The Best Restaurants in Jefferson, Texas

Stephen Joseph has worked this pit since 1991 and took the business over in 1993. On January 15, 2012 the building burned down to the brick facade. He rebuilt on the same corner and reopened about five months later, and the following spring Texas Monthly put Joseph's Riverport on its 2013 Top 50 Barbecue Joints list, the only Jefferson restaurant on it.

The family history is on the plate, not just the wall. The Josephs came to Jefferson from what is now Lebanon more than a century ago and ran a dry goods store and a cafe before the barbecue. The Lebanese potato salad is not a novelty side, it is a family recipe, and the spiced spareribs come out of the same kitchen tradition. You order at the counter and carry your own tray.

Kitt Williams invented the cornbread sandwich when she was eight years old. She and her mother, Sarah Williams, moved from Dallas to Jefferson in 1992 to run a bed and breakfast, opened Jefferson's House of Pies in 2003, and the sandwich turned into the thing people drive in for. Texas Monthly filmed her making it and Texas Co-op Power ran a feature on it, which is unusual coverage for a lunch counter in a town this size.

The build is simple. A square of cornbread, split and filled, with the cornbread doing work that sliced bread cannot. The second half of the name is not decoration either, so leave room for a slice.

Gena McCormick is both the chef and the owner, which in a town this size means the person cooking your lunch is the person who bought the ingredients that morning. The room reads like an old tea parlor and the menu is broader than the setting suggests, running from French onion soup, tomato basil soup and crostini through a corned beef sandwich and an Asian chicken salad to pecan crusted salmon, shrimp scampi and pork chops.

It is the practical answer to the middle of a Jefferson afternoon. You can walk Austin Street, sit down without a reservation, eat something that was actually cooked, and be back in the shops in an hour.

The name is the year the building went up on Austin Street. It is known locally as the Planters Bank and Mercantile building and it still has the round arched ground floor openings, the French doors with fanlight transoms and the cast iron balcony. Dave Echols along with Mickey and Brenda Morrison opened the restaurant here in 2021. The bar with the brass rail came out of a Kansas City saloon and dates to the 1850s.

What separates it from a straight steakhouse is the soundstage at the back, which books live bands and puts the room in the old dinner club tradition rather than the quiet white tablecloth one. Steaks and seafood carry the menu.

Auntie Skinner's opened in 1983 as a pizza parlor and grew into a full restaurant and bar, with the current ownership taking over in 2012. The building dates to the 1850s, which is old even by Austin Street standards, and The Texas Bucket List filmed an episode here.

It matters on this list because it is the closest thing Jefferson has to a late night. Most of downtown has the chairs up by nine. This one runs a kitchen and a bar on different clocks and keeps the lights on through the weekend, with live music or karaoke on Friday and Saturday.

The Hive is a small house on Polk Street turned into a bakery and coffee shop by owner Christie Bullock. The sourdough is made on site and the sandwiches are built on it, with a cheddar beer bread offered as the alternative. The avocado toast on that sourdough and the scones are what people come back for, and the espresso work is a step above what a town of this size usually supports.

It is also a scheduling answer. Jefferson kitchens mostly do not open until eleven. The Hive is pouring at seven.

Open since 2015, the Outpost is half general store and half diner. The store side carries jams, jellies, pickles, salsa, honey, packaged mixes, coffee and gifts. The diner side does breakfast plates and lunch, the espresso bar runs from seven until close, and the fudge is hand dipped on site along with cinnamon glazed nuts.

The reason it earns a spot rather than a footnote is the calendar. Jefferson's best kitchens close Monday, Tuesday or both. This one does not close at all, which makes it the fallback that actually works.

The name points at Caddo Lake, the cypress lake that straddles the Louisiana line east of town, and the menu leans the same direction. Gumbo, po'boys, fried and blackened catfish and shrimp sit next to chicken fried steak, burgers and a salad bar, which is about the right split for a town that is culturally as much Louisiana as Texas.

It is a plain room with booths and quick service rather than a destination dining experience, and it is priced accordingly. Come for the gumbo and the fried seafood.

Don Juan's describes itself as the only Mexican restaurant in Jefferson, and nothing in our research contradicts that. It runs a full Tex-Mex menu with house specialty plates and daily specials, serves beer and margaritas, and does takeout and delivery, which almost nothing downtown does.

It is also the last kitchen open. Downtown Jefferson largely stops serving between eight and nine. Don Juan's runs to ten on Friday and Saturday and opens at 10.30 every day of the week, the longest hours of anything on this list. Being a few blocks off Austin Street means parking is easy too.