Ten More of the South’s Legendary Barbecue Places Worth a Detour, Plus a Special Bonus

A while back — it’s been well over a year — I did a post called Ten Legendary Barbecue Places Worth a Detour. I borrowed (well, stole … no, let’s say expropriated) the title from a similarly named post by Robert Moss, the Southern Living/Southeastern Dispatch/Cue Sheet/barbecue history guru. Moss initially had proposed “The South’s Best BBQ Secrets,” but someone, perhaps the Southern Living Clickbait Staff, rewrote the headline to replace “secrets” with its antonym “Legendary.” My post, the one linked above, discussed Moss’s thoughtful picks and added a few nearby places that I thought would have been better choices.

Here are ten more places, and this time there’s a bonus place that’s definitely outside the South. They may be well known locally, may even be local legends, but they all get far less attention that they deserve outside their state or immediate area. For this list, I’m excluding barbecue places in my occasional “Ten Best” lists — the Ten Best Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Places, the Best in the Washington, DC, Area, and, the most recent, the Ten Best in Virginia. You really should click and find out about those barbecue places if you haven’t already. Each is well worth a detour and some are well worth a planned trip. Here are 10 — actually 11 more to add to your travel plans, presented in alphabetical order.

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Daniel Vaughn of Texas Monthly had an article about the lamb barbecue at B. Cooper Barbecue in Austin. I tried and liked lamb barbecue at Silver and Sons. I loved Cooper’s South Fork in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and when I get back to Austin, stop #1 will be B. Cooper for some lamb. And some brisket. And ….

Bar-B-Q- King in Lincolnton sits between two giants, Lexington #1 and Red Bridges, so it’s easy to overlook it. That’s a huge mistake. It’s among the very best.

Clark’s Barbecue in Kernersville, North Carolina, just off I-40 between Greensboro and Winston-Salem, features doughnut-shaped hushpuppies, great vegetables, and some of the best barbecue in the Piedmont.

Dave’s BBQ in Virginia Beach is hard to find, but well worth the effort. Everything is made in-house or cooked over wood outside, and it’s all good.

Dickie-Do’s BBQ is in Haw River, North Carolina, a modest detour off I-40. It has the smokiest barbecue in the state, smoky, moist, and tender, and hushpuppies so good they’re dangerous.

South Carolina barbecue hash and great barbecue cue are co-stars at Henry’s Smokehouse in Greenville, South Carolina. It’s the real deal.

Ramey’s Whole Hog BBQ in Parson’s, Tennessee, just a few miles south of I-40, has the best whole hog barbecue in Tennessee, and deserves UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, in Leeds, Alabama, just outside Birmingham, is just a couple of miles down the road from Buc-ee’s. Wait until after you eat at Rusty’s to go to Buc-ee’s.

Shuler’s Bar-B-Que is only four miles off I-95 in Latta, South Carolina. It may have the best barbecue in the state, and it certainly has the most frequently refreshed buffet around.

Sid’s Catering, in Beaulaville, North Carolina, is only open Saturday from 8:00 am until 2:00 pm, or until they sell out. At 8:30 the line had already formed. If you go there, you’ll see why.

And, drum roll, the special bonus place:

Wilson County Barbecue, in Portland, Maine, is a little bit of Wilson, North Carolina as it was before they started using gas-fired cookers: whole hogs cooked exclusively over wood — and more.

Each of these places is well worth a detour, a serious detour. National “Best” lists include a small cadre of places over and over again when they ought to be out seeing what else is better. There’s a lot of good food to eat, and you can find some at each of these. Go. Eat. Enjoy.

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