When I eat around New York City, it strikes me that barbecue is the new deli. Like delis (or like delis used to be), it's everywhere; it's affordable; and everybody argues about whose version of this or that (pastrami sandwich/pork ribs) is the a) best and b) most authentic.
But here's the thing. Unlike deli food, which was the product of a culinary culture that drew on traditions from elsewhere to create a clear identity, New York City barbecue simply replicates authenticity. No matter how many barbecue restaurants (note: restaurants, not joints) open in New York, it will never be a new North Carolina. Or Memphis. Or Texas. Or Kansas City.
They're all doing what's done elsewhere: Blue Smoke, Mable's, Fette Sau, Daisy May's, Virgil's, Dinosaur, RUB, Hill Country, Fatty 'Cue. (Actually, Fatty 'Cue, with its wacky experimentation, attempts to create something new from something old, but unlike traditional Southern barbecue, its identity is self-conscious.) It's about time we got this straight. There is barbecue. And there is Yankee barbecue.
Barbecue is a Southern thing. Yes, cultures around the world cook meat over smoldering embers. That, too, is barbecue. But we all know what we're talking about when we talk about barbecue: meats that are hardwood-smoked at low temperatures (between about 212-275 degrees F). There are exceptions. Dreamland BBQ in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, cooks its succulent pork ribs over charcoal. Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas, smokes its beef briskets at what they guess is 650 degrees or higher. Then there are the arguments over sauce that could take up another column.
But screw the details. What we know is that when we talk about barbecue we're talking about Southern barbecue in all its forms. There is a reason you see "Memphis-style ribs" and "North Carolina sauce" and "Texas brisket" and not "New York burnt ends." Partly, it's because barbecue restaurants (there's that word again) in the North generally don't have all-wood pits (with exceptions, like the aquarium-style all-wood pits on Chicago's South Side). They use wood-enhanced ovens instead. In the North, the guys who run these meat-cooking machines go home and sleep, for chrissakes. Because they can. In the South, a pitman tends the fires all night long and into the wee hours. Fewer and fewer pitmen ply this grueling trade, but those who do, and those who came before them, gave rise to the mystical alliance between palate and national identity that is barbecue.
That primal flavor is disappearing, even in its Southern capitals, but that's its home. New York, meanwhile, serves up a legitimate representation of the real thing. But until it gets all-wood pits and pitmen who apprentice for years and a style all its own, it remains a BBQ Epcot.