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Since signing on as the Southern Living Contributing Barbecue Editor back in 2014, I’ve been traveling the South in search of the best barbecue that the region has to offer. Last summer we published our initial list of the South’s Top 50 Barbecue Joints, and now, with another year’s worth of eating under my belt, it’s time to go back and revisit the selection. |

It’s that time of year again — the CheapTickets BBQ Smackdown is in full swing, and eaties and foodies all over the U.S. are voting on their favorite BBQ cities. If you, too, are hankering for the nation’s best barbecue, here’s where to eat, stay and play in all ten cities. Oh, and because this is CheapTickets, all hotels are on the affordable side, and all the activities listed are gloriously free.

If you were asked to pinpoint the dish on a menu most likely to exemplify ingredient reverence and a delicate touch, you probably wouldn’t pause on pork cake. Pork cake has one meaning in Chinese cuisine, where the steamed minced meat patty is packed with so much salt and fat that the government of Hong Kong has encouraged the elderly to quit eating it. In Southern cooking, the phrase has an entirely different meaning: Traditionally, pork cake is a kind of scarcity fruitcake, made with salt pork instead of costly butter and eggs.