{"id":81205,"date":"2025-07-21T17:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T17:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/81205\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T17:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T17:51:09","slug":"chicago-named-one-of-americas-best-cities-for-bbq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/81205\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago named one of America&#8217;s best cities for BBQ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Windy City has long been a foodie haven, especially when it comes to meat: There&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeout.com\/chicago\/restaurants\/the-best-italian-beefs-in-chicago\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Italian beef sandwiches<\/a>, loaded <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeout.com\/newyork\/restaurants\/best-hot-dogs-in-nyc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hot dogs<\/a> and, of course, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeout.com\/chicago\/restaurants\/best-bbq-in-chicago\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chicago-style barbecue<\/a>. Heavily influenced by the city&#8217;s vibrant immigrant communities, the city&#8217;s local &#8216;cue utilizes an aquarium smoker and sweet-meets-tangy sauces and spotlights specific dishes like rib tips and hot links.<\/p>\n<p>And now, according to a new ranking from yard experts\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawnstarter.com\/blog\/studies\/best-bbq-cities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">LawnStarter<\/a>, Chicago earned a sixth place spot out of nearly 500 U.S. cities on the list of\u00a02025\u2019s Best BBQ Cities in America. Chicagoland earned\u00a0an overall score of 42.20. (For reference, the number one spot earned an overall score of 52.02, with the number five destination garnering a 46.54.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To determine the above rankings, LawnStarter looked at consumer satisfaction, access to BBQ restaurants, competition awards, and elite BBQ memberships (yes, that\u2019s a thing). For each of the biggest cities in the U.S., data was analyzed, and scores were calculated out of 100 points for each city, giving each locale an overall score from the \u201cBest\u201d at number one to the \u201cWorst\u201d at number 476.<\/p>\n<p>Fifteen Illinois cities made it to the list, but only two earned a spot in the top 100: along with Chicago at No. 6, Joliet came in at No. 94. Elsewhere,\u00a0Schaumburg earned a spot at 117, Waukegan at 132, and Peoria at 186. Other cities didn\u2019t fare as well: Springfield at 335, Evanston at 381, and Rockford at 442.<\/p>\n<p>Outside of Illinois, Kansas City, Missouri received the number one rank, followed by Los Angeles, Houston, St. Louis, and Austin rounding out the top five. Interestingly, Los Angeles has the best access to BBQ with 162 establishment according to this ranking and has the second highest number of top-rated BBQ joints. Unsurprisingly, nine cities in Texas landed in the top 100.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago earned the number four spot for the highest number of BBQ establishments with 123. And for the highest number of top-rated BBQ establishments, Chicago comes in at number five.<\/p>\n<p>Now, who\u2019s hungry?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Windy City has long been a foodie haven, especially when it comes to meat: There&#8217;s Italian beef&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":81206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[10633,960,5386,1818,10634,988],"class_list":{"0":"post-81205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-categories-restaurants","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-news-eating","13":"tag-restaurants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114892497537077794","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}