Kansas City Barbecue

[SPonteKC]

While many of KC's bbq restaurants are justifiable famous, KC's best bbq (and its real bbq culture) happens in back yards all over the city. As soon as the weather turns from winter, all the way through the fall, you can't drive 10 minutes without smelling smoked meat on a weekend in KC.

[kc chris]

KC's signature BBQ sauce is a thick sweet tomato based sauce. Typically has brown sugar, honey, molasses or something along those lines in it.

[xenokc]

What makes KC BBQ stand out is that there is no one style. You can find a thai based BBQ sauce with ginger, lemon grass, rice vinegar and thai fried chili paste. Every type of meat is game in KC, though burnt ends is unique to KC.

Agree with s.davis that KC BBQ isn't about the restaurants, it's the number of people in KC who have the art form down. Very slow cooked/smoked meats with various finishing techniques. The sauce is secondary and many purists say if you need sauce, you didn't do it right. The definition of BBQ in KC is _slow_ smoked meat - BBQ sauce on grilled meat doesn't make it BBQ.

There are a lot of BBQ restaurants in KC, but many take shortcuts - too dependent on the sauce. And there are 3-4x more Mexi restaurants than BBQ, 2-3x more Asian eats in KC. Yet there are so many different styles of BBQ in KC that there's a good chance you won't like more than half of them. Some like fatty meat, others like lean. Some like vinegar based sauces, others like molasses, or salty. It's all over the place in KC. You have to do many to understand as it's about the variety, not one style.