Golden Horseshoe BBQ: Wood-Fired Texas-style barbecue on Dupont Street

There’s a particular kind of barbecue you can taste from the first bite. Wood-fired, slow-cooked over hours and hours, with a bark that means somebody actually stood by the pit through the night. Golden Horseshoe BBQ on Dupont has been doing exactly that since opening in late 2025, and the lineups outside the door tell you Toronto noticed. Brisket, ribs, in-house sausage, pork belly burnt ends, and a couple of weekend specials, all coming out of a kitchen that burns 50 pieces of wood for a single 12-hour cook. Michelin noticed too: the 2026 Toronto guide handed them a Bib Gourmand, one of only five new ones this year.

A 24-Year-Old Pitmaster Who Started in His Mom’s Backyard

The Golden Horseshoe story begins in March 2020. Andrew Golden was a first-year student at the University of Ottawa when COVID sent everyone home. That summer, his mom bought a small electric smoker for the backyard. Andrew took to it immediately, taught himself the process, and started selling food to family, friends, and anyone who would cover his costs.

That backyard hustle eventually got him a job at a Toronto barbecue restaurant, then at The Carbon Bar, where he met the executive chef who would become his business partner: Kris Hansen. After a year and change at Carbon Bar, Andrew took a summer off to work at one of the best barbecue restaurants in Texas. He came home different. He had the bug, he had the skills, and he had a vision Toronto wasn’t yet offering.

For the next year and a half, he ran pop-ups under the Golden Horseshoe name. The lineups got longer. By May 2024, the project had outgrown the format. Andrew and Kris partnered up, Andrew left Carbon Bar to focus on Golden Horseshoe full-time, and the search for a permanent space began. They opened on Dupont in late 2025, and they’ve been busy ever since.

A Name That Belongs to the Region

Golden Horseshoe BBQ takes its name from a few places at once. The Golden Horseshoe is the geographic crescent that runs around Lake Ontario, from Niagara through Hamilton up to Toronto. Andrew’s last name is also Golden, which made the choice easy. But the deeper meaning was about regional identity.

In the United States, barbecue is hyper-regional. St. Louis style, Texas style, Carolina style, Alabama style, each carries its own techniques, sauces, and traditions. Cross a county line and the meat tastes different. Andrew wanted Golden Horseshoe to be Toronto’s answer to that idea: a barbecue restaurant rooted in Texas tradition but built to reflect the city it lives in. Toronto sits between Little Italy and Koreatown, with cuisines from everywhere folding into each other every block. Golden Horseshoe leans into that, cooking Texas style with the city’s flavours quietly woven in.

What to Order

Andrew’s first rule for any Texas-style barbecue joint is the Texas Trinity: brisket, ribs, sausage. If one of those three isn’t your favourite at a barbecue restaurant, something is off. At Golden Horseshoe, all three are dialled in.

The brisket sells more than anything else. It’s the dish the kitchen builds the day around. Slow-smoked over wood for hours, with a deep bark and a tender pink ring, it’s the standard the rest of the menu meets.

The ribs are the second-most popular order. Generous, well-rendered, and built for the trinity if you’re ordering for the table.

The sausage is something Andrew is genuinely proud of. Every single sausage on the menu is made in-house, using only the beef and pork trim from their own raw protein. They don’t buy meat to make sausage. Every link is the result of butchery the team is already doing, which is unusual at this scale and audible in the flavour.

Beyond the trinity, the pork belly burnt ends are a crowd favourite and tend to sell out first. The turkey and chicken are the white meats Andrew thinks the city sleeps on. He’ll tell you that if he could eat one thing every day, it would be the turkey and chicken, because the richer cuts wear you out faster than people realize.

On Saturdays and Sundays, the kitchen runs the beef short rib as a weekend special. It’s the dinosaur-bone cut you’ve seen photographed at every great Texas joint, and the team prices it accessibly because they want people to actually try it. It’s not always available elsewhere in the city at this scale.

The sides round it out: mac and cheese, charro beans, coleslaw, cornbread, and esquites, the Mexican-style charred corn salad that adds the kind of brightness the menu needs.

Quick Service, Real Transparency

Golden Horseshoe is a quick service restaurant. You walk up to the counter, you watch the meat get sliced, you build your tray. There’s no wait staff. There’s no folded-napkin choreography. The team doesn’t believe in over-attentive service, and they’ve designed the room to let you create your own experience instead. Talk to the meat cutter. Ask about the brisket. Get an honest answer.

The kitchen is open enough that you can see most of what’s happening in the back, with a small plexiglass divider added per city bylaw. Even better, the team offers pit tours. If you’ve enjoyed a meal and want to see what’s behind it (or if the bill surprised you and you’re curious why barbecue costs what it does), they’ll walk you through. Where other Toronto BBQ spots might burn 3 or 4 pieces of wood for a 12-hour cook, Golden Horseshoe burns 50. There’s a pit cook who starts at 1 a.m. every day and works through 10 a.m. so the meat is ready for lunch service. That’s the math behind the price, and the team is happy to show it.

What They’re Most Proud Of

When asked what they’re most proud of, Andrew’s answer is the team. They’ve pulled hospitality pros from every kind of Toronto restaurant, from cheap quick service spots to the most expensive steakhouses, and they’ve all had to relearn things to fit the way Golden Horseshoe operates. The cooking style is unfamiliar. The service style is unfamiliar. Seven months in, the growth Andrew sees in his cooks and his front-of-house team is what makes him proudest. The pit cooks especially, the ones starting at 1 a.m., are the heart of the operation.

The Verdict

Golden Horseshoe BBQ is doing something Toronto needed and didn’t yet have: serious wood-fired Texas-style barbecue with a Toronto identity, run by people who actually know how to cook it. Order the Texas Trinity, add the pork belly burnt ends, and take advantage of the weekend short rib if you’re there on a Saturday or Sunday. Take the pit tour if they offer one. This is barbecue worth standing in line for.

Written by Fabie Lubin
Photography by Golden Horseshoe BBQ

Updated on September 29, 2026

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