The Best Restaurants in Gilmer, Texas

Texas Monthly carries this one in its barbecue listings, which no other kitchen in Upshur County can say. Pitmaster Clyde Osborn cooks with post oak in an offset smoker, and the magazine's listing singles out the brisket and the house made sausages at prices it calls reasonable.

The sandwich is the signature. The Sibling Sandwich layers brisket, cheddar and slaw between slices of jalapeno cheese sourdough baked by a local bakery, which is the kind of detail that tells you a kitchen is paying attention. It is also a member of the Gilmer Area Chamber of Commerce, so it is a confirmed going concern rather than a listing that outlived its business.

Running since 1969, which makes it the oldest food business on this list by thirty years. CBS19 and the Longview News-Journal both covered the 50th anniversary in 2019, when more than 100 people turned up, and reported that Floyd Henderson ran it for 45 years before selling to Terry Capps and his daughter Mesha Capps. The business is named for Floyd Clarence Doc Henderson.

The product has not changed. Spicy beef hot links in the East Texas roadside style, plus a jalapeno and pepper jack version, and its own site makes the claim that matters, which is that it is the only hot link stand left in Gilmer. It now ships nationwide through Goldbelly, which is unusual for a counter this small.

The most substantial sit down restaurant in Gilmer, and one of the few here that runs its own website with its own menu rather than leaving it to a delivery app. It is a Gilmer Area Chamber of Commerce member and the town's default answer for a full Tex-Mex dinner.

The kitchen describes itself as authentic and fresh with traditional Tex-Mex flavour, and frijoles a la charra is the dish it puts on its own front page. It is ranked third here rather than higher for one reason, which is that it does not publish its hours anywhere we could find, including on its own site.

Gilmer has one Italian restaurant and this is it. A Gilmer Area Chamber of Commerce member, and the only kitchen on this list that publishes current prices anywhere, which makes it the easiest place in town to plan a budget around.

Cheese pizza runs 12 dollars and a specialty pizza 16, fettuccini alfredo with grilled chicken is 15, garlic bread with cheese is 6 and tiramisu is 7. Lunch specials run Sunday plus Tuesday through Friday. It sits two doors down from East TX Rust BBQ on the same street, which makes West Tyler the closest thing Gilmer has to a restaurant row.

Jucy's is an East Texas burger chain rather than a Gilmer original, with locations across Tyler, Longview and White Oak, and we are saying that plainly rather than passing it off as a local find. It earns a place because it is the Gilmer Area Chamber of Commerce's burger listing, it is open early when nothing else in town is, and it is the most reliable quick meal here.

The format is the old Texas drive in burger, thin patties and a short menu, and the chain is expanding rather than contracting, with KLTV reporting a fourth Tyler location in June 2025. We rank it fifth because the chain connection means it tells you less about Gilmer than anything above it.

The only Japanese kitchen in Upshur County, and the reason it is on this list is scarcity rather than acclaim. A town this size having a sushi counter at all is the point. It is a Gilmer Area Chamber of Commerce member and still listed and taking orders at this address through 2026.

It ranks last because the sourcing is the thinnest here. One ordering platform lists the kitchen under a second name, Mario's Asian Grill, which may be a stale record or a change of operator, and we could not resolve which. We are reporting what we could confirm, which is the address and that it is trading, and nothing more.