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 arrived this morning with no ceremony and no red carpet, just a list posted online. North Texas came away with a modest but meaningful update. Here is what actually happened, straight from Michelin’s own selections, and what we make of it.
Start with the headline. Goldee’s Bar-B-Q, a Bib Gourmand the last two years, was promoted to one star, the first in Fort Worth’s history. Michelin pointed to the beef and pork ribs, the jalapeño-cheddar sausage and the signature brisket, cooked low and slow over local post oak, and noted that patrons do not seem to mind the long line out the door. Goldee’s was founded by a group of friends in 2019 and opened in 2020, 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 three days a week, serves on trays and sells brisket by the pound. A star for a place like that says great cooking in Texas does not need tablecloths. The inspectors even wrote this year about pitmasters pushing for excellence despite the soaring cost of beef, and Goldee’s is the proof.
In Dallas, both 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-Italian restaurant in Uptown, held onto the star it famously earned last year just 48 days after opening. Dallas did not gain a star, and it did not lose one.
That puts North Texas at three starred restaurants, the most it has ever had. Texas has 19 in all, none of them at the two- or three-star level, and the only other new stars this year went to Austin, where Fabrik was promoted and Kappo Kappo debuted with one. Austin and Houston still lead the state, and that gap is going to keep coming up until the inspectors spend more time up here.
The Bib Gourmand list, Michelin’s nod to great food at a fair price, is where Dallas really shines. The city has seven Bibs this year, and one is new. Resident Taqueria, Andrew Savoie’s chef-driven taco shop in Lake Highlands, earned its first Bib on the very day it turned 11. It is a deserved pick and a nice reminder that a neighborhood counter on Audelia Road can share a guide with an omakase counter.
The other six all kept their Bibs for a third straight year: Cattleack Barbeque in Farmers Branch, Gemma on Henderson, Lucia in Bishop Arts, Một Hai Ba on Lewis Street, Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen on Lower Greenville and nonna on Lomo Alto. With Goldee’s moving up, Cattleack is now the only barbecue joint holding a Bib in North Texas. Michelin has the full Bib Gourmand list for the state.
On the Recommended list, the name that jumped out at us is Olōyō, chef Olivia López’s restaurant built around heirloom Mexican corn, masa and the cooking of Colima on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Michelin singled it out as an example of the personal, chef-driven restaurants shaping Texas right now, and the menu changes with the seasons, though tamales, huaraches and sopes turn up often. You can browse the full Dallas selection on Michelin’s Dallas page.
One more nice moment for the suburbs. When Michelin’s inspectors wrote about the farm-to-table movement in Texas, the restaurant they called the most complete example in the state was Harvest at the Masonic in McKinney, which sources its produce from Water Boy Farms, run by executive chef and master gardener Andrea Shackelford. That is high praise for a restaurant on a courthouse square about 30 miles north of downtown Dallas.
So what does it all add up to? A great day for Fort Worth, a steady one for Dallas and a reminder that Michelin still sees only a slice of what is happening here. The Vietnamese kitchens in Haltom City, the taquerias along Jefferson Boulevard and the Korean barbecue in Carrollton remain largely unexplored by the guide.
There is also a business question hanging over all of it. As the Dallas Morning News has reported, the tourism-funded agreement that brought Michelin to Texas covered three years, and this was year three. 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.
