Photographs by Mary Kang.
The entrance to Barbs B Q is marked by a pink wood sign decorated with little hearts. Inside, white walls are peppered with menus in that same bubblegum hue, several illustrations of Sonic the Hedgehog, and plenty of kitschy tapestries with life-affirming expressions. The decor recently expanded to include the lime green cover of Brat, the 2024 album that elevated Charli XCX to pop treasure. This is the energetic world of Chuck Charnichart, the 26-year-old pitmaster upending Texas barbecue.
From the start, Charnichart’s approach has been irreverent and cheeky, unmistakably that of someone who grew up on the internet. She didn’t name her first restaurant after herself in the vein of the state’s most prolific pitmasters—Franklin Barbecue, Louie Mueller Barbecue, Terry Black’s
BBQ, and so on. Barbs B Q nods instead to Nicki Minaj, whose army of fans are known as the Barbz. From top to bottom, Charnichart has styled her restaurant with an aesthetic shared by the sorts of queer and female pop icons who smash barriers and reshape American culture in their image. This young pitmaster is reshaping barbecue in hers.
Charnichart’s mastery of traditional cuts is apparent in her dark and wobbly brisket and juicy turkey breast. But her spirited approach is clearest in dishes like her Molotov pork ribs. A salute to fond childhood memories of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, they’re lacquered in a fiery-sweet sauce superpowered with serrano, guajillo, and árbol chiles. Each order is brightened by a flurry of lime zest. Diners eat these hulking ribs alongside spaghetti in cilantro-packed green sauce and generous scoops of sweet, sticky pineapple upside-down cobbler. “I want it to be fun and silly and not so serious,” Charnichart says of the menu.
Charnichart often incorporates the flavors of South Texas into her cooking. Her parents emigrated from the central Mexico state of San Luis Potosí to the Texas border town of Brownsville in 1997. At her first pop-up event in 2021, she served a duo of Heaven or Las Vegas ribs in honor of an album by the Scottish indie rock band Cocteau Twins. The Heaven ribs were glazed in a bright and sweet cherry sauce, while the Las Vegas were smoky and dark. “I was thinking about the flavors of the [Rio Grande] Valley—spicy, citrusy, savory—and also a little bit of pop culture,” she says.
Charnichart’s father was a cook at a seafood restaurant on a nearby barrier island, and her mother made nearly every meal from scratch. In high school Charnichart won an iPad in a school raffle and spent her time listening to her favorite pop stars and debating their merits online. “I wanted to be able to start my own music festival one day. Music was a huge part of my life,” she says. “I wanted to be an actor; I wanted to be a lawyer. I’ve always wanted to be a lot of things, but I knew that chef was one of them.”
Charnichart landed in the food world while attending the University of Texas at Austin. She worked the register and doled out sides at Austin’s legendary Franklin Barbecue before taking a job in the kitchen at Goldee’s BBQ in Fort Worth. In 2021, shortly after she started at Goldee’s, it secured the top spot on Texas Monthly’s star-making list of “The 50 Best BBQ Joints.”
