Winners For

Best BBQ

The third barbecue joint in this location, on the corner of 16th Street and Washington Avenue in Miami Beach, proves to be a charm for the space that housed Hogzilla and Barbeque Beach before it. Austen's Q slow-cooks its proteins low and slow. We're talking pork, chicken, and beef cooked in a wood stove at 200 degrees for 24 hours. This is clea...

Chef-owner Michael Herran saw the need for a good place to get inexpensive barbecue in Miami and ran with it. Mad Man Jack's, named for the man who taught him how to fish, fits the bill with slow-cooked meats and homemade sauces and marinades. Spare ribs cooked low and slow are $9 for a third rack, $14 for a half rack, and $25 for a full rack of...

This Miami institution has been smoking meat over oak wood since 1962, which is probably longer than your mother has been alive. Just off I-95 in Overtown, People's Bar-B-Q proffers down-home Southern barbecue at its finest. Loosen your belt and dig into ham hocks ($8.50), a slab of ribs ($23), barbecued chicken ($16), and barbecued beef ($8). L...

Top Chef alum Howie "Bulldog" Kleinberg's little barbecue shop in Aventura might look a bit too suburban and clean to house the kind of 'cue that sets your heart aflutter. But don't sell Bulldog Barbeque or the chef short, because his operation is neat and well lit. St. Louis-style ribs are messy, sweet, and tangy ($7 to $22), while beef brisket...

Sure, it's Miami's oldest roadhouse. Of course, it's the place to hear great live music and get your drink on until early the next morning. But did you know Tobacco Road also smokes its own meat out back? See? You have newfound respect for "the Road." A 12-hour smoked brisket platter ($10.95) and St. Louis-style ribs ($13.95) come with your choi...

Say what you will about Shorty's Bar-B-Q -- that it was better before "the fire," that you've had "more authentic" barbecue at your cousin Carol's wedding in North Carolina. But Shorty's and Miami go together. Period. Say something bad about this place and you've dissed the part of South Florida that still rejects neon lights, Pitbull, and breas...

To get to Shiver's BBQ, just drive south on South Dixie Highway. Way south. Like, next-stop-Florida-Keys south. Is the drive to Homestead worth it? You bet your pork it is. For the past 50 years or so, people who are serious about their meat have flocked to this wagon-wheel-decorated shrine to barbecue. Go Tuesday or Wednesday for all-you-can-ea...

Down Old Cutler Road in Cutler Bay you'll find a mecca of Southern cooking, Harvey's Smokehouse BBQ. Chef-owner Harvey Alexander gets off on rubbing his meat. Make every dirty joke you want, but Alexander has his own method that produces the some of the best barbecue you've ever tried. Taking the best from every school of barbecue, Alexander fir...

There's no other place on our list where you can eat ribs and clean your clothes at the same time. Bo Leg's Barbeque, the mobile pit located in the parking lot of the Foxy Lady Laundromat in North Miami holds that distinction. Which might actually be serendipitous when you get barbecue sauce all over your shirt and tie. There are two lines -- on...

Built in 1965 as a tourist trap for visitors on the way to view wildlife in the Everglades, the Pit offers a giant chickee hut as shelter for the hundreds of families who travel from all over Miami-Dade to chow down on ribs ($14.99) cooked low and slow over an open pit stoked with black oak wood. Live music, karaoke, and Latin American favorites...

Smoked over pecan wood, Chef Bryan Dooley's first-rate barbecue definitely is worth the drive from just about any locale in the Valley. You can't go wrong with any of the meats on the menu, which doesn't waste time on burgers and other non-essentials — it's all about the 'cue at this small and friendly, counter-service eatery dressed up like an ...

Damn, Andy Nelson’s is good. We’ve given it more awards than we can count, and we’re giving it another. It’s a veritable shrine to meat—beef, pork, and chicken—and sauce—“Bama” style, South Carolina style, something called “Pig Dip.” And its outpost, despite being yards away from York Road traffic, seems to transport you from Baltimore, even the...

Former Browns player Al "Bubba" Baker has found life beyond the gridiron, and it's slathered in barbecue sauce. At Bubba's Avon restaurant, the pork, smoked turkey, and signature ribs are bad to the bone, but in a very good way. Dry-rubbed, marinated overnight, then slow-smoked over Ohio-grown applewood, the meats arrive at the table smoky, sauc...

Beyond the city limit's but well worth the drive, Martin's low-and-slow whole-hog barbecue is arguably the best in all of Middle Tennessee – the Redneck Tacos are amazing, a hickory-smoked slice of heaven.

Here's a meaty subject: Why is Denver so shy of good barbecue spots? There's no easy answer for that — but there's an easy answer for the best BBQ joint in town. And the best just got better this year when Boney's Smokehouse, Lamont and Trina Lynch's downtown, down-home restaurant, moved into a much bigger space next door that not only allowed f...