Savor Scout › Food guides › Pulled pork
How to find good pulled pork
Pulled pork is pork shoulder or whole hog smoked for hours until it pulls apart. In the Carolinas it is the whole of barbecue, and the sauce — vinegar in the east, tomato in the west, mustard in South Carolina — is a matter of regional identity.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Smoked over wood — Hickory or oak. Smoke should be present but not bitter.
- Bark mixed through — The dark outer crust chopped into the meat for flavour and texture.
- Moist without drowning — Juicy meat, lightly sauced. Pulled pork swimming in sauce is hiding something.
- Whole hog, if you can — Chopped whole-hog barbecue mixes every part of the pig — a regional speciality.
- Regional sauce — Vinegar-pepper, Lexington dip or mustard. Choose the one you came for.
What to order
- Pulled pork sandwich with slaw — Carolina-style, slaw on the sandwich.
- Chopped whole hog plate — Eastern North Carolina.
- Hushpuppies — On the side.
- Banana pudding — For dessert.
- Sweet tea — To drink.
Where to find Pulled pork
Pulled pork is mostly found at barbecue joints, so that is where to look. Open listings put 19,343 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
Chicago, IL 153 San Antonio, TX 146 Houston, TX 131 Dallas, TX 121 Austin, TX 121 Las Vegas, NV 112 New York, NY 109 Los Angeles, CA 96
Campuses with the most within a mile
FIT 28 New School University 27 The Graduate Center 26 Baruch 25 NYU 23 City Colleges of Chicago-Harold Washington College 20
A few to start with
- Smoque BBQ — Chicago, IL
125 S Clark St, Chicago - Pinkerton's Barbecue — San Antonio, TX
107 W Houston St, San Antonio - Otto’s — Houston, TX
500 Dallas St Ste T24, Houston - Brisket Rules — Dallas, TX
211 S Akard St, Dallas - Blue Ribbon Barbecue — Austin, TX
120 E 4th St, Austin - The D Grill — Las Vegas, NV
301 Fremont St, Las Vegas
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.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for whole hog, pit-smoked, Carolina and vinegar sauce, and lets you name a regional style so you get the barbecue you want.
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.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX