3 smokin' barbecue joints you need to try ASAP in Cincinnati

As far as I know, there is no such thing as Cincinnati-style barbecue. I think there's a Cincinnati-style barbecue sauce (we can thank Montgomery Inn restaurants for that), but we are not – and probably never will be – a barbecue destination along the lines of Memphis or Austin or the Carolinas.

That's fine by me since Cincinnati has an abundance of dedicated barbecue obsessives making damn good briskets, ribs and pulled pork sandwiches for us and us alone. At places like Eli's, Beards & Bellies, Pickles & Bones and Lucius Q, among others, you'll find variations of different regional barbecue styles, from Texas to St. Louis, prepared by pit masters and chefs who know what they're doing.

In the spirit of Cincinnati's homegrown barbecue scene, here are three very good places I've tried recently. None of them are new, though one does have a new name and the other two just opened second locations.

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Home Court Tavern, East End (formerly Sinners & Saints)

“We were having an identity crisis,” chef Pam Griffith told me when I visited East End's Home Court Tavern recently. It's a sentiment owner Chris Rose echoed as well. Since the smokehouse and bar opened in 2020, Home Court (formerly Sinners and Saints) has faced plenty of obstacles. The pandemic, obviously, but also heavy construction on Eastern Avenue due to water main breaks that made the restaurant all-but-invisible to drivers. Then there was the name of the place, which Griffith said led many people to mistakenly think it was a biker bar. That name, incidentally, was conceived when Rose was planning to open his restaurant in an abandoned church across the street. The deal didn’t work out, but he decided to keep the name anyway.

By renaming his Riverside Drive restaurant, Rose hopes to make it clear that it's not a biker bar at all, but a family-friendly restaurant and tavern. Since Rose also runs a Cincinnati company called Artsman – a company that takes old NBA and NCAA basketball courts and turns them into sports memorabilia – he also wants to call attention to the fact that you can dine at tables repurposed from championship basketball courts, including the court where LeBron James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA championship in 2016.

The tables are cool. But the big draw here is Griffith's food. A former drag racer, she spent time in the kitchens of Jeff Ruby's and the Lytle Hotel. And while I hate to resort to sports metaphors, I will say that she brings a style all her own to the game – one that gives Home Court an advantage. (Sorry.)

After smoking her brisket, pork and chicken out back, Griffith uses them as building blocks to create complex and comforting dishes such as garlic naan street tacos with pulled pork and peach barbecue sauce, brisket stew with tender potatoes and carrots in a tomato broth, and a loaded baked potato with a choice of pulled pork or brisket. And while I almost never order tater tots at a restaurant, Griffith's velvety versions (so big that they're more like preteens than tots) topped with melted queso, pickled onions and jalapenos were tempting enough for me to make an exception.

Griffith isn't just about smoked meats, either. She also makes salads. Very good salads, in fact, including one with roasted carrots, chickpeas, red onion, goat cheese and toasted almonds in an apple cider vinegar vinaigrette. Her house-made salad dressings are so good that I ordered a few plastic containers to go during my last visit. Oh, and don't miss out on her blackberry pie or ricotta donuts with chocolate and berry dipping sauce, either.

The focal point of the dining room at Home Court is the well-stocked bar with some outstanding bourbon selections. The creamy white walls, wainscoting and pane-glass windows that surround that bar lend it an almost New England lobster house aesthetic. If the downstairs gets too packed, there’s additional seating upstairs. And when the weather warms up, Home Court will likely be one of those places where you’ll want to sit on the outdoor patio, which offers views of the river and a few scattered examples of grand Victorian-era houses (both weathered and restored) that will remind you of Riverside Avenue's East End past.

Bee’s Barbecue, Over-the-Rhine

A couple of years ago, I wrote how Bee's Barbecue in Madisonville felt like one of the city's best hidden gem barbecue joints – the kind of place you might find among the shotgun shacks of New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood or tucked away on the outskirts of Memphis. Its new second location, in Over-the-Rhine, has just as much personality, though this place feels more like a kicked-back Texas honky-tonk that just happens to serve excellent barbecue.

Don't just take my word for the quality of that barbecue, either. Last year, I met up with Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn at Bee's when he was passing through town. I was worried he would say disparaging things about a place I was slowly coming to love. But not only did he like Bee's, he made a point of flagging down owner Brendan "Bee" Hague to remark on the quality of his brisket and the Texas-style sausages he makes in collaboration with Avril-Bleh butcher shop, Downtown. That's high praise given that Vaughn has eaten at over a thousand barbecue restaurants during his lifetime.

Maybe he sensed that the food here speaks to a deeper truth about barbecue. That it's not just about your spices, your sauces or even your smoker. It's about your passion for it. Your love of it and the patience it takes to get it right. That's why I've always attributed part of Bee's success to the reverence he often expresses toward the old Cincinnati barbecue joints he grew up with, including Bill Thomas' BBQ Revue, in Madisonville, where he used to ride his bike for pulled pork sandwiches when he was a kid.

Even though Hague didn't have a lot of work to do on the new Bee's space, which was previously home to chef Dan Wright's Pontiac Barbecue, he's given it a personality all its own. Sitting with my friend, Peter, at the bar recently, we drank long necks of Lone Star beer while eyeing a Pepsi-branded menu board mounted above the bar. Outlaw country played over the stereo as we devoured juicy brisket, lacquered smoked wings and tender sidewinder chips. And while I'm a food writer and Peter's a social worker, I felt like we were a pair of long-haul truckers on a pit stop in a state that I couldn't quite name but felt a hell of a lot like Texas.

Just Q'in, College Hill

The word "faith" is painted in big block letters on the wall of Just Q'in's new second location, in College Hill. My guess is it’s taken a lot of that for owner Matthew Cuff to get where he is right now. Cuff, a former engineer who was born and raised in Cleveland, originally moved to Cincinnati to work for GE Aerospace. That's a pretty solid career choice. But after winning an amateur barbecue competition in Greenville, South Carolina, in 2007, his obsession with barbecue led him down a smoky path toward another kind of success. In 2011, he opened a brick-and-mortar location in Newtown, later relocating it to the up-and-coming food destination of Walnut Hills.

When I visited Cuff's new location for the first time on a recent Wednesday afternoon, two men in black T-shirts were standing behind the counter tending to the last of the lunch rush. I ordered three St. Louis-style pork ribs and a cup of mustardy potato salad, then took a seat at a table where three squeeze bottles of barbecue sauces (mild, mustard sauce and hot) were waiting for me to try.

Soundgarden played on the stereo as I nibbled away on those meaty, fatty ribs. Cuff finishes each rack with a sprinkle of dry rub, giving them plenty of flavor. And while I tried a squirt of each of those sauces on my ribs, my favorite was the mild version, which tasted of brown sugar and white pepper.

I've tried other things here at Just Q'in during the past few years (the juicy pulled chicken sandwich is fantastic), but since I'm a rib guy, the ribs will always be my favorite. That's not to disparage Cuff's pastrami, which, he told me, is his proudest achievement. When I asked him why, he told me that he thinks it might actually pass muster in his pastrami-loving hometown of Cleveland. That's the thing about the people who make good barbecue, I thought – it's not just about smoke and meat, it's about creating something that is distinctly you, while still honoring everyone and everything that came before you.

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 3 barbecue joints you need to try ASAP in Cincinnati