Barry Sorkin opened his Old Irving Park barbecue joint Smoque in 2006 hoping to fill what he saw as a gaping hole in the city's otherwise robust dining scene. “What we didn't quite realize was the extent to which Chicago is a barbecue town waiting to happen,” he says.

He also didn't know he would start a revolution—a barbecue renaissance in which dozens of restaurants continue to pile into a market with a seemingly insatiable desire for true Southern-style smoked meats.

While Chicago long has been known for its African-American-influenced South Side rib shacks and its Eastern European-inspired boiled-slathered-and-grilled baby-back rib joints, the newer movement draws from the low-and-slow, hardwood-smoked style of barbecue pioneered in Texas and the Deep South.

“The Midwest is finally embracing authentic barbecue,” says Rachel Dennis, owner of Piggyback Tavern in Forest Park and two forthcoming Piggyback BBQ restaurants slated to open within weeks in the Loop. “What you're seeing now is a demand for the real thing, a real way of cooking meat, and it has nothing to do with the sauce. (Restaurateurs) are just answering that cry.”

Sales at U.S. barbecue restaurants grew 7.2 percent to $2.9 billion in 2014, according to Chicago-based market research firm Technomic. The rate is nearly double the growth of the overall industry, where sales ticked up just 3.8 percent over the same period. The number of barbecue-focused restaurants jumped 8.1 percent to 1,942, with most of the growth coming from limited-service or fast-casual formats.

“It's riding the trend of what people are looking for,” says Warren Solocheck, vice president of client development at NPD Group, a research firm in Rosemont. “New, interesting and unique foods that aren't easy to cook at home.”