Posted too soon. I meant to add that my best Q experience was at Goode’s in Houston, but I have been informed that I was deprived on a count of having settled in West U (My girlfriend went to Rice. Where else would I go?).
Nope, hamburgers, steaks, chicken breasts, etc. are grilled not barbecued. Actually, that’s not quite fair since there are a lot of different popular definitions for barbecue.
What is barbecue to me? It’s any meat cooked low and slow over an indirect heat source of coals or wood with plenty of smoke. This typically means you’re using tougher cuts of meat like brisket, ribs, or boston butt but you can also bbq more tender meats like whole chickens.
There are a lot of different bbqs and I do a lot of grilling and smoking. The only area I haven’t tackled yet is fish and I plan on getting to that soon.
Marc
Tragic. One of the best joints in the city was only a few miles away. Luling City Market, at the intersection of 610 and Richmond.
Drexler’s is not all that, despite being owned by Clyde’s family.
I admit it, I’m a heretic. I’m a blasphemer. I’m an infidel.
But barbecue has always been, for me, pork riblets slowly grilled outdoors on the barbecue–during a warm summer evening, with other neighbours sitting outside on their porches–with a swath of hot sauce, a dash of lemon juice, and a sprinkling of cilantro.
To me, as I’m a native of Kansas City, barbecue must be served with sauce made with molasses.
Barbecue is slow cooked with lots of smoke. Grilling is NOT barbecuing, but is my favorite way of making a meal.
Yes!!!
Barbeque is a food, not an event. The event where the barbeque is cooked is called a pig pickin’, regardless of whether or not any other meat or vegetable is being cooked at the same time. Cole slaw (not vinegar-based), hush puppies, and sweet tea must be present though.
People in California think hush puppies are shoes. 
The best hush puppies I have ever had were at a place called Bridges BBQ in Shelby, outside of Charlotte, NC. Just the perfect amount of spice.
If it moves of its own free-will and is edible and tasty, kill it and cook it low and slow. 
Sauce or rub? Both and neither. It all depends on the meat and how it was prepared and cooked. My only requirement is that the sauce and/or rub enhance and/or compliment the flavor of the meat, not mask it.
Never could get used to the mustard based sauces though. The ones I’ve tried have overwhelmed the meat instead of enhancing the flavor. I’m willing to be persuaded that there is a good mustard-based sauce out there though.
I will have to try that white barbecue sauce though that Ogre pointed out.
So, peg me as a typical Libra, unable to make a decision. 
It’s all good to me, and I’ve eaten my way across the US from Hawai’i to South Carolina.
And while the others are arguing over what is and isn’t barbecue, I’ll simply sneak in and eat it before it gets cold.
__
<< He who hesitates is… Oh, damn! >>
A-freakin-men! Gonna miss this the most, along with real fajitas, when I move from Houston to Baltimore in a month and a half. I would also add that there is an interesting segregation to Texas barbecue. You have the white-owned places – Goode Co, Lockhart, Groene, Luling – and the black-owned places – Drexler’s, Williams Smokehouse, the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Huntsville but the clientele is always mixed. Texans know where to go for good barbecue, and no small thing like distance, neighborhood, or preconceived notions about race will stop that…
If you have never had real Texas barbecue, IMveryHO you can’t say your barbecue is the best. I’ve had a bunch of barbecue from all over – pulled pork, tomato based, whatever – and it just doesn’t hold a candle.
I was so encouraged by David Plotz’s Slate travelogue where he traveled the country in search of the best barbecue. A quote:
And some NPR pieces about his trip as well:
Barbecue for me is a very specific type of cooking, mainly, low and slow over wood. It can be very smoky, it can be a little smoky, but it is not grilling, it is not about the sauce. Sauce is a nice addition to good barbecue, but it should be an accent, not the definition. I generally barbecue pork or chicken, although beef or any other meat is acceptable for barbecue. Barbecue is the technique. Low and slow over wood. That’s it.
If anyone wants to learn how to properly barbecue with a Weber Smokey Mountain, this is perhaps the best tutorial I’ve found. I finally got to dinner #5, the pulled pork, and, Oh. My. God.. That $200 for the Weber was the best money I’ve ever spent on a cooking instrument. Just do not stray from the website’s advice. Follow the rules to the tee, and you will learn fire control and proper barbecue technique.
HH speaketh the truth. Only thing I would add is a mention of the mustard based sauce used primarily for the pulled pork in central South Carolina. I’ve also had the pleasure of many a rack of baby backs in the midwest but care must be taken or you’re likely to end up with a rack of something you can’t taste swimming in a bunch of sauce…
I agree with the first part of Zeldar’s post.
It is a method of cooking.
“Grilling” is entirely inadequate. People grill on all sorts of devices using all sorts of heating methods. E.g., those George Foreman grills.
BBQ: charcoals or similar. Has to be outside for safety reasons. Not only can you BBQ hamburgers, you can BBQ corn on the cob, etc. Open flame-based grilling is a major step backwards.
Smothering something in sauce means you don’t know how to cook it right.
The best barbecue I ever had was a McRib.
I’ve had great BBQ with both yak, goats and sheep. It ain’t the animal but roasting over a fire and the sauce.
I think that to most afficianados, grilling means “High heat. Close to food” – a specific style of cooking that is neither worse nor better than barbequeing, and can’t be properly achieved on a George Foreman “grill”.
Grilling is a distinctly different style of cooking than barbequeing which involves slow cooking food using coals with or without smoke.
Ergo, you don’t BBQ hamburgers.
As opposed to people from the south, I don’t think that the average Yank says, “barbeque” to mean a pork sandwich or ribs or brisket or anything specific. However, a yank learn-ed in the ways of Flay and Raichlen, would be attuned to the distinction.
Growing up in New England, primarily, “having a barbeque” meant “having a cookout”. Secondarily, “barbeque” just meant the “barbeque grill”, as in “throw another hot dog on the barbeque”.
Barbecue is meat, slow-cooked in sauce, pulled apart into shreds, and served by itself or on a bun. It can be pork, beef, chicken, goat, or albatross, and the sauce usually includes some combination of tomato, spice, vinegar, and sweet.
I think most of us would assume you meant ribs (baby back) and chicken if we just heard “barbecue”. I love pulled pork myself - the yumminess of ribs without all the work - but it’s not as common around here as ribs and chicken.
But I’ll second that “a barbecue” means “a cookout”. Generally at “a barbecue”, one will grill, as in hamburgers, bratwurst and hot dogs or even (shudder) grilled ribs (par-boiled for tenderness). Real “barbecue” is mostly a restaurant thing for a white yankee. Hecky’s Barbecue is THE place for good barbecue 'round here. (Oh dear, I see they’re now doing on-line order and delivery. I’m in so much trouble.)
We’re starting to see more vinegar in our BBQ sauces around here, but it’s still vinegar in a tomato/molasses base, not a thin vinegar sauce like I loved in Georgia.
If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, give Honey 1 (2241 N. Western) a shot. It’s generally considered the upper echelon of Chicago BBQ by foodies. It’s Arkansas style BBQ, nice smoke flavor, toothsome spare ribs, they always ask if you want sauce on the side, etc… It used to be located on the West Side in the Austin neighborhood, but they just recently moved. Other great BBQ joints in Chicago include Barbara Ann’s (on 76th & Cottage Grove) and Lem’s (about 300-ish E. 75th). Chicago sucks for true BBQ, but there are a few diamonds in the rough to be found. Also, spare ribs are far more common than baby backs (which is good; spare ribs are much better suited for the low & slow style of cooking and, in my opinion, have better flavor.)
Bridges is great Western NC Barbecue, but they have purple slaw. That’s just wrong. I’m jealous of Jeep’s Phoenix. He’s actually within 20 miles of the best barbecue in the world. Check out Allen and Son on Hwy 86 just north of Chapel Hill. You know it’s good because of all the taxidermy.
For the best hushpuppies, go to the Seafood Restaurant at the NC State Farmer’s Market on Lake Wheeler Rd.
Crap - now I’m hungry.