Southern Living Named This North Carolina BBQ Restaurant The Best In The South

May is BBQ Month

N By Nana_studio/Shutterstock

If you are from North Carolina, or even just the South in general, then there are a few things you just know to be true: BBQ is better down here and Southern Living tells no lies.

Just about every state in the South has its own signature style when it comes to BBQ, but we all know the Carolinas' vinegar-based sauce is the best. Southern Living released its readers' choice list of the best BBQ restaurants in the South for 2023.

A restaurant from North Carolina and a restaurant from South Carolina made the list, so let's get into it.

North Carolina

Lexington Barbecue won the top spot! The famous barbecue spot in Lexington is serving up pork cooked on big brick pits over hickory coals. The meat is then chopped, sliced, or coarsely chopped and dressed with a sauce that will make you say "YUMMM!"

And of course, you know the drill. We can't praise North Carolina without praising South Carolina, especially if they are on the same list.

South Carolina

Rodney Scott's BBQ won the top spot! The famous barbecue spot opened in 2017 in Downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Owner, Rodney Scott, introduced barbecue in a whole new way for the city. His restaurant is one of the most recommended barbecue places to try whenever you're visiting Charleston.

This has our mouths watering and ready for a BBQ lunch! Looks like we will be taking a trip to Lexington and Charleston in the near future. In the meantime, there are a lot of Charlotte, North Carolina BBQ restaurants that deserve some recognition too!

The 15 Best Charlotte North Carolina BBQ Restaurants

Here in North Carolina, we love our barbeque. And we do it well if I may so so myself. There is no shortage of fantastic restaurants across the state and the Queen City is no exception to that. But if you only can eat at one which should you choose? While I have my favorite (and it didn't make this list near the top), I decided to turn to the public for their thoughts on the matter. A quick search on TripAdvisor led me to a list of 30 Charlotte BBQ restaurants. It included chains, multiple locations of some, the heavy hitters, and some I hadn't heard of before. For this list, I took the top 15 restaurants (combining anywhere that had multiple locations).

Trip Advisor compiles these rankings based on average rating and number of reviews. Therefore you will see a couple of places that are ranked higher with a slightly lower rating. This means they probably had a higher number of higher-rated reviews. I have to say for the most part I do agree with this list the top 3 didn't surprise me at all and I feel could have been ranked in any order. What's your favorite of the many Charlotte BBQ restaurants?

15. Let's Meat Kbbq

Address: 1400 S Church St, Charlotte, NC 28203-4114

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Reviews: 31

Southern Living Named This North Carolina BBQ Restaurant The Best In The South

If you are from North Carolina, or even just the South in general, then there are a few things you just know to be true: BBQ is better down here…

Nicole Weaver

North Carolina

South Carolina

The 15 Best Charlotte North Carolina BBQ Restaurants

15. Let's Meat Kbbq

14. Sweet Lew's BBQ

13. Bubba's Barbecue

12. Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q

11. Bill Spoon's Barbecue

10. Bobbee O's BBQ

9. The Q Shack

8. City Barbeque

7. Noble Smoke

6. Bar-b-q King

5. Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q

4. Sauceman's

3. Mac's Speed Shop

2. McKoy's Smokehouse and Saloon

1. Midwood Smokehouse

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