★ You're Invited ★
Saturday,November 21,2026
4 – 7 PM
Slow-smoked brisket, seasoned to Jetton's perfection.
Free ★ Invitation Only ★ Limited to 50 Guests
RSVP
A seat at the table
always belongs to you.
The King of Barbecue
From a butcher shop on Seventh Street to the President's table.
and undisputed, King of Barbecue.
Chapter One ★ The Butcher's Kid
Walter Jetton's father walked out when he was two. His grandparents raised him in Fort Worth, and at thirteen he left school to learn the trade under a butcher named Frank Williams. By thirty-one he was running the shop. By thirty-eight he owned it.
Out back, he dug a smoke pit and went to work on the cuts nobody else wanted. Oak wood. Low heat. All the time it took. In 1946 he opened a barbecue place at Seventh and Terrell, and Fort Worth started lining up.
"The first year I lost my shirt. The second I lost two shirts."
He kept cooking anyway.
Chapter Two ★ Feeding Texas
One restaurant wasn't big enough. Walter built a fleet of catering trucks he called chuckwagons and took his pits on the road. In August 1950 he fed 10,000 Shriners. A few months later, 7,500 Baptists at Will Rogers Coliseum.
In 1955 his crew rolled a chuckwagon into a national convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana, handed out ten-gallon hats, and served barbecue. The next day the delegates picked Fort Worth over Miami, 52 votes to 11.
By then the mail knew him too. Letters addressed simply to "King of Barbecue" found their way to his restaurant.
18
Chuckwagons at his peak
10,000
Shriners fed, 1950
500,000
Pounds of beef cooked in 1955
52–11
The vote barbecue won
Chapter Three ★ Cooking for Presidents
On November 22, 1963, Walter was in Austin with 3,500 steaks ready for President Kennedy's dinner. Those steaks never hit the grill.
Five weeks later, President Johnson welcomed West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard to the Hill Country with the first state dinner where barbecue was the main attraction. It was 27 degrees, so the party moved into the Stonewall school gym: hay bales, saddles, a mariachi band, and Van Cliburn at the piano. Walter served spareribs, German potato salad, and slaw. The papers called it the Sparerib Summit.
After that, everybody wanted him. He wrote a cookbook in 1965. Hilton brought him to Paris to cater the opening of its new hotel. The Dallas Morning News reported his crews were feeding a million and a half people a year.
His method never got fancy: Central Texas oak, patience, and smoke. "Smoke," he said, "is the secret."
where barbecue was the main course. Photo: LBJ Library.
Photo: LBJ Library.
Chapter Four ★ Your Seat at the Table
Walter died in Fort Worth in January 1968. He was 61. The business closed a few years later, and the pits went cold. In 2025, the American Royal inducted him into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
Now his great-grandson Jacey Jetton and Fanny are firing up the smoker again. Same oak. Same patience. Brisket seasoned to Jetton's perfection. We're starting small: invitation-only cookouts for friends and neighbors, fifty seats at a time.
Walter fed presidents. This time, the seat's for you.