This barbecue joint ranks No. 1 in North Carolina — again. What makes it so special?
A barbecue joint ranks as the best in North Carolina — for another straight year.
Lexington Barbecue is No. 1 on a list of top places to eat the smoked Southern staple, according to results published Tuesday, March 11.
To determine the top barbecue restaurant in the state, the magazine Southern Living said it worked with researchers at Proof Insights from July 10 to Aug. 21, 2024. They surveyed more than 10,000 magazine readers, and the winner earned a South’s Best Award, a spokesperson told McClatchy News via email.
What makes the NC barbecue joint special?
Lexington Barbecue, a roughly 20-mile drive south from Winston-Salem, said it sticks to “the true barbecue cooking tradition, meaning cooking with wood, not gas.” Southern Living gave the restaurant a nod for continuing the legacy of its founder.
“It’s not quite accurate to say that nothing has changed at Lexington Barbecue since Wayne Monk founded it in 1962,” the magazine wrote in its report. “The building has been expanded several times over the decades, and they do take credit cards now. The barbecue, though, is still prepared the way Monk learned it from his mentor Warner Stamey, North Carolina’s pioneering barbecue restaurateur.”
The fan-favorite restaurant tops the Southern Living list for at least the third consecutive year, adding more fuel to the state’s longstanding barbecue debate. The dining spot is in Lexington, a city synonymous with a style of barbecue.
The style — also called “Western” or “Piedmont” — “uses meat from the pork shoulder with a vinegar, ketchup and spice-based sauce.” Meanwhile, Eastern-style barbecue “uses the whole hog” and skips the tomatoes, according to the Visit North Carolina and Charlotte Mecklenburg Library websites.
At Lexington Barbecue, “pork shoulders are cooked directly over oak and hickory coals in closed brick pits, then chopped, sliced, or ‘coarse chopped’ (cut into chunks). It’s dressed in a tangy, slightly-spicy ‘dip’ (vinegar and tomato sauce) and served with crisp golden brown hushpuppies and finely-minced vinegar slaw tinged red with ketchup — an essential example of the classic Piedmont North Carolina style,” the magazine wrote.
Southern Living didn’t reveal the runners-up in the 2025 rankings. Here are the North Carolina restaurants that rounded out the top five last year:
Wilber’s Barbecue in Goldsboro at No. 2
Stamey’s Barbecue in Greensboro at No. 3
Sam Jones BBQ in Raleigh and Winterville at No. 4
B’s Barbecue in Greenville at No. 5
The South’s Best Awards also considered the top cities, beaches, hotels and other regional attractions.
This story was originally published March 11, 2025 at 10:00 AM with the headline "This barbecue joint ranks No. 1 in North Carolina — again. What makes it so special?."
