Panther City BBQ.

Panther City BBQ

Panther City layers creamed corn, chopped brisket, queso fresco, cilantro and hot sauce into a cup and calls it brisket elote, and Texas Monthly calls it a full meal.2

Why go

Chris Magallanes and Ernest Morales worked together in the audiovisual business, won an amateur barbecue competition, quit their jobs and opened a food truck outside Republic Street Bar in Fort Worth's Near Southside.2 They built a permanent room on the same lot, took the bar next door, and Magallanes's own account of the company: Nobody here really comes from a culinary background, and We're just guys who like to cook barbecue.7 Texas Monthly put them tenth in the state in 2021 and kept them on the list in 2025, and D Magazine's North Texas guide has them fourth.210 The MICHELIN Guide put them in the Recommended tier of its first Texas selection in 2024.8 Everything runs on post oak through an offset smoker.1

Order this / avoid

• Order: the brisket elote. Kevin Gray calls it a creamy, spicy, meal-sized side that reimagines the Mexican street classic.5
• Order: the pork belly poppers, which are burnt ends stuffed into jalapeño halves with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon.2
• Order: the brisket guisada at a weekend, with the beer-and-bacon borracho beans and the fresh flour tortillas.51
• Order: the spareribs and the smoked turkey. Kevin Gray: the former competition cooks behind Panther City make remarkable sticky-sweet glazed spare ribs, and their moist smoked turkey puts the typical Thanksgiving bird to shame.5
• Finish on the Nutter Butter cheesecake pudding, which Texas Monthly prefers to the banana pudding.2
• Avoid: the indoor room at a rush. Vaughn's tip is to take one of the picnic tables on the covered patio.1

What locals & experts say

• Daniel Vaughn, Texas Monthly, 2025: Between the brisket birria tacos, brisket-topped elote en vaso, and pork belly poppers, you could fill up here without eating any barbecue standards, but then you'd miss some of the best sliced brisket, turkey, and spareribs in the state.3
• Malcolm Mayhew, Fort Worth Magazine: get the brisket elote, Panther City's fantastic, and fantastically filling, mash-up of corn and chopped brisket. But don't sleep on their smoked brisket guisada.9
• Chris Magallanes, on the Fort Worth pit scene: A lot of these guys are just like us, he says, and They get up early, smoke the meat themselves, wait on the customers themselves and clean up the trash themselves. No investors, no employees.12
• Fort Worth Magazine's readers made it their barbecue pick in 2026.11

Good to know

• There is a second door, and it is not as good. The owners bought Bailey's Bar-B-Que downtown in 2024 and run it as Fort Worth BBQ Company, smoking the meat on these pits and hauling it over each morning, on cheaper choice-grade briskets with salt and pepper instead of the house rubs. Vaughn: It's still solid barbecue, but not as good as you'll get down at Panther City.4
• A third address is coming, on North Main Street in the Historic Northside, in the building La Playa Maya used to occupy.6
• They teach. BBQU runs one Saturday a month, on wood, fire and meat.5
• The gas smokers at the second room did not survive the handover. Morales on trying them: It exploded, knocking him backward.4

Verdict

must-visit — A Fort Worth pit whose best plates are the ones that are not barbecue: corn and chopped brisket layered in a cup, pork belly burnt ends packed into bacon-wrapped jalapenos, a weekends-only brisket stew you eat with flour tortillas. Order the brisket elote and the poppers, get the guisada if it is a weekend, and take a spare rib, which Vaughn rates among the best in the state.