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The 10 Best BBQ Towns in the World Worth Loosening Your Belt For

Forget the taco trails and dumpling crawls — these are the best barbecue towns to visit on earth, from Texas brisket joints to Korean grill alleys to South African braai country. Bring stretchy pants.

I have eaten a lot of smoked meat in a lot of places, and I have the cholesterol number to prove it. So when people ask me for the best barbecue towns to visit, I don’t reach for some balanced, diplomatic list. I have opinions. Strong ones. Barbecue is the one food category nobody’s bothered to map properly — everyone’s done the taco trails and the pizza pilgrimages — but smoke-and-fire towns are wide open, and they span the globe in ways that’ll surprise you. So loosen your belt a notch. Here’s where I’d send you, and roughly in the order I’d go.

If there’s a holy city for barbecue, it’s this little town south of Austin. The Texas legislature literally named it the “Barbecue Capital of Texas.” Kreuz Market and Black’s (open since 1932) serve brisket and beef sausage on butcher paper, no sauce, no forks, just salt-and-pepper-crusted meat smoked over post oak for half a day. You order by the pound. You eat with your hands. It’s a sacrament.

Where Texas does austere, KC does saucy, smoky, and generous. Burnt ends — the charred, fatty tips of the brisket — were practically invented here. Joe’s Kansas City (in an actual gas station, and don’t you dare laugh until you’ve tried the Z-Man sandwich) and the old-guard Arthur Bryant’s are the rite of passage. Thick tomato-molasses sauce on everything. Get the ribs too.

Korean BBQ isn’t smoked low-and-slow, it’s grilled hot at your table, and it is FANTASTIC. Go to a proper galbi alley — sizzling marinated short rib, samgyeopsal (pork belly), the lettuce wraps, the dozen little side dishes (banchan). The whole ritual of cooking it yourself, the smoke in your hair, the soju — it’s communal and joyful in a way American BBQ isn’t. Cheap, too.

The braai isn’t a meal in South Africa, it’s a national institution. Out in the Karoo and around Cape Town, lamb is the star — the sheep graze on aromatic scrubland and the meat tastes of it. Get boerewors (a coiled farmer’s sausage), grilled lamb chops, and “sosaties” (the local kebabs). Wash it down with a Cape red. A proper braai runs for hours and that’s the point.

The eternal Memphis argument: dry-rubbed ribs (no sauce, just spice) or wet (mopped). Rendezvous built its name on dry ribs in a basement alley; Central BBQ does both beautifully. Pulled pork shoulder is the everyday king here, piled on a bun with slaw right on top. Go in May during the Memphis in May barbecue contest if you want to lose your mind.

Brazilian churrasco is meat on swords, carved tableside until you physically beg them to stop. Picanha (the prized rump cap, salted simply and grilled over coals) is the cut to chase. In the south, in gaúcho country, this is closer to religion than dinner. The endless-meat rodízio format is gluttonous and glorious.

NC is a civil war between two sauce styles. Eastern Carolina does whole-hog, chopped, with a thin vinegar-pepper sauce that cuts the fat perfectly. Lexington-style adds a touch of tomato. Either way you’re eating slow-cooked pig that’s been over wood since before dawn. Skylight Inn in Ayden is a whole-hog temple. Hush puppies on the side, always.

Hear me out. Moo ping (grilled marinated pork skewers) from a street cart, gai yang (Isaan grilled chicken), and kor moo yang (grilled pork neck) with a fiery dipping sauce — this is barbecue, just lean, charred, and punchy with lemongrass and fish sauce. Eaten with sticky rice for about a dollar a stick. Some of the best grilled meat on earth comes off a Bangkok sidewalk grill at midnight.

The asado is the soul of Argentine cooking — beef cooked slowly over wood embers (not gas, never gas) by an “asador” who treats it like a craft. Go to a parrilla, order the bife de chorizo or a whole mixed grill (parrillada) with chimichurri, and a bottle of Malbec. The cuts are different (try the provoleta — grilled cheese, literally — and the morcilla) and the whole long, lazy, wine-soaked event is the experience.

The wildcard, and the one nobody expects. There’s a serious fire-cooking, ethical-meat movement happening in rural Wales and the wider UK — places sourcing native-breed lamb and beef and cooking it over open flame with real care. It’s young and a bit fancy, but the produce is extraordinary, and watching the live-fire scene grow somewhere this far from Texas is genuinely exciting. Watch this space.

Town	Country	Order this
Lockhart	USA	Brisket by the pound
Kansas City	USA	Burnt ends
Jeonju	South Korea	Galbi + soju
The Karoo	South Africa	Lamb chops + boerewors
Memphis	USA	Dry-rub ribs
São Paulo	Brazil	Picanha
Lexington	USA	Whole-hog, chopped
Bangkok	Thailand	Moo ping
Buenos Aires	Argentina	Bife de chorizo
Llandeilo	Wales	Live-fire native lamb

A couple of universal rules I’ve learned the hard way. First: at the great American joints, get there early — the legends sell out of brisket by early afternoon and a “back tomorrow” sign is heartbreak when you’ve flown across the country. Second: queue happily. The line is part of it, and the regulars in front of you give the best ordering advice you’ll ever get. Third: order more than you think. You’ll regret the rib you didn’t get, never the one you did. Probly.

The thing about chasing barbecue around the world is that it’s never just about the meat. It’s about the guy who’s been tending the same pit for forty years, the family arguing about sauce, the smoke that gets into everything you own. It’s food that takes time, made by people with patience, and it always — always — tastes like the place it’s from.

Pick a town, wear elastic-waist trousers, and go before they run out. Barbecue rewards the early and the hungry, in that order.

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