Blood Bros. BBQ
Quy Hoang smokes brisket over oak and pecan in a Bellaire strip center, then sends it out as chow fun and char siu banh mi.
Why go
Hoang and the brothers Terry and Robin Wong grew up together in Alief and ran Blood Bros. as a pop-up before they signed a lease in 2017.65 The pit work is orthodox, oak and pecan in an offset, and the menu is not: pho-rubbed beef belly goes into a banh mi with garlic aioli and chicken liver pate, and the ribs get a gochujang glaze.1 The board changes most days.1 The room is wood, angle iron and Astros orange.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: the brisket fried rice, and the smoked char siu banh mi if the board has it.1
- Order: the beef brisket with gai lan chow fun. The Chronicle's team calls it
a wok hei meets Central Texas love story.
2 - Order: the plain brisket, ribs and house sausage if you brought somebody who wants Texas and nothing else. Hoang cooks them every day.2
- Avoid: treating the specials as an add-on. Michelin and the New York Times both put the kitchen's best work on that board.1
What locals & experts say
- The New York Times, 50 favorite restaurants in America (2021), Brett Anderson:
The daily changing menu at this strip mall barbecue restaurant in a Houston suburb is a product of the seemingly endless ideas for cooking Texas barbecue whirling through the brains of the owners and staff.
5 - MICHELIN Guide Texas (2025), Bib Gourmand:
Where else will you find banh mi with pho-rubbed beef belly, a swipe of garlic aioli, chicken liver pâté? How many pitmasters glaze their ribs in gochujang?
1 - Houston Chronicle, Top 100 Restaurants (2024):
few places in the city better exemplify Houston cuisine than Blood Bros.
2
Good to know
- Timing: the kitchen sells out, so go early.6
- Booking: first come, first served.5
- Where it is: 5425 Bellaire Blvd, in Bellaire, which is its own city surrounded by Houston.1
Verdict
should-visit — Two Michelin selections have carried the Bib Gourmand and the Chronicle put this door in its 2024 Top 100, so the standing has held for years. The line that decides the rung is Brett Anderson's for the New York Times in 2021, which says the daily specials board is where the ideas actually land, and that board is what to order off. It sits under the star joints for one reason: Daniel Vaughn's 2025 Top 50, read end to end, does not carry it, and the 2021 edition did.