We fell in love with the southern states and their attitude to food and gatherings three years ago, when we quit our long-standing careers in London and embarked on a road trip across the US, eating at every barbecue joint we could afford. When we returned to the UK we knew we had to share what we had discovered. Our first kitchen takeover was a weekly pop-up in a backstreet pub in Cardiff. We went on to win the BBC Food & Farming Best Street Food award in 2015, and this year we opened our first permanent restaurant, Hang Fire Southern Kitchen in Barry, south Wales.
Counting down to our number one favourite, here is our hit parade of southern smokehouses …
10. Choo Choo BBQ, Chattanooga, Tennessee
This simple, stripped-back, booth-style restaurant on the Georgia-Tennessee state line is a very popular local choice: the place is full of regulars who all seem to know each other and their servers. You can get a plate of ribs with two sides for under $10 (perfect for us, with our road-trip coffers dwindling). The individually cut loin ribs are meaty, with a lovely smoky ring, and glossed with sweet, rich barbecue sauce. The sides are the epitome of comfort food: the slaw is sweet and crunchy, the fried okra crisp and refreshingly bitter, and the smooth and creamy potato salad rounds it off. We absolutely love these little neighbourhood joints – the hard work is evident in every forkful.
• choochoobbq.com
9. 12 Bones, Asheville, North Carolina
With a quirky, bumper-sticker-embellished, white interior, friendly staff and top-notch barbecue, 12 Bones is the place for central Carolina-style barbecue. We had a rack of its inventive blueberry chipotle sauce baby backs, with sides of corn pudding and incredible smoked potato salad ($22), as well as a mighty Hogzilla sandwich ($7.50) – slices of brown-sugar bacon, a big, spit-grilled bratwurst, pulled pork and melted pepperjack cheese on a hefty hoagie roll that tries its best to hold it all together.
Chef and co-owner Shane Heavner puts his stamp on hand-me-down recipes from the matriarchs in his family. The barbecue scene is male-dominated, but this is a familiar tale of how women shaped the development of barbecue across the US over the past 100 years (albeit sometimes behind the scenes).
• 12bones.com
8. Central BBQ, Memphis, Tennessee
Central BBQ’s third Memphis restaurant is downtown, not too far from Beale Street – so you can dance off your dinner to the blues. It has topped Memphis’s “best BBQ restaurant” charts for a while now, and you can see why. The counter service is slick – when we visited they spotted a European tourist quickly, and helped us out with the slightly intimidating “order by the pound” system – even keeping a straight face when we asked what they had for our vegetarian travelling companion.
Behind the till, you can see the pits working – racks and racks of ribs piled high, wrestled from the smoky abyss then stacked and glazed, ready to eat. We shared a rack of baby backs and some sides for around $23. You can see why Memphis is called Rib town.
• cbqmemphis.com
7. Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous, Memphis, Tennessee
This has to be one of the US’s most iconic rib joints. It does brisket, pork and, rather surprisingly, lamb riblets, but people really come for one thing – a large portion of baby backs (under $19 with sides), coated in the secret Memphis Dry Shake blend, like a blanket of paprika snow. The ribs have a great bark (crusty, seared surface) and the dry shake, loaded with fragrant spices, took the flavour profile to another dimension. Since trying these life-affirming ribs, we serve our ribs with “Memphis Gold Dust”. If you’re in Memphis, don’t miss this place; but, unlike us, check the opening hours (it’s closed Sunday-Monday) – it took us two trips to eat here!
• hogsfly.com
6. Leatha’s BBQ, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Leatha’s manifesto is summed up by a very sweet poster on the wall: “If you’re happy, I’m happy.” We talked to her daughter, Bonnie, who was not at all surprised that a couple of drifting Brits washed up in her restaurant – they get people from all over the world eating here. There was no messing about with this barbecue; it was big and hearty and unapologetic for its size. The pulled pork was a highlight – loosely pulled, a little tomato barbecue sauce, and plenty of bark, and we washed it down with an iced tea that had us checking our insulin levels. Sadly, we’ve since learned that Miss Leatha has passed away, leaving the legacy of her business (which she started with just $2 in 1976) to her family. Thankfully, a book has been written about her life. Leatha says on the back: “I taught my family to pour love into everything they do.” It’s true – it was there in the soul food we were served that day, and in how sweet and generous Bonnie and her family were to us strangers.
• leathasbbq.com
5. Big Bob Gibson BBQ, Decatur, Alabama
This place is legendary. Award-winning head chef Chris Lilly is a TV barbecue celeb, and the first thing that strikes you here, aside from the familiar smoky wafts, is the number of trophies in the room. We ordered the Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q Feast ($23), which is ribs, chicken, brisket and turkey with slaw and potato salad, and added half an Alabama chicken ($5.49) and a bowl of Brunswick stew ($4.69). The stars of the show are the chicken and turkey, which are phenomenally moist, with the perfect amount of wood smoke flavour and a peppery white sauce that made us “mmmm” with every mouthful. The potato salad was also one of the nicest we tried – creamy, with a hint of buttermilk, and well seasoned.
• bigbobgibson.com
4. Old Hickory BBQ, Owensboro, Kentucky
This lovely little barbecue joint, run by the same family for five generations, has worn wooden furniture and a warm, homely vibe. The aroma here is different from any other we’d been in: it was the mutton, which vaguely reminded us of a good roast lamb dinner with a good lick of fragrant wood smoke. We hadn’t come across much lamb in our travels here, but struck ovine gold at Old Hickory. We ordered a three-meat plate ($14.50) of sliced and chopped mutton and mutton ribs, with sides of mac’n’cheese, green beans and Kentucky burgoo (a rich, tomato-based barbecued meat stew, $3). Smoked mutton is a game changer as far as lamb goes, and we decided that this was one we had to take back to Wales.
• oldhickorybar-b-q.com
3. Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que, Kansas City, Missouri
This iconic, cool, mint-coloured restaurant operates from the old service bays in a working gas station. The queue was snaking around the building on our visit, but it was so very worth it. We had the rib and brisket dinner ($13.89) and the burnt ends ($17 a pound) with plenty of Texas toast. The thinly sliced brisket was moist and tasty and not drowned in barbecue sauce. We loved the cantina vibe of this place, and everyone from the staff to the punters were super friendly.
• joeskc.com
2. Smitty’s Market, Lockhart, Texas
Lockhart is the home of what we’d heard folks call “central market style” barbecue, created by grocery stores owned by German and Czech immigrants during the 1800s. The brick pits at Smitty’s run the length of the back walls, and their pulley-operated flat steel lids – wonderfully archaic, not a temperature gauge in sight – are like nothing we’d seen before. They were stuffed with beef, ribs and sausage. The fire pits burned at our feet as we stood in line, waiting to order – it was like a smoky, meaty museum. The hunks of meat are taken from a holding pit and sliced on a big, round cutting table and dumped on butcher’s paper, and fistfuls of pickle chips and slices of white bread thrown on the side. We ate mounds of buttery brisket and spicy Texas sausages (on one bite, hot grease jetted out like a water pistol!) for under $15. If you’re interested in true barbecue, go to Lockhart.
• smittysmarket.com
1. Franklin Barbecue, Austin, Texas
At the revered Franklin Barbecue the line is in full swing by 8am, two hours before it opens. We were there, coffee in hand, by 7.45am, and there were already 120 people in front of us. A little later a woman came out with a clipboard and asked everyone what they wanted. She put us down for a little of everything: “Might as well, since you came all this way, girls!” It was 1pm before we tucked into brisket (both fatty and lean), Texas hot link sausages, and big pork spare ribs with slaw, beans and pickles (around $15)… and a turkey sandwich ($6). This is hands down the most perfect plate of barbecue we’ve ever eaten. The show stopper is the brisket, a marbled, grain-fed cut of Angus beef. And yes, it was the best turkey sandwich ever. Franklin also has its own smoked beer on tap, which was deceptively subtle for a smoked porter. Aaron Franklin is a master fire maker who, night after night, watches, adjusts and watches again every one of his nine pits, knowing exactly what size piece of wood to throw on and when to adjust the coals and move the meat around. It’s our lifelong quest to produce a plate of barbecue that remotely resembles what we ate that day at Franklin.
• franklinbarbecue.com
Sam and Shauna’s Hang Fire Cookbook is out now, published by Quadrille, £20. To order a copy for £16, including UK p&p, visit bookshop.theguardian.com. Their Hang Fire Southern Kitchen restaurant is at the Pumphouse in Barry
