Best BBQ in Texas: Goode Company Barbeque of Houston

Exit Kirby from highway 59, drive south for a few blocks, and you will come upon the original Goode Company Barbeque, one of the culinary Meccas for anyone who likes their meat well smoked. The restaurant is a building that looks like a dilapidated barn on the east side of Kirby, surrounded by picnic tables and meager parking spaces. Inside there is seating for about forty and a kind of South East Texas ambiance that has to be seen to be believed.

Pick up a tray and get into the serving line and prepare for some of the best Texas barbeque in the world. Meats available include barbeque brisket, ham, chicken, pork, turkey breast, pork links, jalapeno pork links, Czech sausage, turkey sausage, ribs, and sweet water duck. You can get them in a po-boy sandwich or on a plate with a choice of two vegetables and home made jalapeno bread. Vegetables include jalapeno pinto beans, potato salad, cole slaw, jambalaya, and Austin baked beans. You can top it off with a desert of pecan pie, chocolate cream pie, or a homemade brownie. A glass of beer or iced tea completes the perfect Texas barbeque meal.

The secret to Goode Company’s barbeque involves the way the meat is prepared and then the way it is cooked. First, the meat is rubbed down with a dry marinade and is allowed to chill in a cooler for at least twenty four hours. Then the meat is slow smoked in a gigantic rotisserie style oven especially designed for the process. The oven is fueled with mesquite wood and has a process which keeps the smoke circulating. The meat usually takes about eighteen hours to smoke before it is ready for consumption.

Goode Company Barbeque began in 1977 when Jim Goode bought an old hamburger place for a few thousand dollars. Since then, Goode’s culinary empire has expanded to another barbeque place on highway I 10, two sea food restaurants, and a hamburger/taqueria

The Goode Company Barbeque on Kirby is usually quite crowded, especially during lunch and dinner. However if there is no room along the rough hewed benches inside, there is likely places to sit at the picnic tables outside. You can chow down on your favorite barbeque meat while listening to Willie Nelson blasting on the loud speaker system. Parking is also at a premium and backing out after a sumptuous dinner into the heavily trafficked Kirby Street can be an adventure. But these minor inconveniences are worth it for the food and the friendly service. .