While Texas Republicans were busy floating a ban on halal food, Muslim pitmasters in the same state were winning Michelin awards, drawing hundred-person lines at 9 a.m., and quietly becoming the most interesting thing to happen to Texas barbecue in a generation. The irony is so thick you could slice it like brisket. Per NPR, at least a dozen halal barbecue spots are now thriving across Texas, and some of them are being talked about as the best in the state.
A Six-Hour Wait for Halal Brisket in Fort Worth
Goldee's BBQ is a small wooden-shack restaurant in Fort Worth. On a recent summer Saturday, nearly 100 people were already lined up outside by 9 a.m. The first in line, a 30-year-old named Thanh Huynh, had planted himself in a lawn chair on the porch since 6:30 in the morning, rattling off a long order from his phone's Notes app while smoky air drifted off the nearby pits.
This is not a novelty act. Texas Monthly named Goldee's the number one barbecue spot in the state in 2021. The Michelin Guide followed with a Bib Gourmand award, given for exceptional food at reasonable prices. The restaurant serves classic Texas staples alongside halal brisket, turkey, and lamb, all raised and slaughtered according to Islamic guidelines.
One customer, Haris Ghaffar, drove an hour from Celina and stood in 90-degree heat for nearly two hours for the halal options. As NPR reports, Ghaffar grew up in the 1990s when a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish was often one of the only halal meals he could find eating out. The distance between that and a Michelin-recognized brisket in Fort Worth is not a small one.
Pakistani Spices, Iraqi Wagyu, and a Former Silicon Valley Engineer
Zain Shafi, a co-owner and pitmaster at Goldee's, previously ran Sabar Barbecue, a food truck that built a following on Pakistani-infused halal dishes: brisket rubbed with bay leaf and coriander, tandoori smoked turkey. He brought that sensibility to Goldee's, and according to NPR, he sources halal cuts because he considers them simply the highest quality meat available.
Then there is Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi, owner of Kafi BBQ in Irving, whose story reads like something someone made up to own conservatives online. He is a former Silicon Valley tech worker who moved to Texas six years ago looking for a Muslim community. On weekends, he smoked brisket in his backyard for friends. By 2024, he had bought a smoker, opened a restaurant, and was serving 13-spice Wagyu brisket, pomegranate-glazed beef belly burnt ends, and an Iraqi-inspired spicy beef sausage that a Fort Worth regular told NPR might be the best sausage he has ever eaten.
Abdul-Kafi told NPR he was driven by the Islamic concept of Ihsan, which means doing something with excellence for the sake of God. The red booths at Kafi BBQ were packed on a recent Sunday afternoon. One non-Muslim customer said he did not need halal, but appreciated knowing the meat had been well cared for, then went back in line to order oxtail.
A Billion-Dollar Industry That Belongs in Hip-Hop Tracks, Apparently
Food writer Farhan Mustafa wrote about the rise of American halal barbecue for Bon Appétit in 2025, and he has a way of putting it that is worth quoting directly. "Halal food is American food," he told NPR. "It belongs on your plate. It belongs in the casual chat. It belongs in hip-hop tracks. It's the most American thing there is."
He is not wrong about the scale. Halal food was once treated as a niche market serving a small community. Today, NPR reports, it is a multibillion-dollar industry woven into the American culinary mainstream. Muslim pitmasters are part of a broader wave of communities putting their own stamp on Texas barbecue, adding layers of cultural heritage to a tradition that was itself built by Black pitmasters and Czech and German immigrants long before it became a state religion.
The halal BBQ scene has also created space for businesses like Yearby's Barbecue and Waterice, run by Black Muslim couple CJ and Sabrina Henley, soon to open in Plano, and Levant Mediterranean BBQ, with locations in Houston and Frisco, whose all-beef menu includes a brisket shawarma sandwich. These are not fusion gimmicks. These are restaurants people are lining up for before sunrise.
While the Smokers Run, the State GOP Considers Banning the Meat
Here is where the story gets its sharp edge. As NPR reports, some Texas GOP lawmakers have openly discussed a ban on halal food, part of a broader pattern of Republican leaders targeting the state's growing Muslim communities with increasingly hostile rhetoric.
Let that sink in. The state that produced the barbecue tradition these pitmasters are now elevating has legislators who want to make the meat illegal on religious grounds. The same state where a halal spot won the number one ranking in Texas Monthly and earned a Michelin nod is also home to elected officials floating the idea of banning the method by which that meat is prepared.
Abdul-Kafi, for his part, is not hiding from the contradiction. He told NPR the rise of halal barbecue is a direct rebuttal to the Islamophobes who claim Muslims do not integrate, do not contribute, do not belong. "I'm sitting here contributing to the most well-known cuisine of Texas," he said. He is not wrong about that either.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that halal food is a threat to Texas. The people making this argument are the same people who will drive forty-five minutes for a good brisket and tell you barbecue is the soul of the state. What they mean, of course, is that the soul of the state belongs to them, specifically, and any interloper who smokes a brisket with coriander and bay leaf is a cultural aggressor rather than someone doing exactly what every group of immigrants and their descendants has done to Texas barbecue for 150 years.
The thing about food as a political battleground is that it always ends the same way. The food wins. Czech kolaches became Texas. Korean tacos became Los Angeles. And 13-spice Wagyu brisket from a former Silicon Valley engineer who moved to Irving to find a Muslim community is going to become Texas barbecue, because it already is Texas barbecue, and the hundred people standing in line at 9 a.m. already know it.
The GOP legislators threatening halal bans will probably keep threatening them, because the actual goal was never food safety or tradition. It was making a community feel like strangers in a country they belong to. That playbook is old and it is ugly. The pitmasters are not playing it. They are too busy perfecting their sausage recipe.
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