BBQ World Mural

With a design inspired by the old Astroworld theme park maps of the past, and painted by local artist and East End resident Jose Cordova, the BBQ World mural is a tribute to the city’s historic barbecue joints that laid the groundwork for the city’s current barbecue boom.

In the last ten years, Houston has experienced a dizzying expansion of high-quality craft barbecue joints. This success has been achieved by the dedication, talent and hard work of a new generation of pitmasters who want to make Houston the greatest barbecue city in Texas, and therefore the world.

It is important to remember, however, that starting in the early 1900s pitmasters of African American, German, Czech and Creole origins established historical barbecue joints in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards that laid the cultural foundation for this success.

It was the many decades of hard work put in by legendary pitmasters like Matt Garner and Jim Goode that infused the flavors and traditions of barbecue into the identity and culture of the Bayou City and its citizens, contributing to the success of our current world-class barbecue scene.

This mural honors the dedicated men and women of Houston’s barbecue past for making places like J-Bar-M Barbecue possible.