America's bucket-list barbecue styles – and where to try them

Divided states of barbecue

Few culinary techniques are more quintessentially American than barbecue. The art of cooking meat low and slow over an indirect flame, to yield moisture and a smoky taste, is a cornerstone of US food culture. As any devotee knows, though, the term 'barbecue' covers a multitude of regional styles, each showcasing different techniques and flavours. Here, we’ve ranked America’s original barbecue styles, delving into the deliciously rich and complex history of each one – and picking out the best joints to try them.

Read on to discover America's brilliant barbecue styles, counting down to the one we believe is the most iconic of all. Do you agree?

We've based our ranking on the enduring popularity of each style in its place of origin and beyond, and on the opinions of our well-travelled (and well-fed) team. The list is unavoidably subjective.

16. Chicago barbecue

Though it's not a traditional barbecue city, Chicago, Illinois has a food scene that's been influenced by migration from across the USA and beyond. Over the course of the 20th century, as people moved steadily to the city from the south, Chicago's culinary cultures blended to create a barbecue style all of its own, defined by sausages and pork rib tips (the part of the rib cut away to make flat, St. Louis–style ribs).

16. Chicago barbecue

Rib tips, which were historically discarded by butchers when they cut out sheets of ribs, tend to be a South Side delicacy – and they can be sampled at Honey 1 BBQ and Lem's Bar-B-Q House. Chicago is also the home of the aquarium smoker (named as such because it looks like a fish tank). This type of metal smoker is usually located on a restaurant’s roof; to see one, and to taste the spoils for yourself, hurry down to popular spot Smoque.

15. Santa Maria barbecue

In the 1930s, the Santa Maria Club – a country club in California’s Santa Maria Valley – began holding monthly 'Stag Barbecues'. Beef would be rolled in salt, pepper and garlic, then cooked using the region’s time-honoured technique (around since the 1800s) of smoking over red oak wood. As a result, Santa Maria barbecue was born. The cut of meat most associated with the style is tri-tip beef. The area’s proximity to Mexico also influences its barbecue traditions.

15. Santa Maria barbecue

There are plenty of Santa Maria Valley restaurants serving excellent barbecue, and many have been around since the 1950s or earlier. One such place is Far Western Tavern, which has been serving tender meat smoked over red oak for decades. Just outside the valley in Casmalia, the Hitching Post executes the region’s barbecue techniques to perfection; it was even named one of 10 Great Barbecue Joints in the USA by Forbes magazine.

14. Oklahoma barbecue

Located next to Texas, and not a million miles from cities like Kansas City and Memphis, Oklahoma has a style of barbecuing that's often overlooked. It needn’t be, though, as it incorporates the best elements from all three. Similar to Texas-style barbecue, Oklahoma barbecue focuses heavily on beef, from brisket to ribs. It also incorporates Memphis’ love of pork, too, with plenty of pulled pork and hot links on offer. Meanwhile, the sauce is reminiscent of Kansas City–style barbecue, with a tangy tomato finish (usually from ketchup). It often includes additions like Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar for extra flavour and sweetness.

14. Oklahoma barbecue

There are plenty of great spots honouring the state’s signature style. Wellston’s Butcher BBQ Stand is loved for its giant rib-sticking platters, which come served with a delicious array of sides (think baked beans, roasted corn and coleslaw). Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue in Broken Arrow, meanwhile, is famed for its rib slabs and burnt end mac ’n’ cheese.

13. West Tennessee barbecue

While Memphis barbecue is known for dominating the Tennessee scene, the west of the state boasts plenty of much-celebrated whole hog joints, with many chefs in the region devoted to the craft. Whole hog barbecue became a prevalent choice here largely thanks to the fact that pork was cheap, readily available and stretched a long way.

13. West Tennessee barbecue

Today, the Tennessee whole hog sandwich is considered a vanishing art, with Pat Martin, founder of Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, among a handful of chefs keeping it alive. At Martin’s, which has several locations in Tennessee and beyond, the meat is served with a vinegar-based sauce. The sandwiches, crucially, are loaded with crunchy slaw – an addition that marks out the Tennessee BBQ sandwich from the rest.

12. Virginia barbecue

While other regional styles have gone on to become more famous, some people, like Virginia-based food historian Joe Haynes, contend that Virginia barbecue is the original. Haynes argues that barbecue evolved from the cooking techniques of Powhatan Indians, indigenous to an area that's now part of Virginia, who slow roasted food over hot coals. Today, pork is the main event, and the style leans heavily on its sauces.

12. Virginia barbecue

There are four major sauces: the tomato-mustard blend of Tidewater (best exemplified by Old City Barbeque in Williamsburg), the Worcestershire sauce flavours of central Virginia (try Charlottesville’s Ace Biscuit and Barbecue, pictured), the mahogany sauce of the northern part of the state, and the vinegary blend of the Shenandoah Valley (best represented by Shaffer’s BBQ, Middletown).

11. St. Louis barbecue

St. Louis barbecue takes cues from Kansas City’s distinctive tomato and molasses–based sauce – and it's just as delicious. Its flavourful finish is on the sweeter and spicier side, pairing brilliantly with pork, which is the protein of choice in the Missouri city. Many favour cuts such as spare ribs and steaks, though snoot – the meat between the jaw and nose area – is also popular. St. Louis–style barbecue typically comes with sauce on the side, rather than smothered over the meat, allowing diners to fully appreciate the smoky flavours of each cut.

11. St. Louis barbecue

For a true St. Louis barbecue experience, Pappy’s Smokehouse is a favoured choice. Prepared fresh, the joint's meat is cooked for 24 hours over sweet apple or cherry wood. The house speciality is tender ribs, served with two tasty sides (think potato salad, baked beans or vinegary coleslaw), but the fully stacked sandwiches are a hit with customers, too. Roper Ribs, meanwhile, is the place to go for sauce-slathered snoots.

10. Barbacoa

The origins of barbecue are complex, but they can generally be traced to the Caribbean, South America and North America. Native American cooking techniques of roasting food over smouldering coals almost certainly led to the types of barbecue we know and love today, as did similar methods used by enslaved African American people. Meanwhile, the Caribbean Taíno people used the term barbacoa to describe the green wood structure on which they would cook meat wrapped in agave leaves over a low flame.

10. Barbacoa

Barbacoa can also refer to a type of meat prepared by earth oven cookery, a technique used by Indigenous people for thousands of years. The technique saw meat – and sometimes vegetables – cooked in ovens buried underground, often for extremely long periods of time. Today, barbacoa and pit barbecue are often interchangeable terms, though they almost always refer to above-ground pits equipped with grills or spits, which are specially designed for slow cooking meat over wood, coals or both.

10. Barbacoa

There's one place in the USA that still crafts authentic below-ground barbacoa. At Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que in Brownsville, Texas, you can order barbacoa de cabeza – smoked cow’s head – which is cooked in an underground brick-lined pit for 12 hours. Bestowed with a prestigious America’s Classics award by the James Beard Foundation in 2020, it's a must-try for barbecue fans.

9. Kentucky barbecue

Kentucky barbecue is distinctive for its preference for mutton. According to Kentucky barbecue expert Wes Berry, mutton cookery in the state is centred mostly in the city of Owensboro, where pitmasters smoke the meat over hickory and serve it with a Worcestershire sauce–based dip flavoured with vinegar, lemon and spices, known as mutton dip. Elsewhere in the Bluegrass State, pork shoulder (or Boston butt) is another perennial favourite.

9. Kentucky barbecue

Though Kentucky is known for its mutton barbecue, there are only a few places to find it, most of which are in Owensboro. To try sliced or chopped barbecue mutton or a piping hot bowl of burgoo (a meat and vegetable stew), head to Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn, which has been run by the Bosley family since 1963. Owensboro’s popular Old Hickory Barbecue also serves these local delicacies.

8. Hawaii barbecue

Thanks to its sunny climate, Hawaii has a long history of outdoor cooking. Often, the grill is at the centre of a party, and a variety of culinary influences find their way onto the plate, from Portuguese barbecue pork to Korean-style ribs. Traditional Hawaiian kālua pork is made in an imu (earth oven) – rare elsewhere – and seafood is also high up on the menu, with grilled mahi mahi a speciality across the state.

8. Hawaii barbecue

Bob’s Bar-B-Que in Honolulu is a legendary local spot and the perfect place to sample the melting pot of flavours on display in Hawaiian barbecue; hibachi, teriyaki and traditional barbecue are all available here. To try kālua pork, head to Helena’s Hawaiian Food, also in Honolulu, where you’ll be served up meat that's been cooked in an imu.

7. Georgia barbecue

Though it's sometimes overlooked in favour of its barbecue giant neighbours, Georgia also has its own signature style. As with many states, pork is king here. Sweet sauces – with sweetness also applied via sugar, and sometimes cinnamon, in the dry rubs for ribs – accompany smokier than usual meats (often smoked overnight) to complete the state’s barbecue flavour profile. Sides are also important in Georgia barbecue; think coleslaw, potato salad and mac ’n’ cheese.

7. Georgia barbecue

The oldest pit barbecue restaurant in Georgia is Fresh Air BBQ in Jackson, which has been open since 1929 (the dining room is pictured here in the 1950s). The place is home to a wood-burning pit that requires constant tending, though it does result in some seriously smoky meat that's more than worth the effort. Elsewhere, the state’s signature meat style can be sampled at both D.B.A. Barbecue in Atlanta and Wiley’s Championship BBQ in Savannah, where the speciality is smoked wings.

6. Alabama barbecue

Alabama has a deep-rooted history of barbecue, stretching back to the 19th century. Knowledge of pitmastery was passed down through communities of enslaved people, and pork became the preferred meat due to the prevalence of pig farming in the area. Otherwise, Alabama barbecue is best defined as a melting pot (or pit) of local styles and characteristics.

6. Alabama barbecue

While ribs and tomato and mustard–based sauces abound across the state, Alabama’s primary contribution to barbecue is probably the mayonnaise-based sauce – known as Alabama white sauce – pioneered by Big Bob Gibson in Decatur. His restaurant, Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Que, has remained in his family since opening in 1925. The famed sauce is creamy, peppery and tangy, and it makes an especially good baste for poultry.

5. South Carolina barbecue

South Carolina barbecue is largely characterised as whole hog barbecue, due to its origins in the whole hog cookery used by enslaved people on plantations here. Today, whole hog barbecue is considered a craft of its own, requiring long shifts (it takes around 12 hours from start to finish) and close attention to the heat. The finished product tends to be served simply, accompanied by an acidic, vinegar-based sauce.

5. South Carolina barbecue

In the state, the art of whole hog barbecue is dominated by the Scott family. Rodney Scott’s BBQ in Charleston, South Carolina is regarded as one of the best examples of whole hog barbecue – so much so that in 2018, Scott won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast.

4. North Carolina barbecue

There isn't one uniform style of barbecue in North Carolina; cooking and serving techniques vary between the east and west of the state. The eastern style, widely considered the original, is typically a whole hog basted with a peppery, vinegar-based seasoning. Its tart, acidic characteristics are distinctive from the western style, which takes pork shoulder and introduces ketchup and (sometimes) Worcestershire sauce into the mix – resulting in a sweeter, saucier dish that's much faster to cook than the whole hog.

4. North Carolina barbecue

Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden is one of the state’s best places to try the eastern style. Its relationship to whole hog barbecue can be traced back to the 1830s, when pitmaster Sam Jones’ great-great-great grandfather traded from a covered wagon. For the western pork shoulder speciality, Hursey’s BBQ in Burlington is a great bet, having been in business since the 1940s. The shoulder at Little Richard’s BBQ – smoked for 12 hours – also exemplifies the western style.

3. Memphis barbecue

Memphis barbecue is characterised by an emphasis on pork (ribs are a particular speciality), typically smoked over charcoal. The style emerged in the early 20th century, as the Tennessee city grew as an economic centre – and as former army cook John H. Mills opened a barbecue stand on Beale Street, a hub for the city’s Black community. Mills’ style of rib cookery, hot and quick over charcoal, informed what would become the iconic Memphis rib.

3. Memphis barbecue

Building on Mills' cooking style, the recipe for Memphis' signature dish, dry-rubbed ribs, was created by Charlie Vergos at his restaurant Rendezvous, which opened in 1948. It sees dry ribs basted with water and vinegar during cooking, and finished with a mouthwatering spice mix of salt, pepper, bay leaf, cumin, chilli powder, oregano and paprika. Rib sandwiches are another highlight of the Memphis scene, proudly served by A&R Bar-B-Cue on Elvis Presley Boulevard.

2. Kansas City barbecue

Kansas City barbecue emerged in the early 20th century, courtesy of Henry Perry. The chef opened a barbecue stand in the city in 1908 and is considered to be the father of this regional style. The technique sees meats seasoned with a dry rub and smoked over oak and hickory. Other calling cards of the style include burnt ends (the crusty, tasty cut from the end of a brisket) and a sweet tomato and molasses–based sauce.

2. Kansas City barbecue

The most famous barbecue restaurant in Kansas City is Arthur Bryant’s, which has its roots in Perry’s original stall (and subsequent restaurant). After Perry’s death in 1940, his employee Charlie Bryant took over the business, followed by his brother Arthur, who had also worked for Perry, six years later. Renowned for its ribs, burnt ends and house-made sauces, Arthur Bryant’s is one of the most beloved barbecue restaurants in the US.

1. Texas barbecue

Arguably the most famous style, and known all over the world, Texas barbecue tends to focus on beef – specifically brisket – and pork ribs. The style originated in the 19th century among German and Czech immigrants, who brought with them European smoking techniques that were often used to stop meat going stale. The prevalence of pork ribs, once again, stems from enslaved people on plantations elsewhere in the South.

1. Texas barbecue

Like North Carolina, Texas plays host to competing barbecue styles. Central Texas–style barbecue showcases beef (usually simply seasoned), while East Texas–style barbecue offers both beef and pork, sometimes stuffed into sandwiches. South Texas barbecue is also closely linked to Mexican cooking, with dishes often served with guacamole, salsa and sweet barbecue sauce.

1. Texas barbecue

Southside Market & Barbeque in Elgin (sometimes called the sausage capital of Texas) claims to be the state's oldest barbecue restaurant. The place opened as a slaughterhouse in the 1880s and began selling sausages soon after. These days, it's well known for Elgin hot guts, a type of beef sausage smoked over oak wood, alongside other beef specialities. Elsewhere, spots like Snow’s BBQ in Lexington and Franklin Barbecue in Austin often attract lines stretching over several blocks.

Now discover America's original recipe hot dogs – and where to try them

Last updated by Lottie Woodrow.