshire’s, and Sack ‘N Save, along with direct shipping through their website. It’s a rare case of a family barbecue joint expanding without opening a second location or watering down what made the first one worth visiting.
Angelo’s BBQ is at 2533 White Settlement Road in Fort Worth. It’s open Monday and Tuesday from 11am to 8pm, Wednesday through Saturday from 11am to 9pm, and closed on Sunday. The phone number is (817) 332-0357, and the full menu along with the retail rub and sauce line is at angelosbbq.com.
