I asked this a few years ago and we had a lively discussion about it. Now, with the suggestion that we call a Council of Ribcea to settle things, I ask again:
Exactly what is barbeque, to you? Sauce or no sauce? Pork or beef? Goat? Tomatoes in the sauce? Vinegar? Coffee? Where is the best place to get your style of BBQ? Are all the others heretics? Do Texans know jack about it? How do you deal with the South Carolina Heresy? Inquiring minds want to know.
To have a barbecue is to have a bunch of people over to grill a variety of meats and drink beer and have fun. If someone has the wherewithal to smoke something that’s fine and dandy but it’s not required. Barbecue itself is meat that has been cooked on the grill, smoked or cooked in a crockpot device until it all falls apart and makes a messy sandwich. I don’t care if you do tomato based sauces or vinegar or whatever the argument is about; it’s all good and as long as everyone is fed and happy at the end of the day it was a successful barbecue.
I grew up in Kansas City, so know KC BBQ very well. I think there’s a certain handicap to growing up in BBQ country, especially growing up in a regional BBQ area - and that’s that we’ve known REALLY GOOD BBQ for most of our lives, and are thrown off by variations of that. And the regional variations really boil down to sauce - and that’s not the foundation of what BBQ should be judged on.
For some time, when I encountered a different style, I was quick to dismiss it as “not real BBQ”. I’ve grown to understand how very wrong I was. Dry ribs are very different than what I’m used to, but they’re still incredibly good, and you have to get your tastebuds accustomed to focusing on different aspects of it.
My first trip to North Carolina was an eye-opener. 30 minutes after checking into the hotel, my brother and I got recommendations for the best, closest BBQ joint in the area. Vinegar! What the…? But once you see what’s going on, you can appreciate it.
I think we can start with what BBQ isn’t - things that people outside BBQ regions may not quite understand. BBQ is certainly not:
What BBQ most certainly is not: Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky’s Montgomery Inn, which is essentially boiled ribs drowned in ketchup. But ask any (non-foodie) Cincinnatian who has the best barbecue, and nine times out of ten they’ll say Montgomery Inn. Of course, these are also the same people who cite La Rosa’s as their favorite pizza, so they’re more to be pitied than scorned.
Boiling ribs is just fine… if you’re making soup. If you’re taking the ribs out and serving them and then throwing out the liquid, that’s an abomination before God. The same is true, incidentally, for most vegetables.
OK. You can stay. The rest of you–out! 
Having lived in Virginia and North Carolina for many years, BBQ can only be pork, pit-cooked, over wood, long and slow, then pulled and served on cheap whitebread buns, with cole slaw on the sandwich. The Eastern Carolina vinegar-based sauce(no tomato) is preferred. But then you learn to appreciate the basic pulled pork, and you make allowances to accept the Western Carolina/Southern Virginia tomato/vinegar sauce. I’m sure you’d have to be a mutant to accept the (mainly) South Carolina mustard-based sauce. And, to add, you don’t really put sauce on the pork while it’s being cooked. Well, some do put on a mop sauce to keep it moist. And, that’s OK. But you put the finishing sauce on once the meat is smoked and ready to be served.
Cooking ribs over a charcoal grill isn’t BBQ. It might be what has become to be known to a majority of people in the US, but it’s ain’t BBQ.
Beef brisket, slowly cooked/smoked as they do in Texas and other Western states is mighty good eating when done right. I’d have to allow that as BBQ.
Being originally from Memphis, BBQ, to me, means pork. Most specifically, as a noun, slow-smoked pork shoulder shredded and served on a soft white hamburger bun topped only with a little spicy, very slightly sweet tomato-based sauce and freshly made creamy coleslaw. BBQ ribs are usually just called ribs (everybody knows they’re slow-smoked pork, silly!). Ribs really didn’t become that popular in Memphis until around 30 years ago. Until then, most BBQ places only served the aforemention BBQ sammich. (Of course, Charlie Vergos’ Rendevouz restaurant was around serving “dry” ribs for years.) “BBQ” spaghetti has a meat sauce of pork shoulder, “BBQ” pizza is covered with pork shoulder, “BBQ” nachos have pork shoulder, etc. Having lived in Texas for many years, I just don’t broach the subject. If we crave a BBQ, we either make it ourselves or order it from Memphis.
I guess around here the homey roots of traditional BBQ are rural Farmers, Churches, Firehalls, Family Reunions, towns and townships, etc. getting together for a Whole Pig Roast, an Ox Roast, or Slow Grilled (BBQ) Chicken prepared in a variety of ways… our sauces are usually vinegar bastes- but commercially and popularly it is babyback ribs grilled or smoked and a sweet tomato based KC style sauce.
A BBQ is a meeting of people to eat dead cooked animal flesh, with a few offerings to wierd vegetarians =) Occasional grilled veggies and fruits may find there way to the table, as will cold and hot salads. There will be ants, mosquitos and occasionally dogs and cats and kids underfoot.
BBQ specific is slow cooked meats, usually the cheap cuts that have the excellent connective tissues that go all gooey and tender from the slow cooking. It may or may not be rubbed with dry spices, or served with a sauce but it will be falling off the bones tender, or already pulled apart and served in a heap. It will be heavenly and somewhat messy to eat.
Beef or pork. (Not chicken, or hamburgers, or sausage.)
Cooked in a pit or smoker. (Not grilled.)
Long and slow. (This is the key.)
The sauce is an afterthought. With really good BBQ, you don’t need sauce. The meat just melts in your mouth.
My personal favorite is Mesquite-smoked Texas brisket. Favorite place to get it is Goode Company in Houston. If I had to pick my last meal, if would be Goode Company’s sliced brisket sandwich on jalapeno cheese bread.
Back when I lived in North Carolina I tried a lot of the local pulled-pork-with-vinegar stuff and never really warmed to it. Too sour. I prefer more of a smoky flavor. In fact, my favorite BBQ place in the Triangle is Danny’s, which is owned by an out-of-stater who doesn’t like the local BBQ.
I still haven’t found a decent BBQ place in L.A. … .
Around here, when we say “barbecue” in vernacular, we usually mean to say, or use it interchangeably, with " to grill out"… then, it is usually steaks, hamburgers, and hot dogs on the charcoal or gas grill. If we are going to smoke meats, then it would probably be clearly specified that we were going to have a “Smoke-out”, “a Roast” or “Pit Barbecue”, or some other adverbial or adjective descriptors.
Interesting. I drove by a place in Southfield Michigan that had sign that said they had “Montgomery inn ribs”. I meant to look it up to see what the hell they were talking about, I guess now I know 
To me, barbecue is the cooking method. The meat is unimportant. The sauce is unimportant. I’m a fan of pork, personally, but I enjoy the great barbecue traditions that involve beef and mutton, too. Chicken is also fine by me, but not what I usually think of when I think barbecue. I think of meats with a lot of collagen and connective tissue that is broken down by the low and slow cooking process.
To me, barbecue should be cooked in the general temperature range of 200-275F. It should be done over wood, usually indirectly, but not necessarily, as long as the temp is in the low range it’s fine. Now, ideally, for me that’s an all wood fire or lump charcoal with wood chunks or split logs. I’ve even made exceptions for all-charcoal barbecue (like Cozy Corner in Memphis. Even Payne’s in Memphis said they’re all charcoal, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.) Still, I think those are the outliers. Before I had gone to Cozy Corner, I would not have made this exception.
Also, when it comes to ribs: No boiling. No foiling. No “falling off the bone” ribs.
Sauce should just be an accent in barbecue, never what defines it. Good barbecue can have sauce, certainly. (And keep your friggin Liquid Smoke out of my sauce!!! If, for whatever reason, I need to buy a commercial barbecue sauce, I will disqualify every one that has LS in it. And that’s about 95% of the sauces out there.) But good barbecue should never need sauce. Oh, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with South Carolina’s mustard-based sauce, although my favorite for pulled pork is Eastern North Carolina’s vinegary finishing sauce. Mustard + pork is always a fantastic combination, and I don’t understand the hate. I once had a barbecue with all three Carolina traditions represented in terms of sauce (a Lexington-style thin tomato-based sauce, a vinegar-based sauce, and a mustard-based sauce.) The guest’s favorite was Lexington followed closely by the S.C. mustard sauce. My favorite finished a very distant third.
As for local barbecue, what defines the Chicago South and West Side barbecue traditions is the following: Spare ribs, ribs tips, and hot links (Mississippi, not Texas style–think spicy pork breakfast sausages in hog casings). Chicago barbecue is generally cooked on the hotter side of the barbecue range (in the 250-300 area), usually over pure wood in what’s known as an aquarium smoker. The only place I’ve seen this outside of Chicago is at Cozy Corner in Memphis. The sauce is generally not too sweet and usually has a bit of a clove kick to it. It’s also traditional to serve it in a styrofoam clamshell container with greasy steakcut fries, two slices of white bread, and the tiniest container of coleslaw. See here for a typical pictures (coleslaw not included, but would come in the same container as the sauce.)
As for the best barbecue I’ve ever had, it’s the pulled pork sandwich from Morris Grocery in Eads, TN. Seriously, if you are ever in the Memphis area, trek out the extra 40 minutes to Eads. It’s well worth it. I still dream of that pulled pork sandwich.
Whoops, missed this. Here, there’s two places I go to for all my barbecue cravings: Uncle John’s for tips & links, Lem’s for spare ribs.
Barbeque is friends and family together enjoying meat cooked outside. Doesn’t matter how you cook it.
As a native of southern CA, i’m going to have to disagree with all of you and say that carne asada is the one true barbeque.
As a native son of southern CA who is older than you (whippersnapper!), I counter your odd proposal and come down firmly in the camp of North Carolina.
No, wait. Texas.
OK…let’s put it this way. When it comes to pork, nothing beats NC-style BBQ. Eastern or Western, doesn’t matter. Pig means Tarheel cooking. The pulled pork sandwich at Lexington #1 is ambrosia. The hushpuppies at Bridges are sublime.
If we’re talking beef and/or sausage, then Texas rules the roost. Lockhart is the center of the Texas BBQ world, and Smitty’s is the king. Brisket, hot link, screw the sides, just let me eat.
KC and Memphis styles depend on sauces and are therefore lesser, although still legitimate forms of BBQ. The kind of meat doesn’t matter, as long as it’s cooked low and slow. The motto of one of my favorite joints is “If it will fit in the pit, we will barbecue it.”
I’m pretty flexible on my BBQ beliefs. Barbecue is meat cooked over a slow dry heat. Beef, pork, turkey, chicken, duck - the BBQ Gods love them all. Sauce can be good but it’s not necessary. Arguing about tomato-based vs mustard-based vs vinegar-based is missing the point. It’s like arguing about what kind of lingerie a beautiful woman should wear - she’ll be beautiful in any kind of lingerie or none at all.
Mustard-based BBQ is heresy. Don’t try to gussy it all up with your Gnostic clap-trap!
