Here’s the best BBQ joint in NC, according to Southern Living
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Southern Living readers again name Lexington Barbecue NC’s top spot in 2025.
- Lexington preserves Piedmont tradition: smoked pork shoulders, thin vinegar-ketchup dip.
- Statewide debate: Eastern whole-hog vinegar-pepper vs Lexington Piedmont shoulder style.
One of the cathedrals of North Carolina barbecue has been named the best in the state by readers of Southern Living.
In an annual Southern Living poll, barbecue fanatics in the South named the best barbecue joints in every state.
Once again, Lexington BBQ has been named North Carolina’s best barbecue destination by Southern Living readers. Old-school Lexington nabs the honor despite a new generation of pitmasters opening several high profile barbecue spots.
Here’s what Southern Living had to say:
“A wave of new-school craft ’cue has washed over the South in recent years, but when it comes to North Carolina, our readers are sticking with the classics,” Southern Living wrote in a blurb on Lexington. “And what could be more classic than Lexington Barbecue? This spot, perched at the top of Smokehouse Lane, embodies the Piedmont style. Huge pork shoulders are cooked on closed brick pits over glowing hickory coals and served chopped, sliced, or ‘coarse chopped.’ The meat is dressed in a traditional thin vinegar-and-ketchup “dip” and accompanied by red slaw and golden-brown hush puppies.”
East V. West
In North Carolina, barbecue obsessives divide the state in two. There is the older Eastern North Carolina style, where barbcue is made from smoking whole hogs and mixing the pork with a thin vinegar and pepper sauce. And then there’s the Lexington, or Piedmont style, where barbecue is make from smoked pork shoulders and a red, tomato-based sauce mixing vinegar and ketchup.
Lexington is one of the most famous practitioners of Lexington-style barbecue. The restaurant itself has been around since 1962 and diners know to ask for “dip” with their pork, the term for the ketchup-based barbecue sauce served from warmed coffee pitchers.
The pork comes chopped, coarse chopped or sliced. And those who know order it with extra “outside brown,” the caramelized, heavily smoked end bits which add heightened Lexington-style flavor.
Southern Living readers also named Lexington Barbecue as North Carolina’s top spot in 2025. In his own reported list, Southern Living Barbecue Editor Robert Moss ranked Lexington Barbecue as the 10th best in the entire South. But he did give the North Carolina edge to Skylight Inn, an Eastern-style spot in Ayden, ranked at No. 6.
The barbecue debate goes on and on and on.
This story was originally published March 17, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
