BBQ Across the South

Southern Living ^ | April 2003 | Gary Ford

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BBQ Across the South

Barbecue is pork. No, beef. How about mutton? Chicken? Goat? North Carolina has the best barbecue. Make that Texas. Memphis is barbecue heaven. Nope. Kansas City.

Sometimes, home-cooking is best. The Gibson family's "pig-picking" begins in the early hours.

On and on goes this debate about the South's best barbecue. While y'all argued, we ate. Charles Walton, the best food photographer in America, and I sniffed out nearly 100 restaurants, joints, and dives from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, Missouri. We found that the heart of barbecue beats in Memphis. Tar Heels and Texans cook mountains of it, and between them run rivers of sauces and islands of styles. A vast feast spreads across the South. Come savor it with us.

As long as there's been a South, we've loved barbecue, the one food that defines us most as a region. It suits our Southern sense of comfort, society, and the passage of time--friends and family gathering around glowing embers, drifting smoke scenting the air and seasoning the meats of animals that grazed the grass of our prairies and rooted the mast of our forests.

Barbecue has moved from home to restaurant. In our Readers' Choice Awards, we asked for your favorite barbecue places. You submitted more than 7,500 restaurants. A full 47 of them sported "Bubba" somewhere in the name--from Bubba's Barbeque in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to Bubba's Ribs & Q in Tifton, Georgia. All those Bubbas--and so many more--set a very long table of meat, sauces, and side dishes.

"There are four barbecue meccas," says Carolyn Wells, a Nashville native and now the executive director of the Kansas City Barbeque Society. "The Carolinas form the cradle of American barbecue. Memphis is the undisputed pork barbecue capital of the world. The entire state of Texas considers itself a capital. Kansas City is the melting pot, where all regional styles come together."

Later we'll tell you what we think is the best barbecue in the South. Travel Assistant Tanner Latham, informed of our foolhardy claim, leveled a gaze at us and said, "You do realize that readers will send death threats?"

Yes. We expect them, but when you write us, please include names of your favorite restaurants so we can cover them in the future.

[wardaddy]

Neely's...Rendevoux(just for the experience)

[sweetliberty]

"it came with the coleslaw on the brisket."

Now THAT's obscene!

[okie01]

"I don't know that I would call it the best in the world but Dobbs in Dothan Alabama can be really good."

Have you ever tried the place over in Iron City, GA?

Sliced pork sandwiches best I've ever tasted -- believe they use fresh ham.

[LittleRedRooster]

I grew up in Kansas City, lived in Little Rock and now live in Texas. I have loved BBQ for over 30 years and the BBQ from the Carolinas is good, the BBQ from KC is better and the BBQ in Memphis is the best except for the stuff I make right here at home.

As for Texas BBQ I just dont get it.
Risky's sucks, The Railhead sucks and Angleo's has the worst BBQ but the best beer ever.

[yarddog]

I have driven through or nearly through Iron City many times on 84. Didn't even know there was a BBQ place there.

[noutopia]

Cant beat a South Carolina Pig Pickin!!!!

[LibKill]

There are many fine varieties of barbecue across the south.

I can't pick a favorite, but I will eat all kinds with gusto.

[sweetliberty]

Some of the best I have had is the Whole Hog Cafe in Little Rock. They have won so many awards for their barbeque they needed a new room to put them all in! They do pork AND brisket and 7 different styles of sauce. There's something for everybody and it is ALL good. We have our FReeper meetings there pretty regularly. Some other great places for barbeque are Dixie Pig in Little Rock, Smokehouse and Bubba's in Eureka Springs, Arkansas (different styles though), Gene's Barbeque in Colonial Heights, Virginia and also in Dinwiddie County, and there was a place near Brunswick, Georgia that did a fantastic barbeque too. Can't remember what it was called. It was a drive-in type place.

[tet68]

Ribs? Try Dreamland in Tuskaloosa Ala.
But only ribs! That's all they sell.

I prefer the dry ribs at the Rondesvous in Memphis.

[Non-Sequitur]

Best barbecue in the country is right here in Kansas City, partly because we have the best beer in the world to wash it down with - Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat. Draft, of course, with a slice of lemon.

[sinkspur]

Risky's sucks, The Railhead sucks and Angleo's has the worst BBQ but the best beer ever.

So. You like that mustard-based swill over the sweet Texas red sauce?

I'm gettin' a rope!

(How can somebody have the "best beer" when Coors is Coors is Coors?)

[FreepLady]

"but one thing I do not get is coleslaw on a sandwich. I got that in Tupelo, Mississippi"


I'm a native Alabamian...and we have always had coleslaw offered on our bbq sandwiches, so maybe it is just a very southern trait.

[ladyinred]

make some sweet tea,

LOL! No one in California calls it that! In fact here, if you sweeten tea, you are endangering your life or something! ;-)

[shpanda]

Actually sweet ice tea is what you drink with BBQ.

[shpanda]

Interesting that we were thinking of the same subject at the same time.

[okie01]

"I have driven through or nearly through Iron City many times on 84. Didn't even know there was a BBQ place there."

Forgot the name -- but it's a family name, like "Tate's" or "Tatum's", I think. There's a sign where the "business route" cuts off the bypass.

It's right "downtown", you can't miss it. Probably the biggest business in Iron City -- looks like it's been expanded four or five times.

Highly recommended.

And that comes from a Texas resident -- who believes the best brisket comes from Sonny Bryant's old place (in Dallas on Inwood), the best ribs from Steve's in Denton and the best pork loins come off his own New Braunfels smoker.

The pork loin with apricot-jalapeno sauce is especially yummy...

[Revelation 911]

are we talkin pulled pork or ribs?

[TC Rider]

Let me be more specific. BBQ comes from EASTERN North Carolina, accept no substitutes.