Bring a bib to America's best barbecue joints

7. Kansas City, Missouri
Many native sons believe Kansas City barbecue is the best anywhere because of its broad-spectrum appeal: It includes pork ribs, beef brisket, hot sausage, and smoked mutton, plus a sauce as complex as an Indian curry. LC's lends good evidence to that proposition. All the meats are pit-cooked to perfection, and the specialties include burnt ends (pictured). Also known as brownies, burnt ends are the crisp, chewy, extra-luscious nuggets of meat cut from the outside edges of smoked brisket. Heavy with protein satisfaction and radiant with hickory smoke, some pieces are laced with obscenely delicious amounts of fat. There are both chewy chunks and crunchy nuggets, and while a few tips might taste dry all by themselves, LC's excellent sauce makes them sing.

LC's Bar-B-Q
Tel: 816 923 4484

8. New York City, New York
Brazilian churrascarias have appeared throughout the United States in the last dozen years, and while some might argue that this approach is not technically barbecue, the combination of open flame and meat makes this edible orgy an essential stop for all carnivores. One of the most authentic (and delicious) is found on West 49th Street in New York City. Plataforma Churrascaria has the standard massive buffet of salads, cheese balls, cured meats, and seafood—but the sooner you flip your coaster from red to green, the sooner you'll embark on a meat frenzy. Servers bring a variety of proteins in different cuts, including steak, pork roast, sausage, lamb, chicken, and suckling pig. The meats are carved tableside with a lot of knife-and-fork razzle-dazzle, directly off the skewer. (You might wonder if a server has ever dropped a knife on a customer, but these guys are professionals.) The seasoning is mostly subtle, owing to the Brazilian preference to use only rock salt. Filet mignon wrapped with bacon is carnivore comfort food; flank steak seems as tender as the filet; the faint char on chicken hearts only serves to emphasize their elegance. Sadly, it's not humanly possible to sample everything in a single visit—but we applaud the effort.

Plataforma Churrascaria
Tel: 212 245 0505

9. Owensboro, Kentucky
West of Louisville, Kentucky, mutton is king of the pit: rich and smoky with big flavor that isn't pepper-sharp but still hits you with a prizefighter's wallop. The Moonlite Bar-B-Q's huge, garrulous buffet—at which customers stand and admire the 'cue out loud, nearly clapping when new trays are brought forth from the kitchen—offers mutton chopped, sliced, and as ribs. It's also a primary ingredient in the locally loved stew known as burgoo. Served in all the local barbecue parlors, burgoo is fork-thick, loaded with vegetables, and anchored by the holy smoke-pit trinity of pork, chicken, and mutton. It's also got the eye-widening spice quotient of a Creole gumbo. You might find tasty barbecue mutton in other places (try Kansas City), but nowhere outside of western Kentucky can you experience the surprising pleasure of burgoo.

Moonlite Bar-B-Q
Tel: 270 684 8143

10. Taylor, Texas
The great barbecues of central Texas are often secreted in out-of-the-way nooks, and amenities are scant to nonexistent. Louie Mueller's, located in a former school gymnasium on a side street in the sleepy town of Taylor (west of Austin), is one of those places. Smoke-cooked beef is cut, weighed, and slapped down onto a sheet of pink butcher paper, along with a stack of soft white bread. And while an au jus–like sauce is offered, it's inconsequential. Meat is all that matters in this churchlike shrine to the transformative power of smoke: Brisket, prime rib, and beef sausage are cooked in the haze of oak smoke, so low and slow that little fat seeps out, keeping all the moisture in. The fibers of the meat absorb all its flavor. Even the dark-crusted rim of brisket drips with protein potency. And the outer, less pink circumference of a slice of prime rib radiates the earthy perfume of burning wood. School lunch never tasted like this.

Louie Mueller's
Tel: 512 352 6206

11. Ayden, North Carolina
North Carolina has a lot of barbecue variants (and mini-wars) of its own: heavy sauce in the west, hardly any sauce at all in the east. Creamy slaw versus spicy slaw versus mustard slaw. Hush puppies or corn sticks? But the daddy of all Tar Heel pits, the Skylight Inn, has been unaffected by time or 'cue trends. Treasured by connoisseurs, it's located east of I-95, not far from Greenville, and features whole-hog barbecue. Unlike pyrotechnical kick-ass Q's, Skylight's mating of smoke and pork is a subtle nuptial, elegantly abetted by the addition of a little vinegar and hot sauce—nothing more—as it's chopped on a maple cutting board. Beyond the exquisite flavor, the variety of textures from eating the entire pig is striking. Along with soft shreds from the interior are chewy strips from the outside, and surprisingly crunchy nuggets of skin. The cooked skin conveys terabytes of lusciousness, its firmness adding edible drama that is lacking in barbecue made only from upscale hams or shoulders. There are two and only two ways to have it at the Skylight: on a bun or in a cardboard tray. Other than corn bread and coleslaw, there's nothing else on the menu.

Skylight Inn
Tel: 252 746 4113

12. Memphis, Tennessee
Assuming you've made your way to Memphis to try out the delights of Cozy Corner, it would be a shame to miss Payne's. The menu is rather limited, but if you are looking for the Memphis signature dish known as a pig sandwich, it's the go-to place. As in most barbecue parlors of the mid-South, the counterman at Payne's won't actually ask if you want coleslaw when you order pulled pork on a bun. It's a given. Tender pork shoulder is hacked apart with a cleaver and put into a bun, with your choice of hot or mild sauce. Then a big pile of pickly sweet slaw goes on top, balancing the meat's smoky profundity. This configuration, first constructed by Memphis barbecue man Leonard Heuberger in 1922, is a tongue-boggling presentation that combines warm meat with cool slaw, spicy sauce with creamy dressing, piggy pork with crunchy cabbage. Perfection.

Payne's
Tel: 901 272 1523

To read more about Jane and Michael Stern's favorite spots to eat, visit roadfood.com.

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