Press

To find good barbecue while traveling, Michael Smith advises that you look for ambience—depending, of course, on how you define the word.

“Look for dives that have been around for a while,” says the Missouri-based  healthcare marketing pro, who has sought out bucket-list barbecue joints all over the South and Midwest. “You can trust them for the best barbecue—because no one is going there for the atmosphere.”

Taylor Garrigan, executive chef and partner of the local micro-chain, was dealt a basketstocked with barbecue sauce, shrimp, bananas and coconuts, among other items. “Taylor talking to his ribs: ‘Come on, baby girl, come on’,” Garrigan’s pals at Southern Soul Barbecue on St. Simons Island tweeted admiringly during the broadcast. Garrigan coaxed a win over Jimi Hatt of Guerilla Cuisine, Deljuan Murphy of Fleet Landing and Heather Edwards of Cannon Bar & Kitchen.

Real, wood-smoked barbecue requires serious quantity in order to make any sense. When prescribed cooking times range from several hours to overnight, you aren’t going to play
around with a few chops—no. The twelve or thirteen active hours required to tenderize a whole hog with hot smoke pay off with enough delicious pork to feed the parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and their friends, or a bunch of hungry tailgaters, with meat left over.