During the first full week of the FIFA World Cup, the Dallas location of Terry Black’s Barbecue brought in $2 million in sales. The following week, it made the same amount in just five and a half days, general manager Nate Werner told me. He was beaming with pride as he relayed this information when I stopped in for lunch on Monday. “The previous record was $752,000 in a week,” he said. The statewide chain, founded in Austin in 2014, has been a barbecue powerhouse for years, producing smoked meats at a rate most joints are not capable of. Craig Crisafi, who has been on the pit staff at the Dallas restaurant since it opened, seven years ago, said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Diners who’ve traveled to the World Cup host city have been wielding Terry Black’s beef-rib bones as their own trophies all over social media. The bones are a uniquely Texan symbol of a uniquely American cuisine that international travelers have embraced. “Everybody wants a beef rib,” Crisafi said. “They see it on the block with the bone and know they can hold up that bone.” A standard-sized beef rib, which weighs about a pound and a half, can cost around $60. “They don’t care what it costs,” Werner said. The Terry Black’s social media team has embraced the star power of the rib, holding a clean bone out like a microphone and asking guests to share their predictions for the World Cup winner.
The first viral World Cup–related Terry Black’s post I noticed was from the Instagram account @bob_travel__, run by a fan of Japan’s national team. Bob traveled to Dallas and filmed his experiences of several American firsts, including indoor baseball, birria tacos, and Whataburger. On June 17, he doused a Terry Black’s beef rib with sauce, took his first-ever bite of Texas barbecue, and, with a full mouth, declared: “Amazing! I love it!” He also posted the video to TikTok, where it currently has 4.1 million views. Last week Bob became a repeat visitor, this time wearing a cowboy hat, and Terry Black’s enjoyed another viral moment.
Japan and the Netherlands had tied 2–2 a few days earlier at AT&T Stadium, in Arlington, which has been temporarily renamed Dallas Stadium at FIFA’s behest. FIFA’s choice to brand Dallas as the host city had an effect on neighboring Fort Worth. The Fort Worth location of Terry Black’s is actually three miles closer to the stadium than the Dallas location, but Werner said it hasn’t enjoyed the same sales bump. “They’re maybe twenty-five percent up, and I’m almost two-hundred-fifty percent up from last year.” When King Abdullah II of Jordan wanted barbecue before watching his country play against Argentina on June 27, he chose Terry Black’s, but the Dallas location didn’t have a private room available. “We’re too busy for the king of Jordan,” Werner said, so the ruler got a royal welcome at the Fort Worth location instead.
The line that stretches down the block at the Dallas location has convinced some visitors to reserve the Terry Black’s BBQ Experience through OpenTable. For $150 per person, guests skip the line to feast on half a beef rib, slices of brisket and turkey, a pork rib, a link of sausage, sides, and dessert, and they get a pit-room tour. Werner estimates his location is selling about sixty of those seats per day.
Fans of the Austrian national team enjoy barbecue at Terry Black’s Dallas location.Antonio Jimenez
Father’s Day was what Crisafi described as “a perfect storm.” Along with the holiday, the World Cup was in full swing, and a Food Network show called Top 10 had just named the Terry Black’s beef rib the single best barbecue item in the country. On a normal weekend, the Dallas location smokes up to 90 racks of beef ribs. On June 21, it smoked an astounding 280 racks. It borrowed a thousand-gallon offset from the Austin location to cook them all. The other smokers were packed with briskets, but more reinforcements were needed. The Waco location sent 90 smoked briskets, and Fort Worth sent over 60 more. In total, the Dallas location served every bit of its 435 briskets that Sunday.
The World Cup crowds descending on Terry Black’s aren’t there to watch soccer. Unlike the popular pubs in Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood that are year-round sports havens thanks to their combinations of booze and a vast array of television screens, Terry Black’s has just one small TV hanging at the end of the bar. If you watch the video posted to Terry Black’s Instagram on June 21, the day before Argentina’s win over Austria, you’ll see a dining room full of Argentina fans dancing and chanting in anticipation with that tiny TV in the background.
When I visited this week for lunch, about thirty people had gathered along the bar to watch as Brazil knocked Japan out of the competition. I could tell when something consequential had happened from their groans or cheers. I didn’t have to wait long in line for my tray of brisket, ribs, and turkey, but there wasn’t a single open table in the dining room. I found a shady spot on the patio out front instead. Werner said I was lucky to catch an unusual lull; he expected loads of Norwegian fans that evening for the following day’s game against Ivory Coast.
I asked Crisafi if he had gotten any breaks from the grueling schedule during this unprecedented run. He said he had the day off this past Saturday, but instead of resting, he drove down to Lexington. “I had never been to Snow’s,” Crisafi said. He got to meet pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz and owner Kerry Bexley and enjoy a different version of Texas barbecue. Werner stayed back in Dallas, focused on his own competition. “We have never beaten Austin in a week,” he said of the sales numbers. On a triumphant Monday afternoon, he told me, “last night, at 9:35, I beat them by three thousand dollars.”
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