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The South’s Top 50 Barbecue Places

BREAKING NEWS!

The estimable Robert Moss has posted his 2023 Top 50 Barbecue Joints in the South list in Southern Living, and there are lots of changes. WARNING: Southern Living also publishes a separate list that’s based on readers’ preferences. Do not confuse the two lists. You can ignore the readers’ list, but pay attention to Robert’s. The man knows barbecue. Each of the 50 places listed — certainly the ones I’ve tried — is good and some are great. And Robert’s list itself is great fun, as is the other reliable Top 50 barbecue list.

That said, I deplore the indiscriminate mixing of brisket, pork, and ribs in the same list. It’s like comparing apples and amphibians and actors: the differences are greater than the commonalities. I would much prefer three separate lists.

I also disagree with specific choices, and I’ll invite you to comment on the selections and rankings with which you disagree. I’ll get the ball rolling by noting that Archibald’s should be ranked above Dreamland and, at least among rib places, above everyone. (I do acknowledge that Dreamland has the best rib sauce anywhere.) And why B.E. Scott instead of the superior Ramey’s? I’ll stop there. For now.

I also note that the Southern Living photo editor made an important error regarding Stamey’s. It’s a great barbecue place, of course, but it’s one of the few places in North Carolina that doesn’t automatically include hushpuppies with their barbecue, as implied in the photo. You now have to order hushpuppies separately at Stamey’s! Really. The idea offended me when I last went, hushpuppies being a birthright in North Carolina, just as chips and salsa are at Mexican restaurants. Still, I was willing to order some, as they are fine hushpuppies.

You may guess the real problem. That’s a lot of hushpuppies for one person to eat, especially if that person is also going to eat greens and red slaw and a chicken quarter. Okay, and peach cobbler. But each of the hushpuppies was delicious.

Again, go ahead and study Robert’s Top 50 list, and then share plaudits and complaints.

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23 thoughts on “The South’s Top 50 Barbecue Places”

  1. About Stamey’s and hushpuppies: Warner Stamey actually pioneered hushpuppies with barbecue. Before the 1950s they were found pretty much only with fried fish. At Stamey’s and eat most other Piedmont NC places you got a white roll, and you can still get that at Stamey’s if you prefer.

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  2. I’ve often been offered a white roll. Each time I’ve wondered if it’s some sort of sanity test, or a way to weed out our friends from the north. It never occurred to me to choose the white roll.

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  3. Robert’s list isn’t about rating the best brisket, the best pork, or the best ribs. He’s rating the entire experience. I love the brisket at Lewis in Charleston, and also the ribs, and I’m glad to be able to have both when I go there.

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    1. Looking over the list, it’s ever harder to find any commonality in the entire experience among the 50.
      There’s no reason that a given restaurant can’t be on more than one list.

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  4. I can’t seem to figure out how to go to a new line in the comments. I often seem to post my comments before I’m ready. Regarding the hush puppies, I’m fine paying for them. Maybe they normally don’t come with sandwiches but do with plates? I generally get the sandwiches.

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      1. I will get the hush puppies if they’re free or if I have to pay, obviously. Sometimes when they’re free there aren’t “quite” enough of them. Maybe need one or two, or three or four more. If there are too many I might just not eat them all. I might……. Ah, there’s nothing like a great hush puppie. Or is it puppy for only one.

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  7. One of my hobbies is tracking barbecue lists. The three major lists that are regularly updated by mainstream publications are the lists by the Texas Monthly, Thrillist, and Southern Living.

    TEXAS MONTHLY

    The Texas Monthly list is the gold standard. It is compiled by a team of people supervised by Daniel Vaughn, perhaps the most knowledgeable person alive about barbecue places. A restaurant can only make the list if it has been visited multiple times and by at least two members of the team (this has been the rule since the 2013 list).

    One key fact about the Texas Monthly listing is that it only comes out every four years, so there is plenty of time for meaningful changes to occur on the list. The list dates back to 1997, so it’s a good basis for comparing how barbecue places have changed over time.

    The one flaw with the Texas Monthly listing, and it is a huge flaw, is that it is limited to barbecue places in Texas. Daniel Vaughn does a nice job visiting and reporting on barbecue places all over the country, but no matter how good a non-Texas barbecue place is, it is not going to make the Texas Monthly list.

    THRILLIST

    The least transparent of the three major lists is the Thrillist list. There is no information provided about who compiles the list, how many people are involved in the process, or what methodology is used. Notwithstanding this lack of transparency, from the individual reviews of the restaurants, it is clear that someone associated with Thrillist has eaten widely and knows what they’re doing. This is the only one of the three major barbecue lists that covers the whole country, instead of being limited to a particular region. Thrillist published lists of the Top 33 barbecue places in 2023, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019; a list of the 41 Top places in 2021; and a list of the 57 Top places in 2022.

    SOUTHERN LIVING

    The Southern Living list is Robert Moss’s list.

    I really respect Moss. He has eaten in a ton of barbecue places and is deeply knowledgeable about barbecue and its history (e.g., his magisterial Barbecue: The History of an American Institution, the second edition of which was published in 2020. He could ask to be called Dr. Moss (he has a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina) and from listening to many interviews with him he seems to be a very nice and humble man.

    But in compiling the Southern Living list, Moss has some institutional constraints to be aware of. Judging by the number of articles it publishes on barbecue, writing on barbecue is economically important to Southern Living (which claims to have 7.2 million monthly subscribers). So Moss is under some obvious pressure to update his best-of list often. Moss’s first “best of” list was in 2016, followed by lists in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Then was a long break, presumably due to Covid, with the 2022 Top list published on January 12, 2023.

    Now, Moss has published the Top list for 2023 on September 12, 2023. Since the Southern Living list is a one-man show, the eight months between January and September obviously do not allow for comprehensive re-visits to all (or even most) of the places on his list. There is a limit to the stomach capacity (and travel budget) of just one person, no matter how much he might love barbecue.

    Moss is admirably honest about this limitation. In the intro to his September 2023 list, he says, “Most of the movement this year was simply a shuffling of the order within the list, and in particular within the top 10.” I believe the Southern Living list would be greatly improved if it came out no more often than every two or three years, so that Moss could visit more places between lists, but market demand for barbecue writing being what it is, it’s understandable that Southern Living wants a “new” list every year.

    Moss is also admirably transparent about what affects his rankings. Yes, the barbecue has to be good, but to Moss the overall experience matters. “After all, this is a list of the best 50 barbecue joints in the South, not the best barbecue.” Moss says, “Sauces count, presentation counts, and so do the side dishes and desserts. Setting is a factor, too…. [I]f there’s something unique and compelling about the physical location, that tends to push a restaurant up a few notches. Having a long line doesn’t necessarily knock a place out of contention, either, as much as I loathe waiting for barbecue. If diners have to wait an hour or more to eat, though, there needs to be something to make the wait enjoyable or worthwhile, for that’s part of the overall experience.”

    And, intriguingly, beginning with the 2023 list, Moss says he is placing more emphasis on “regionality.” It’s not impossible for a restaurant serving barbecue that is not “regionally appropriate” to make the Southern Living list, “But if you’re going to specialize in Texas-style brisket in Georgia or Memphis-style ribs in North Carolina, there needs to be something special to make the experience stand out.”

    I might sound critical, but I love the Southern Living list. However, its inherent limitations (published annually or even more often and by just one guy) make its publication less of a notable event than the glorious day when the new Texas Monthly list comes out every four years.

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  8. I’m hesitant to be critical of what Moss includes and omits on his Southern Living list, since for just about any Southern restaurant, it is likely that Moss has eaten there more often than me and more recently than me. But it’s fun to be critical, so here goes.

    To me, the biggest omissions on Moss’s 2023 list are Joe’s in Kansas City (which last appeared on Moss’s list in 2018), the Ridgewood in Bluff City, Tennessee (which last appeared in 2019), B. Cooper in Austin (which has never appeared), City Market in Luling (last appeared in 2018), ZZQ in Richmond (which has never appeared and might be hurt by the “regionality” criterion), Sim’s in Little Rock (which has never appeared — and which I haven’t eaten in for about 20 years now), Heirloom in Atlanta (never appeared), Sid’s Catering in Beulaville, NC (never appeared), B’s in Greenville, NC (never appeared), and Payne’s in Memphis (never appeared).

    I’ve only eaten in 18 of the 50 places on Moss’s 2023, but I’m doubtful about the inclusion of Sam Jones in Winterville, NC, Old Hickory in Owensboro, KY, Kreuz Market in Lockhart, TX, Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City, and Fresh Aire in Jackson, GA, none of which was particularly outstanding when I ate at them. But again, Moss has probably eaten at them more often and more recently than I have.

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      1. I’m not sure when you were a visiting professor at Baylor, but I’m guessing it was before the 2017 list was published.

        Daniel Vaughn joined the Texas Monthly as barbecue editor in 2013 and TM’s barbecue reviews have steadily grown in importance since then, due to his great writing and marketing ability.

        My impression is that with the 2017 list, the commercial impact of the Texas Monthly list greatly increased because people started flocking to the places on the list. So making the TM Top 50 is now a pretty good hedge against going out of businss.

        I did a spot check against my barbecue spreadsheet and I don’t see that any of the places on the TM 2021 list have gone out of business (though the indictment of the co-owners of La Barbecue and the untimely death of one of them might be problematic for that joint). Only 6 from the 2017 list have gone out of business (Stillwater in Abilene, Freedman’s in Austin, Top 5 in Desoto, Rio Grand in Harlingen, Granary in San Antonio, and Flores in Whiting).

        I might have missed that some places are now out of business, but for one of the top 50 to out of business is usually news that would be reported in Texas Monthly, so I kind of doubt that I missed any.

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      1. B’s is exceptional, the pork and especially the chicken. I really liked the Sam Jones inn Raleigh, and the one in Winterville is good, but not nearly in the B’s class.

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  11. Here’s another idea that I’d love to see you lobby for – John Shelton Reed’s personal list of the best barbecue places. John has to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about Southern barbecue places, and he has written a book along with his late wife Dale about NC barbecue. However, as far as I’m aware, John has never written up his list of what he considers the best barbecue places in the entire South (or the US).

    John is one of my all-time favorite writers — in urging that people not consider pork not cooked over wood to be Southern barbecue, John said that people should not “confuse the sacred and the propane” — and an annotated list of his favorite joints would be a true delight to read.

    Maybe he could even make some money off of it, by publishing it as an article in one of the Southern magazines (my favorite is the Oxford American, though I doubt they pay much) or even better as a stand-alone book.

    I know you know John and if you could lobby him for his personal best-of list, you’d be doing the world a great favor.

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