Ha, what?

Barbecue is like sweet tea in that it’s almost never good outside of the South.

I bet there are 30 better barbecue places in and around Chattanooga alone than the 30 in this entire list.

And any barbecue place that requires or even accepts reservations ain’t no kind of barbecue place I’d ever set foot in.

This list is a damn joke, in other words.

The best barbecue I’ve ever eaten I bought from some dude with a smoker in a parking lot next to a K-Mart in North Carolina that was technically still open but had descended into complete decrepitude and near-desuetude.

I guarantee that none of those listed places are anywhere near that good, since most people primarily “taste” on ambiance and not actual flavor.

For the K-Mart bbq guy, and as it is for most people who make really good barbecue, it’s almost a religion to them. They really care about it. Smoking it for only two hours? Hell no. It’s got to be eight, or it’s not barbecue. They won’t even sell it.

I bet none of those restaurants cook it like it’s really supposed to be cooked. They couldn’t and sell it affordably with all the other overhead they have.

The best barbecue places invariably in my experience are either like that dude on the side of the road, or some place where décor is completely secondary or utterly forgotten. In other words, complete holes-in-the-wall with likely slightly-surly staff who care about the food and little else.