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 2005 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.
Love barbecue? You'll find dozens of delicious recipes in our Bar-B-Que special issue, on newsstands now!
Because prices, dates, and other specifics are subject to change, please check all information to make sure it's still current before making your travel plans.
