The Insiders' Guide to Twin Cities BBQ

COLESLAW
All great foods are made better served alongside a dish that is contrasting in flavor, temperature, and texture. There is no better example than barbecued meats—hot, spicy, smoky, and fatty—served with crisp, crunchy, tart coleslaw. The name is a variation on the Dutch phrase kool sla, literally translated as cabbage salad, a dish traditionally served hot. Richard Hellman’s invention of bottled mayonnaise in 1903 made it easy for small roadside cafés to dress and serve cabbage—a cheap vegetable that doesn’t spoil easily—as a side dish for sandwiches and burgers. Many think the best slaw is the simplest, but great slaws are made with all manner of fruits and vegetables, from apples to zucchini.

1. Redstone American Grill
A simple thin-cut cabbage slaw, seasoned with a scratch mayonnaise-based dressing without a touch of sweetness. This slaw is clean, bright, and fresh-tasting. You get a small ramekin of it with ribs or chicken, but order it by the bucket if you are a slaw fan. Far and away the best slaw we tasted.

2. Dixies Calhoun (tie)
A great traditional cabbage slaw with superior tang, rough cut, and eye appeal thanks to a confetti of carrots.

2. Whitey’s World Famous Saloon (tie)
A fresh cabbage slaw with a fruity snap and a nice celery-seed kick.

4. Scott Ja-Mama’s
A clean, straightforward coleslaw, with no flaws and a fresh dressing.

5. Twin City Grill
Very average barbecue, but one of the best slaws we found on our journey. Freshly made, with a scratch dressing. 130 North Garden, Mall of America, Bloomington, 952-854-0200

CHICKEN
Barbecue chicken is ideally more than just grilled chicken brushed with barbecue sauce. The ultimate BBQ chicken is brined, rubbed, and then slow-cooked, creating crisp mahogany skin and meltingly good smoke-tinged meat that is the perfect canvas for good sauce. Alas, most local barbecue restaurants show little interest in slow pit-cooking bone-in half and whole chickens.

1. Market Bar-B-Que
Market’s chicken is the best in town—cooked low and slow in a brick pit over real wood, which produces a lightly smoked, crisp-skinned bird that is moist at the same time. It’s served dry, with sauce on the side.

2. Cap’s Grille
Cap’s has great chicken, choosing to smoke it slowly over apple wood, toss it on the grill to finish, then baste it with a killer sauce. All the smoky goodness is there, and if you like a little char, you’ll love Cap’s chicken.

3. Dixies Calhoun
Crispy on the outside, smoky on the inside, and served dry, Dixies chicken is well seasoned before going over the hickory, and the extra step makes for a nice crusty exterior. Grill-finishing creates the crisp char.

PORK SHOULDER
For some purists, barbecue is a noun that refers to pork shoulders, butts, and legs rubbed and slow-cooked over wood. Sliced, pulled, or chopped, the pork is served au naturel or on sandwiches, wet with sauce or dry. From the famous tacos al pastor and carnitas of the South and West to the vinegar-mopped Carolinas, pork is barbecue. Pulled pork is uniquely American. It’s found throughout the South and Midwest but is synonymous with the Carolinas. It should be fall-off-the-bone tender so it can be pulled apart by hand. Long, slow pit-cooking results in crusty exterior meat that, when mixed with soft interior meat, gives great textural contrast. What isn’t acceptable is wet-cooked, braised, or boiled pork. In Kansas City, pulled pork is served sauced, on butcher paper with white bread. In North Carolina, it’s tossed with a tart, thin vinegar sauce, but some western Carolinians add ketchup as well. All throughout the South, you’ll find it served on buns with coleslaw. Twin Cities barbecue restaurants serve their pulled or chopped pork as a sandwich, sauced with a Kansas City–style sauce.

1. Rooster’s (tie)
It’s no surprise that the one joint in town that specializes in custom-cooking whole hogs also offers the most authentic pulled sandwich in town. Rooster’s pork arrives in big crusty chunks, exploding with pork flavor. The sandwich comes large or small, with a unique fragrant sweet-spiced sauce, and is available topped with cabbage slaw.

1. Rudolphs (tie)
Rudolphs has one of the top sandwiches we tasted. How so? Smoked over hickory, great texture, crusty and soft, hand-pulled (or chopped), piled high, and crowned with slaw. The pork is exceptionally well seasoned with great pig flavor.

2. Dixies Calhoun
A real western Carolina–style sandwich, thin shavings of raw cabbage and onion served atop a crusty and yielding mélange of hand-pulled pit-style roasted pork cushion, packed with plenty of flavor. Dixies hot-tart sauce is the perfect foil for one of the best sandwiches in town.