While you could probably find moderately good grilled meat no matterwhere you are , some urban center have a reputation forquality barbecuethat depart a niggling beyond a trusty chophouse or two .

allot to a newsurveyfrom lawn precaution troupe LawnStarter , Kansas City , Missouri , is the barbecue epicenter of the country . The ranking organization is establish on 14 weighted gene , including the turn of barbecue and meat house restaurants , number of top - place barbeque and smokehouse restaurants , number of barbecue festival and competitions , consumer restaurant ratings , number of top - ranked cooking team , and more . The city were awarded points in each family , and those value were summate up for an overall score out of 100 . Kansas City earned about 60 point , nearly 14 points ahead of runner - up Chicago .

If you assumed most of the top performers would be located in the South and Midwest , you were right . Houston , Cincinnati , and Memphis rounded out the top five , and the legal age of the top 20 are in those regions , too . But the tilt is not without surprise . New York and Los Angeles , in 8th and 14th place , respectively , have understandably benefit from being monumental hub for chef and epicurean likewise . Los Angeles has the most top - stag barbecue restaurants of all 199 cities include in the study ; and New York is right behind it ( link with Honolulu , Hawaii ) .

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When it come to celebrating the art of barbeque — and the play of eating it — Cincinnati is unequalled , gas more barbeque festivals than any other city . And championpitmastersoften hail from Missouri : Kansas City and St. Louis make first and 2d place on the list of cities with the most cooking teams ranked in the top 25 percentage at open contest for the World Series of Barbecue .

If you do n’t see your urban center on the tilt below , you may see where it landed on the full list of 199 citieshere .