The bluff came first. Everything else followed.
Memphis-style barbecue spaghetti is spaghetti noodles tossed in a sweet, tomato-based barbecue sauce and topped with chopped or pulled barbecue pork, usually finished with shredded cheese. It is a side dish and sometimes a plate on its own, built around the same sauce Memphis restaurants use on pulled pork sandwiches and ribs, not an Italian-American … Read more
The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is a judged pork-cooking competition held each May in Memphis as part of the Memphis in May International Festival. Hundreds of teams cook whole hog, shoulder and ribs overnight in a temporary encampment, judges score entries against a fixed set of criteria, and the public can buy tickets to … Read more
A dry rub is a mixture of spices — typically some combination of paprika, black pepper, cayenne, garlic, salt and other seasonings — applied directly to meat before and sometimes after smoking, with no sauce involved. Memphis is identified with it because dry-rubbed ribs, alongside sauced “wet” ribs, are one of the city’s two defining … Read more
Memphis barbecue is pork, cooked slowly over indirect heat, most often shoulder or ribs, and served either “dry” — coated in a spice rub with no sauce — or “wet,” basted or finished with a tomato-and-vinegar sauce. That combination, plus the “plate” as the standard way of serving it, is what sets Memphis apart from … Read more
The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is a multi-day pork barbecue competition held each May in Memphis, organized by the nonprofit Memphis in May International Festival as one of the festival’s three signature events. Teams from across the country and abroad cook whole hog, shoulder and ribs under a formal judging system, competing for trophies … Read more
About what you read here. Everything on Access Memphis is general information and our own editorial opinion. We research carefully and we say when the evidence is unclear, but we can be wrong, things change, and no article can know your particular situation. Please do your own research and make your own judgement rather than treating anything here as the final word. Prices, products and specifications around the topics we cover change constantly, and what suits one person will not suit another. Check current details yourself, and where a decision involves real money, safety or something you cannot undo, it is worth confirming with a qualified professional before you act.
We do not book anything. Access Memphis is a guide. It sells nothing, takes no bookings or reservations, handles no payments, and holds no tickets, rooms or seats. Some links here lead to travel companies, and some of those are affiliate links that may earn this site a commission at no extra cost to you. Any booking you make is a contract between you and that company, under its own terms, prices and cancellation rules. We are not a party to it and have no responsibility for it — including availability, prices, changes, cancellations, refunds or anything that goes wrong on the trip. Check the details with the company before you pay.