Photograph by Martha Williams
Like everything else around here, the local barbecue scene has sprawled. I tried to count the number of barbecue places, using Yelp and anything else I could think of, and ran out of energy and patience when I got to 350. That’s right: The 28-country metro area has at least 350 barbecue eateries—not just stand-alone restaurants, but food trucks and pop-ups and kiosks and lots of places doing things that don’t fit the standard definition of Southern barbecue. It isn’t just chopped pork anymore.
Ribs past and present
Atlanta’s most renowned rib joints are memories. Aleck’s Barbecue Heaven in West End—Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite—closed at least 20 years ago. And the Auburn Avenue Rib Shack downtown shuttered a few years before that, its gorgeous pink-pig neon sign surviving in the archives of the Atlanta History Center.
But ribs are actually more widely available now that people expect barbecue places to serve all kinds of smoked meats. Most of the places in our Top 12 cook good ribs. Other notable rib joints include Crazy Ron’s BBQ in Stone Mountain and Herb’s Rib Shack in Marietta.
Courtesy of DAS BBQ
Atlanta, Texas?
Smoked brisket used to be unheard of around here. Now it shows up on most menus in town, usually served on metal trays with pink butcher paper, the way they do it in Texas. Among the high-profile Atlanta barbecue places that stress their Lone Star pedigree: Fox Bros., DAS BBQ, Ford’s BBQ, Hattie Marie’s Texas BBQ, and Moonie’s Texas BBQ. No wonder you hear so much ZZ Top in Atlanta barbecue joints these days.
Courtesy of the Imprints Agency
Meatless barbecue
Terry Sargent serves vegan barbecue, and it’s good. At Grass VBQ, he makes faux brisket from chickpea flour and wheat gluten, and faux pork from jackfruit. As far as I’m concerned, his food meets the basic definition of barbecue because he smokes all his proteins. Sargent published a…
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