Texas barbecue won a TV show and booked a London hotel — the $200 tray is the new normal

When someone says Texas barbecue, you picture a guy in a trucker hat behind a pit at 5 a.m., a line down the block, and a paper-lined tray you eat with your hands. That guy still exists. This week, though, he also has a Michelin star, a Food Network check and a booking at a five-star hotel in London.

Two stories, three days apart. On Monday, August 31, Esaul and Grecia Ramos of 2M Smokehouse in San Antonio won the finale of Food Network's new competition "Pitmasters" and its $30,000 grand prize. On Friday, September 4, InterStellar BBQ and La Barbecue — both Austin, both starred in 2024 — open a one-month residency at The Ned, the hotel built inside a former Midland Bank headquarters in the City of London. The tray for two is £150.

A five-course meal, cooked on a smoker

The "Pitmasters" finale wasn't a brisket cook-off. The Ramoses had a full day to produce a five-course meal, up against Canadian chefs Connie DeSousa and John Jackson, with Ernest Servantes of Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin among the judges. Their menu: grilled oysters with chili butter and chorizo, duck carnitas with esquites, smoked shrimp aguachile, a black-garlic ribeye with porcini soup, and a concha — the Mexican sweet bread — baked on the smoker, served with café de olla.

Read that list again and count the words "brisket." Zero. That's the point. The best Texas pitmasters in 2026 aren't defending a canon; they're cooking Mexican-Texan food over post oak and calling it barbecue because that's what it is. 2M has been doing this since Esaul Ramos opened it with Joe Melig on W.W. White Road in 2016 — the chicharoni sausage, the pork ribs Texas Monthly ranked among the state's top 50 last year, the tres leches at the end.

"This solidifies that there really isn't anything that we can't do together," Grecia Ramos said after the watch party at McIntyre's in Southtown. Fair enough. There's also a 2M stand at San Antonio International Airport now, which tells you how far the Southeast Side joint has come.

£150 for a tray, brisket extra

Now the London number. The Ned's "ultimate BBQ tray" runs £150 for two — call it around $200, give or take the exchange rate — and it comes with InterStellar's peach-tea-glazed pork belly, pulled lamb shoulder and chimichurri beef short rib, La Barbecue's pork ribs and chopped-cheese sausage, plus Texas toast, queso shells and cheese, beans and a beet salad. Banana pudding with Jack Daniel's caramel closes it out.

Want brisket? That's £50 extra for two, USDA Prime from Creekstone Farms. Which means the single most famous item in Texas barbecue is an add-on. Somewhere a pit boss in Lockhart just spit out his Big Red.

Before you sneer: it's a hotel residency with two pitmasters, John Bates and Ali Clem, flown across an ocean, cooking American Prime beef in a country where a decent brisket is nearly impossible to buy at any price. InterStellar did a pop-up there last year and it sold out. The market has spoken. It just speaks with a different accent.

What this means for your Saturday tray

Barbecue prices at home have been climbing for two years for a boring reason — the U.S. cattle herd is at a 75-year low and Prime brisket costs what it costs. We ran the numbers in our brisket price guide. What's new is the ceiling. When a Michelin star and a Food Network trophy sit on the wall, a $34-a-pound brisket stops looking like a gouge and starts looking like a bargain next to the London tray.

That's the hidden cost of prestige. Every award pulls the top of the market up, and the joints in the middle — the ones with no stars and a good pit — get to raise prices in the slipstream. Some deserve it. Some are using an oven with liquid smoke, and we'd rather you knew the difference: see real smoke vs fake.

How to eat well in a barbecue boom

First, the best value in Texas barbecue right now is not brisket. It's ribs, sausage and whatever the pitmaster is playing with — duck, lamb, pork belly. Every menu above proves it. Order by the half-pound, mix the meats, and let the brisket be the thing you get two slices of. Our ribs guide explains what a good rack should cost.

Second, go on a weekday. The TV-famous joints sell out by noon on Saturday and the line is the tax you pay for the trophy. Tuesday at 11:30, the same pit, the same meat, no line.

Third, the regional styles aren't a ranking. Carolina, Kansas City, Memphis and Texas each got there for a reason, and the London crowd paying £150 doesn't know what they're missing from the other three. Our BBQ styles guide does.

Texas barbecue has spent a century being underpriced by people who thought it was just lunch. This week it got a TV prize and a London hotel. Enjoy the trophy. And go find the pit that hasn't been discovered yet — it's cheaper, and it still has ribs at 1 p.m.