From
code
to coals.
Twenty years writing software. Five years failing at brisket in a backyard. One Texas BBQ joint on Brunswick St.
Tao Ding · Owner & pitmaster
Our goal
Respect the fire.
Respect the time.
Everything here starts with respect — for the ingredients, for the fire, and for the time it takes to do this right.
Great food doesn’t need to hide under heavy sauce. It needs patience, balance, and a light hand. We season with dry rubs, and only as much as the cut asks for.
The sauces are ours — made in-house from fresh, locally sourced ingredients wherever we can get them, and built as slowly and as honestly as anything that goes in the smoker.
From the first spark to the plate in front of you: no shortcuts, no artificial additives. Just real flavour, given the time it needs.
The bite
It started on a mountain
The first brisket I ever ate was at a restaurant on top of a mountain, halfway through a snowboarding trip. One bite wasn't enough.
Back in the city, I went looking for it. Months of it — every BBQ place around Melbourne, hunting for a brisket straight out of the smoker.
Every one tasted different. Some salty. Some sweet. Most of them poured sauce over the meat, and the sauce was sweeter still. I'd assumed there was one flavour. There were several.
The split
Two styles, one missing
So I went online and dug into where Texas BBQ actually comes from. There are two schools. Central enhances the meat with sauce. Southern gets out of the way and lets the meat stand on its own.
Southern was the one I'd been chasing. It was also the one almost nobody in Melbourne was cooking.
That gap was the whole opportunity.
The smoker
AUD$130 and five years
I started in the backyard with the cheapest smoker I could find. AUD$130. It leaked heat from every seam. I smoked a brisket in it anyway.
Fifteen hours. It came out tough, dry, and far too salty. A complete failure.
I didn't stop. Five more years of it, through the pandemic, until 2023 — when the food finally had my friends' verdict behind it. That was the time to start what I'd planned all along: a Southern-style Texas BBQ shop.
The doors
Nobody knew what we were
Ten months of preparation on a tight budget. In October 2023, TBBQ opened its doors. I was excited, I was nervous, and I thought people would walk in to try something new.
They walked past. Most of them had no idea what the shop was. The first six months were about survival.
So I started handing out free meat at the front door, almost every day. It worked — a little. People came in, sat down, and stayed for dinner. It also exposed everything we were getting wrong, front of house and back. With no hospitality experience, we learned all of it the hard way, and fixed it day by day, week by week, month by month. We got through the first year.
The menu grew with us. Four meats and no sauce at all became nine meats, eleven house-made sauces, a real list of sides, desserts, spirits, wine and cocktails. The way we run the place changed completely.
The award
The second year
In year two, the room started filling. Corporate lunches. Dinner reservations. Guests leaving with a smile on the way out — that's when I let myself believe the work had paid off.
Just before our second anniversary, we won our first award: Best Restaurant 2025, East Melbourne. It said the hard work counted. It said the direction was right, and that every change we'd fought for wasn't wrong.
By that anniversary, around 15,000 people had eaten with us. As a software engineer turned pitmaster, I never thought we'd host that many. Thank you for every one of those visits — your trust is what keeps the smoker running.
Recognition
The wall of wins
Named in Australia’s Top 100 BBQ, and a 2025 Local Business Awards winner — voted by the people who actually eat here.