Why big-city barbecue is suddenly better than ever

Stories about the resurgence of cooking techniques that eschew modern technology have me wondering how much of the flavor and taste improvement is actually because of the technique itself.<p>&gt; With gas-assisted smokers, pitmasters can load their machines with meat (likely briskets and pork shoulders) at the end of service, add a few logs, and sleep soundly without fear the fire will die during the night. This high-tech approach typically eats up less wood and requires fewer employees to watch over the smoker, two significant pluses in a competitive urban marketplace where skilled pitmasters can be hard to find.<p>This aside makes me suspect that an equally significant contributor to better quality might simply be the increased human attention. If you&#x27;ve cooked with any degree of rigor, you have probably witnessed the variation in outcomes with the exact same technique. The way to reduce that variation and maintain quality is to pay close attention to the raw materials and adjust the cooking process continuously.<p>A way to test this hypothesis would be have the same number of people tending a gas-supplemented smoker as well as a traditional one and see how wide the delta is in the meat.

Me! Someone from the WaPo&#x27;s gonna talk to <i>me</i> about BBQ! Moi? Gee, the WaPo wrote an article, did some research, maybe ate some samples for a day, a week, maybe a month. Gee, a month.<p>Me? I grew up in, one word -- WaPo sit down for this one -- Memphis. That&#x27;s right, the King of chopped, picnic pork shoulder BBQ from a smoky pit, of iron plates, etc., right, from the town that gave the world the King (aka, Elvis).<p>Ribs? They were only for the tourists. Beef? Never happened, not in Memphis -- that&#x27;s a Texas thing.<p>A month? I left Memphis after I graduated from college -- we&#x27;re talking age 5-22 eating chopped, picnic pork shoulder BBQ, with sauce, coleslaw, on a soft white bread bun, 1-4 times a week for nearly all those years. In the later years, often with a beer or two. And the better places had some BBQ beans -- they were really good, and never had anything close ever again. And commonly with desert of chocolate ice box pie -- a dark, chocolate custard pie with nice whipped cream on top, pretty good.<p>Memphis was wall to wall with BBQ joints, all very similar in technique and quality.<p>But, my brother moved to Knoxpatch (Knoxville), and they do a good version of Memphis BBQ. They also do Carolina BBQ, and it&#x27;s significantly different -- e.g., it&#x27;s cooked to a somewhat higher temperature and &#x27;pulled&#x27; while Memphis BBQ is chopped into chunks. The Carolina sauce has more vinegar and less of whatever else the Memphis BBQ sauce had.<p>And the WaPo&#x27;s gonna tell me what&#x27;s &quot;better&quot; BBQ? I don&#x27;t think so!<p>I also spent the early part of my career around DC, i.e., WaPo land. Got some good grape juice from between Macon and Dijon, some more from Tuscany, a lot of semi-soft cheese, a lot of good French food, some terrific high end Italian food, a lot of US East Coast seafood, and a lot of red-white table cloth red-sauce Italian food. A lot of DC area food. BBQ? Never!<p>Memphis BBQ -- it was good stuff, was unique, likely still is. WaPo: Tough to tell me about &quot;better&quot; BBQ with just words. Instead need the BBQ!

for what it worth - we had investors coming, and ordered bbq from franklin. brisket was just like any other brisket from numerous trailers in austin. sausage actually made several people sick next day...<p>looking at what going on with food in austin, i certainly can say, it is not that much about flavour (it was good, but nothing really special,) but rather hype and ability to spin up hype quickly.

a man cooks food in one place. a man in another place also cooks food using a similar technique. both men cook food well. both of the men care about being better than the other. an article is written.

I was going to share the best bbq in SF here, but decided not to. The really good stuff in cities, those who know about it, we keep it a secret.<p>Edit: what I meant by this comment was to emphasize a key distinction between country bbq and city bbq that was neglected by the article: country bbq is by definition distant from the large bbq-loving population. So there may be equally good city bbq joints, but there are a number of (individual) parties in whose interest it is to keep them secret.

If anyone knows of some good pulled pork in NYC let me know! You can get some pretty good Texas brisket, but the vinegar style Carolina BBQ has been a bit disappointing. I&#x27;ve done Fette Sau, Dinosaur, Mables, BrisketTown, Hill Country, and some joint in Astoria.

....and now i&#x27;m hungry.