Fort Worth finally has its Michelin star, and it went to a barbecue joint on Dick Price Road. Anyone who has stood in that line on a Saturday morning will tell you it was only a matter of time.
The 2026 Michelin Guide Texas landed this morning with no ceremony, no red carpet and no chefs nervously checking their phones in a hotel ballroom. Michelin simply sent out a press release, and North Texas got a modest but meaningful update. Here is what actually happened, and what we make of it.
Start with the headline. Goldee’s Bar-B-Q, a two-time Bib Gourmand winner, was promoted to one star, making it the first starred restaurant in Fort Worth’s history. The inspectors wrote that the food is worth the hours-long wait in the Texas sun, which is about as close to poetry as Michelin gets. Goldee’s opened in 2020, built by a group of young pitmasters who came up cooking at some of the most respected smokers in Texas, and Texas Monthly named it the best barbecue joint in the state the very next year. Michelin is late to the party, but it showed up.
It matters beyond Fort Worth, too. Goldee’s is open only a few days a week, serves on trays and sells brisket by the pound. Michelin putting a star on that is a statement that great cooking in Texas does not need tablecloths. Barbecue has quietly become one of the guide’s favorite categories statewide, and North Texas now has a seat at that table.
In Dallas, the two stars held. Tatsu Dallas, Tatsuya Sekiguchi’s tiny omakase counter in Deep Ellum, has now kept its star for all three years Michelin has been in Texas. Mamani, Christophe De Lellis’ French restaurant in Uptown, held onto the star it famously earned last year after fewer than 50 days in business. Nobody lost a star, and nobody gained one. Sushi Kozy downtown, which a lot of people in the business quietly thought had a real shot this year, remains on the Recommended list.
That puts North Texas at three starred restaurants, the most it has ever had. For perspective, Texas now has 19 in total, and none at the two- or three-star level. Houston and Austin still dominate the starred list, and that gap is going to keep coming up until Michelin sends its inspectors north more often.
The Bib Gourmand list, Michelin’s nod to great food at a fair price, got one fresh face. Resident Taqueria, the small, chef-driven taco shop in Lake Highlands, earned its first Bib. It is a deserved pick and a nice reminder that a neighborhood counter on Audelia Road can land in the same guide as a 10-seat omakase. Cattleack Barbeque in Farmers Branch, Gemma on Henderson, Một Hai Ba on Lewis Street, Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen on Greenville and Nonna on Lomo Alto all kept their Bibs for the third straight year.
The one Bib that did not return is Lucia in Bishop Arts. It was moved over to the Recommended list instead. Make of that what you will. David Uygur’s cooking at Lucia has been among the best in Dallas for more than a decade, and a category shuffle does not change that one bit.
The Recommended list now runs to 24 North Texas restaurants. The newcomers are Fond on Elm Street downtown, Jashan, the Indian fine dining room in Plano, Mābo, the Japanese spot on Berkshire Lane, and Olōyō, the contemporary Mexican restaurant on Gaston Avenue that has been open only a short time. Jashan’s inclusion is especially welcome. The suburbs north of Dallas have some of the best Indian cooking in Texas, and the guide has mostly ignored them until now.
Plenty of familiar names stayed put on Michelin’s Dallas list, including Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton, Barsotti’s, Crown Block, El Carlos Elegante, Knox Bistro, Mercat Bistro, Mister Charles, Monarch, Quarter Acre, Sachet, Stillwell’s, Stock & Barrel, Tei-An and Written by the Seasons in Dallas, plus Harvest at the Masonic in McKinney and Smoke’N Ash BBQ in Arlington. In Fort Worth, Birrieria y Taqueria Cortez and Panther City BBQ remain Recommended, but no new Fort Worth restaurants were added at all.
The biggest head-scratcher is a name that is no longer there. Georgie, the Knox-Henderson restaurant led by Bruno Davaillon, who once ran a Michelin-starred kitchen in Las Vegas, does not appear in this year’s guide. Michelin rarely explains these decisions, and it did not here. Anyone who has eaten Davaillon’s cooking will have a hard time understanding the diss.
So what does it all add up to? A good day for Fort Worth, a steady day for Dallas and a reminder that Michelin still sees only a slice of what is happening here. North Texas has more than 16,000 restaurants, and the list barely scratches the surface of the Vietnamese kitchens in Haltom City, the taquerias on Jefferson Boulevard or the Korean barbecue in Carrollton.
There is also a business question hanging over all of it. The tourism-funded deal that brought Michelin to Texas covered three years, and this was year three. Visit Dallas, which helps pay for it with hotel tax dollars, told the Dallas Morning News it considers the money well spent. If the guide comes back, here is hoping the inspectors spend a lot more time north of Austin.
In the meantime, congratulations to the crew at Goldee’s. Get there early. The line just got longer.
