Chuck Charnichart

Chuck Charnichart is an American restaurateur and pitmaster.

Chuck Charnichart
Born	1997 or 1998 (age 27–28)[1] Brownsville, Texas
Culinary career
Cooking style	Barbecue
Current restaurant(s) Barbs B Q

Early life and education

Charnichart's parents, Bethoven and Francisca Charnichart, emigrated from San Luis Potosí, Mexico, to Brownsville, Texas in 1997.^[1] Her father was a restaurant cook on South Padre Island.^[1][2] Charnichart was their first child born in the US.^[2][3] She has three siblings.^[2] The family lived in a trailer park.^[2] She worked at a Taco Bell.^[2]

Charnichart attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied marketing.^[4][2] She first tasted Central Texas-style smoked brisket while in Austin.^[5][6]

Career

While in college Charnichart worked front of house at Franklin Barbecue.^[1] While studying abroad in Norway she worked in an Oslo smokeless barbecue restaurant.^[2] When she returned from Norway, she worked at Fort Worth's Goldee's Barbecue, which in 2021 was named the state's best barbecue restaurant by Texas Monthly; owner and pitmaster Jonny White became a mentor.^[1][2][5] When White temporarily closed Goldee's while on vacation, he offered her the opportunity to use the space for a concept of her own, and she created a pop-up version of her vision for Barbs B Q.^[2]

Charnichart is the pitmaster of Barbs B Q in Lockhart, Texas, which she opened with partners in 2023.^[4][1][5]

Recognition

In 2022, Texas Monthly's taco editor Jose Ralat wrote that Barbs B Q's version of green spaghetti, which Charnichart created based on her mother's recipe, "might be the single best dish I ate all year".^[7][8] The restaurant was named one of the twelve best new restaurants in the U.S. by Eater in 2023.^[9] In 2023 Garden & Gun called her "arguably the top brisket cook working in Texas today".^[2]

In 2024 Bon Appetit named Charnichart their 2024 "Chef of the Moment", saying she was "reshaping barbecue".^[1] In 2024, Barbs B Q was named one of the best new restaurants of 2024 by Bon Appétit^[10] one of the best restaurants in the country by The New York Times,^[11] and was a semifinalist in the Best New Restaurant category of the James Beard Foundation Awards.^[12]

See also

• Barbecue in Texas