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Food guide

How to find good barbecue

Barbecue is regional in a way almost no other American food is, and most disappointment comes from arriving with the wrong region's expectations. Sauce-forward Kansas City ribs and unsauced Central Texas brisket are not competing versions of one dish.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Smoke you can see in the meat — A pink smoke ring under the bark is evidence of real smoke over a long cook. It is not a guarantee, but its absence on brisket or ribs is close to conclusive.
  • Bark — The dark, dense crust on brisket or pork shoulder, formed over many hours. It should be firm and heavily seasoned, not soft or wet.
  • Ribs that do not fall off the bone — The single most misunderstood point. Properly cooked ribs pull away cleanly with a little resistance. Meat that falls off on its own was steamed or boiled past the point.
  • They run out — A place that sells out by two in the afternoon is cooking a fixed amount overnight. A place with full trays at nine in the evening is holding it or reheating it.
  • Sauce on the side, or none — The best barbecue is served with sauce available rather than applied. Sauce arriving already on the meat is frequently covering for it.

What to order

  • Central Texas — Brisket, beef ribs, sausage. Salt and pepper only, post oak, no sauce. Order the fatty brisket — lean is the safer-sounding choice and the worse one.
  • North Carolina — Whole hog, chopped, dressed with vinegar and pepper. Eastern style is vinegar-based; Lexington style adds a little tomato.
  • South Carolina — The mustard belt. Yellow, tangy, and unlike anything else in American barbecue.
  • Memphis — Pork ribs, dry-rubbed or wet, and the pulled pork sandwich with slaw on top.
  • Kansas City — Everything, with a thick sweet tomato-molasses sauce. Burnt ends are the thing to order and a Kansas City invention.
  • Alabama — White sauce — mayonnaise, vinegar, black pepper — on smoked chicken. Regional, strange-sounding, and excellent.

Where to find barbecue

Open listings put 19,038 barbecue joints across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.

Cities with the most

Chicago, IL 153 San Antonio, TX 145 Houston, TX 131 Dallas, TX 120 Austin, TX 118 Las Vegas, NV 109 New York, NY 107 Los Angeles, CA 96 Atlanta, GA 88 Jacksonville, FL 73 Fort Worth, TX 72 Memphis, TN 69

Campuses with the most within a mile

FIT 28 The New School 27 CUNY Graduate Center 26 Baruch 25 NYU 23 City Colleges of Chicago-Harold Washington College 20 Touro University 18 National Louis University 16 Jefferson 15 DePaul University 14

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

BBQ near campus

How Savor Scout looks for it

Barbecue searches read for wood type, cook times, named cuts and regional vocabulary, and treat reviews mentioning selling out early as a positive signal rather than a complaint. If you name a region, places whose menus use a different region's language drop down the list even when their rating is higher.

Find barbecue near you →

Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

When you might want this

Where to eat with a big group Where to take friends visiting from out of town Where to eat on a road trip Where to go for a birthday dinner