BBQ across the South

Southern Living, Spring 2003 by Ford, Gary D

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.

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 mound tains 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 (results are located on page 28), 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.

Texas: "I Do; Now, Please Pass the Sauce"

In Texas, barbecue shrines serve as sanctuary and site of ceremony. At The Salt Lick in Driftwood, about 20 miles southwest of Austin, couples who meet in the restaurant sometimes return to wed. On a mellow afternoon last April, underneath tall pecan trees beside a creek, Matthew Ronshausen married Alisha Bronikowsky in a smoke-scented ceremony.

In Huntsville, diners gather near New Zion Missionary Baptist Church Barbecue where parishioners cook and serve brisket, chicken, and ribs. Some devotees call it the "Church of the Immaculate Barbeque."

African Americans, Anglos, Germans, and Mexicans have tossed their flavors onto the grills and pits of Texas. German smoked sausages (often in hot links) and Mexican cabrito (goat) join chicken, pork ribs, slaw, beans, and potato salad on plates. Beef brisket stars, however, with a sweet, hot sauce (properly served on the side) in a color between Texas burnt orange and Aggie maroon.

Some barbecue legends have as much cachet as historic Texas ranches, including Angelos Barbecue in Fort Worth and Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse in Dallas. Many devotees in the Metroplex also love Fort Worth's Railhead Smokehouse BBQ.

Texans think nothing of driving hours to eat. They journey to Joe Allen's Pit Bar-B-Que in Abilene and regularly travel to Llano or Lockhart, both towns with barbecue landmarks.

At Cooper's Bar-B-Que in Llano, diners select their meat right off the pit. In Lockhart, the venerable Kreuz Market, now in a new location, still offers beef and links on butcher paper and still refuses to serve sauce. "We like the taste of the meat and don't want to cover it up," says owner Rick Schmidt. Near the courthouse, the equally respected Black's Barbecue, in the same family since 1932, cooks with fuel from the belt of large post oak trees girdling the town.

Others drive northeast to Taylor, hoping the American flag flies outside Louie Mueller's Barbecue. That means Bobby and Trish Mueller still have meat in the pits, which are located inside the restaurant.

Memphis: The Heart of Barbecue

It beats in this city of 1.1 million, where more than 100 restaurants specialize in pork and ribs traditionally slow cooked over coals.

Bill Scudder, a cabinet builder and amateur cook who competes in the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, doesn't hesitate when asked where place you may not have heard of." Our Richard Banks, Editorial Director of Custom Publishing, grew up near The Bar-B-Q Shop, which serves the specialty of barbecue spaghetti (noodles in sauce and a little pork). He praises the restaurant's consistency.

"That's my one-word mantra when it comes to barbecue," Richard says. "Just about anybody can cook good barbecue on a given day, but who can do it consistently day after day? The Bar-B-Q Shop can."