SEARCHING FOR BBQ BLISS, THE PICKINGS ARE EASY Pigging out all across America, an ever-hungry writer takes on a mouth-watering mission: to seek out barbecues juiciest joints By Alan Richman (An Excerpt from People Weekly "the 10 best barbecue spots in Amerca") Next
Northerners don't know a whole lot about barbecue. They've been cooking on stoves their entire lives and think Now and then, about the time the flies come out, they soak some briquettes in fighter fluid, tell the wife and kiddies to take cover and drop a match. Whoosh. When the flames get real high, they ignite some chopped meat and call it barbecue. That's not right. No wonder the South has stayed mad at the North all these years. Not long ago Northerners caught on to the fact that what they'd been doing all those years was backyard grilling, and real barbecue-it's the same stuff whether spelled bar-b-que, barbeque, BBQ or bar-b-que was meat slow-cooked over wood smoke. Having discovered is new "regional cuisine," the folks up North wanted to find out who did it best. I got the job. I went to 19 states and ate in more than 80 famous or highly recommended barbecue joints, stands, barns, pits and spots-hardly any calll themselves restaurants, maybe because restaurants aren't places where you go to eat recognizable body parts. I concentrated on he big three of barbecue pork ribs, sliced beef brisket and chopped pork sandwiches?but I had pork and beef so many ways the National Cholesterol Education Program might have named me a poster child. To simplify my investigation, I skipped what I call "rogue barbecue," which includes kalua pig from Hawaii, barbecued mutton from Kentucky, barbecued goat from Texas and barbecued bologna from lots of places that ought to know better. l learned that you should never try to find a barbecue place that somebody tells you"just down the road," because barbecue places are the floating crap games of the culinary world, never to be found where people say they are.Finally, I came up with the Top 10 barbecue places in America, ranking them with one rib (pig in clover), two ribs (high on the hog), three ribs, (cloud swine) or four ribs (hog heaven). The only disappointment of rny trip was never participating		in a North Carolina pig pickin'. The way I heard it, and it could be that some Southern boys were pulling my leg, this is a cultural event where the head of the pig is removed and placed atop the barbecue cooker with a John Deere cap on its head and a cigarette in its mouth. By reputation, there are two real barbecue cities in America-Kansas City and Memphis and two real barbecue regions Carolina and Texas.Nearly half of the barbecue places I visited were in these four areas, and this is what I found out: Kansas City is still very good, but I'd feel better about its barbecue future if there were a genuine challenger to Arthur Bryant's. The other famous places you might have heard about are okay only if you've spent your life eating Midwestern cuisine. North Carolina, which has been embroiled forever in an argument over the superiority of the state's western-style chopped pork sandwich (tomato-based sauce) vs. its eastern-style sandwich (vinegar-based sauce), has more important things to worry about. Foremost among them is the fact that too many of the state's great barbecue places have become mediocre full-service restaurants. There is so much fried fish being served in the Tar Heel State these days, I wouldn't be surprised if Arthur Treacher wins the next Carolina Barbecue Championship Cook-Off. Except for Jim Neely's Interstate and the Bar-B-Q Shop, Memphis has mediocre barbecue. Now I know why Elvis preferred fried peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches. Texas has more great barbecue places than anywhere else. I had always heard that the only barbecue you could get in Texas was beef; but the pork ribs served throughout Texas were never less than wonderful (far superior to the ribs I had in Memphis, which is famous for then).The best pork ribs I had anywhere were at the Salt Lick in Driftwood, the best beef ribs at Bob's Smoke House in San Antonio, the best brisket at Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor (where it's so good it's served for breakfast).No wonder Arthur Bryant's last wish was to be buried in Texas. Next