Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Mmmm, Barbecue

Here's a reason to write a mean letter to your high school guidance counselors: I bet not one of them ever suggested "professional barbecue taste tester" as a career option. See if this doesn't make you bitter:
Texas Monthly | The List: The Top 50 Barbecue Joints
Every five years or so (since 1997), this magazine dispatches a team of trained eaters to travel around Texas incognito, ingesting huge amounts of barbecue. Their goal is to visit as many of the state's approximately two thousand barbecue joints as possible in order to come up with a list of the fifty best. At each joint, the eaters sample at least three meats, a couple of sides, and a dessert. In areas of high barbecue density, they may visit as many as nine places in a day... 
OMG. Seriously, why did no one tell me this was a job? So much fail.

Being new to Texas, I've tried only a tiny fraction of the places on this list, but I can verify that Texas is very serious, and rightfully proud about their barbecue. I'm personally a big fan of Black's in Lockhart, but I'm looking forward to checking out more on this list.

Taking a tour at Black's.
To my Texas readers: what's your favorite barbecue joint?


Follow me on Twitter at @rumpfshaker

2 comments:

  1. I don't know if Texas Monthly actually paid the tasters, as opposed to using its own writers and friends on the panel. But the magazine just hired a Barbecue Editor. That's how serious we take our smoked meats.

    ReplyDelete

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