Anybody can tell you about Chicago’s culinary specialties. Some cities might stop at a single dish, but between the pizza, hot dogs, and Italian beef, our broad-shouldered town has a rock-solid reputation. Alas, it doesn’t extend so much to barbecue, for which Chicago has a distinctly lackluster reputation. Frankly, it’s deserved. Even though barbecue joints dot the city, especially the South Side, most of them aren’t very good. But most is not all, and at least two of them could go head to head with the best Memphis or Kansas City have to offer. Moreover, they put to rest the notion that there’s no such thing as Chicago-style barbecue.

Like any obsession, barbecue can be categorized extensively and analyzed exhaustively. Common in North America since long before the Revolution (George Washington’s diary notes a Virginian “barbicue” in 1769), the process of slowly cooking meat indirectly over a wood fire spread across the South and West, by the late ‘90s fueling at least one phenomenological investigation (Holley and Wright, 1998) along with plenty of less scholarly literature on the subject. That said, barbecue in the U.S. tends to fall into a few broad regional categories. Thousands of towns vie for the title of barbecue capital, but Memphis and Kansas City are clear favorites. In both cases, thick, sweet, tomato-based sauces coat tender meat, but that’s not the only way of doing barbecue. In the Carolinas, mustard- and vinegar-based sauces on pulled whole hog predominate, while the diversity of Texan approaches defy easy description, from sauceless Eastern European-influenced hot-smoked meats to Mexican-style barbacoa, originally made from a leaf-covered cattle head.

But back to Chicago, specifically the original Leon’s at 82nd and Cottage Grove. A once-proud establishment with several South Side locations, in its time Leon’s has earned praise from the Woodlawn-raised rapper Common as well as the usual TV and newspaper reviewers. My party orders slabs and links, which arrive quickly. Perhaps too quickly, since the fries are underdone. More importantly, everything is covered in a sickly, corn-syrupy sheen. The sauce tastes as bad as it looks—some horrible cross between ketchup and Karo. Whether sauce even belongs on barbecue is a matter of no small debate. Plenty of established barbecue traditions rely on dry rubs and no sauce at all, and even in the sauce camp plenty of connoisseurs ask for it on the side, certainly not slathered. For my part, I haven’t met any smoked flesh so sublime that no sauce could improve it, but Leon’s paltry offering is too awful to even qualify as depressing. The ribs, on the other hand, grasp towards redemption. Smoky and reasonably succulent, they’re a good effort. Unfortunately, the hot links are a dull, finely ground hash. We don’t finish our meal, but we do stop at Dat Donuts next door. It’s a travesty that any breakfast should trump barbecue, but for the moment it’s apparent why Chicago ‘cue is so easily dismissed.

Our earlier trip to Barbara Ann’s proves that it doesn’t have to be this way. A few blocks north of Leon’s on Cottage Grove, it was founded by Mississippi veteran, lawyer, developer, and restaurateur Delars Bracy in 1967 and named after his daughter—the current owner—who now supervises an all-female pit crew. Attached to an identically named motel, the place sets a high bar. Over an oak, charcoal, and hickory fire, a variety of pork meats slowly cook in the hot smoke. The low heat allows sugars and amino acids to react, browning the surface in a reaction that biochemists don’t understand well. Underneath, carbon monoxide from the smoke reacts with myosin fibers to turn the inner edge of the meat bright red. If there’s such a thing as Chicago-style barbecue, we’re near the epicenter.

That question has been hotly debated, but the answer seems to be a clear yes. For starters, there’s the meat. Chicago’s claims to fame (again, we’re a city that can’t settle for doing just one thing right) are hot links and rib tips. At their best, links are coarsely ground, with melt-in-your mouth chunks of fat and hogflesh dense with sage and red pepper. Barbara Ann serves particularly good ones. Tips are more of an acquired taste. Gristly, flavorful rectangles of flesh a bit bigger than your finger but stuck on a knob of cartilage, they’re cheap, tasty, and not entirely edible. An impressive fraction of a Styrofoam tray full of tips ends up discarded, and nothing quite brings you down from a barbecue reverie like hitting a knob of gross. But what reveries tips inspire. After hours in a glass and steel “aquarium-style” smoker, they’re distinctly crisper and meatier than their Southern counterparts. Add some mixed sauce (equal parts hot and mild sauce, perfectly smoky and sweet) to complement the succulence and the smell alone dissuades us from looking for tables or chairs. Barbara Ann’s has neither, but the parking lot does us fine.

Fortunately, the best is yet to come. A week later, we’re at Uncle John’s at Calumet and 69th. Founded in 2006 by Barbara Ann’s former pitmaster Mack Sevier, the restaurant is cash and carry only. That doesn’t deter the link-and-tip combo-seeking crowds. After moving to Chicago in 1962, the Arkansas-born Sevier worked for a poultry company before opening his own meat business in 1973, with stints at several barbecue places until he joined Barbara Ann’s in 1994. Behind another aquarium-style smoker for hours every day, he regulates the oak, elm, hickory, and mulberry fire, controlling its temperature and smokiness.

Sevier’s pedigree ought to impress—Barbara Ann’s has been a South Side favorite for decades, and his tenure as pitmaster there earned rave reviews. In fact, one of them is posted above the bullet-resistant counter at Uncle John’s, with his name highlighted and Barbara Ann’s crossed out. We follow the advice of one prominently posted review and order the link-and-tip combo again. Even the excellence of Barbara Ann’s doesn’t compare to what we get a few minutes later. For $9.50 and tax, we’re presented with two slices of white bread and a cupful of coleslaw atop a sheet of wax paper. The real bounty is underneath that: two peerless coarse-ground links and a mess of rib tips on top of a pile of fries, all doused in Uncle John’s excellent homemade barbecue sauce. There’s too much of it all to fit in the Styrofoam box, and after his first bite even my friend from Kansas City is impressed. We go back two days later.

Alas, South Side barbecue has long been critically underappreciated. When the popular Tribune columnist Mike Royko challenged the city to best his rib recipe in a 1982 open competition, he was blown away by what the South Side had been cooking up for decades. Even today, Chicago’s best-known BBQ restaurants—the ones in Slow Food books or on “Check Please!”—tend to be north of Wacker. Fortunately, the tide is changing. The increasingly-influential “Chicago culinary chat site” LTHforum.com has been a vocal proponent of Barbara Ann’s and Uncle John’s for several years now, awarding both places “Great Neighborhood Restaurant” awards. The Trib is in on the act now, calling Uncle John’s the best tips in the city in a 2007 article. National respect may be closer than any pitmaster realizes.