After an extensive taste test, here are the best BBQ ribs in Louisville

Joseph Gerth | Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Who has the best BBQ ribs in Louisville? Courier Journal columnist and barbecue aficionado Joe Gerth tries six different ribs from Louisville-area restaurants and declares a winner.

If it weren’t for the dad-blasted fireworks, the Fourth of July would rank among the best holidays.

What’s not to love about it?

Hanging out with family, celebrating our nation’s founding, maybe watching a baseball game on the tube. And the barbecue.

Oh, yes. The barbecue.

What is more American than sitting around the backyard, gnawing on a piece of scrumptious, slow-roasted, hickory-smoked-pig-heaven-on-a-stick?

(If you’re a vegan or a vegetarian, you might want to stop reading now, ‘cause this is not going to get better for you. We’re not talking barbecued tofu here.)

Anyway, this whole Independence Day thing got the bosses asking, “What’s the best barbecue in town?”

Actually, it was likely the brainchild of Rick Green, the Courier Journal’s new editor who used to live in Cincinnati, a town known by some as “Porkopolis” and the home of the legendary Montgomery Inn, which bills itself as “The Ribs King.”

We’ll be the judge of that.

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First, we needed to pick the type of meat to judge and, as anyone outside of Texas can tell you, the only animal worth barbecuing is the hog. Soooooey!

We weren’t going for the pork butt — that’s the “idiots’ cut” because anyone with a smoker and a few wood chunks can do it well. Hard to mess up a butt — just cook it slow until the scapula slides out clean.

But ribs, now they take skill.

You don't cook them long enough, they’ll be tough and they'll remain forever stuck to the bone. Cook them too long — like the ribs I had at one restaurant on Tuesday — and they’re no longer finger food because the meat falls off the bone.

You don’t eat barbecue with a fork. Period.

Next we narrowed down our list of restaurants. What are the places I like, what restaurants get good reviews and what are people recommending on social media?

Restaurants not open for lunch on a Wednesday were immediately excluded. (We’re looking at you, Hammerheads.) So were the chain restaurants based in other cities even though some of them make some pretty darn good 'cue, like Martin’s Bar-b-que Joint and Famous Dave’s.

We were also looking to spread it out around town.

We settled on seven restaurants. Chop's Style BBQ; Feast; Frankfort Avenue Beer Depot; Momma’s Mustard, Pickles and BBQ; River Road BBQ, Shack in the Back and Stevie J’s*.

Now, this isn’t the end-all, be-all list. Limited budget, limited time, yada, yada, yada. Don’t get mad and fire off an email telling me how big of an idiot I am. I get enough of that from my wife.

Just drop a line telling me who else to include. We're looking for ideas.

All the barbecue we tasted would have been fine to serve in the backyard for your Fourth of July cookout, but as you might expect, some was better than others. I and several of my colleagues did a blind taste of all the ribs.

Here’s how I ranked them:

The best was Feast, at 909 E. Market Street. They had good heavy smoke flavor and a good rub that finished with a little heat. They were glazed with a sauce that wasn’t too sweet or too overwhelming. The meat was cooked perfectly — tender but sticking to the bone enough that you had to pull it away with your teeth. This also was, hands down, the staff favorite.

Next was Chop's Style BBQ, a food truck that sets up in a TARC park and ride lot at 7200 Ky. 329 in Crestwood. The ribs were big and meaty and had a spice rub on the outside that was good, but not great. The rib had the right tenderness and didn’t peel away too easily from the bone, which was good. One colleague rated those the best, while another said her rib was dry and had an odd spice flavor. But Chop's Style gets No. 2 because this is my column, no one else's.

Third up was Momma’s Mustard, Pickles and BBQ, at 102 Bauer Avenue. I was a little bit disappointed with this one since Momma’s is the place I go if I’m craving the 'cue. The ribs they serve at Momma’s is a dry rub rib that doesn’t come with sauce on it. The rub and the smoke were excellent but, unfortunately, the meat on the rib I tasted was dry. That knocked it down a couple of notches for me. Others who tasted Momma’s ribs had a better experience and a moister, juicier piece of meat. One person voted it the best ribs, in fact. It finished third, but is usually much better than that.

Frankfort Avenue Beer Depot finished fourth. The restaurant at 3204 Frankfort Avenue is known for the big cookers sitting out in front of the restaurant and belching hickory smoke into the air. Unfortunately, not that much of the smoke carried through to the meat on this day. It just didn't taste very smokey. And while the meat was tender and had the pink ring you want in smoked meats, it just didn’t have as much taste as I was expecting. I would have also preferred the bark on the outside to be a little darker, which it has been on past trips there.

Shack in the Back, 406 Mount Holly Road, finished fifth, and it reminded me a lot of the Frankfort Avenue Beer Depot’s ribs — but with a super sweet, fruity glaze that I wasn’t a fan of. (I really prefer ribs that are flavored with nothing but the dry rub and smoke.) As good as Shack in the Back's burgoo and pulled pork is, I was a bit underwhelmed.

Sixth was River Road BBQ at 3017 River Road. It does things a little differently than the others, starting with the fact that they use complete spare ribs that are big enough to flip Fred Flintstone’s car on its side, and ending with the fact that there really isn’t much in the way of spices on it. My rib was extremely juicy but wasn’t quite as tender as I would have liked. The smoke flavor was excellent — perhaps the best of the lot — but I really thought it needed a rub for some additional flavor. If you’re looking for just the spartan meat and smoke experience, these ribs may be for you. I wanted more.

Finally Stevie J’s, a little hut at 1831 W. Jefferson Street, unfortunately gets a DNF. After we ordered a slab, people there told us they couldn’t have the ribs ready on the day we were taste testing. When I went by the next day for lunch, it wasn’t open. I’ll keep trying, however.

But not on Wednesday. I’ll fire up my own smoker for the Fourth of July. I just hope the neighbors lay off the fireworks.

Joseph Gerth's opinion column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal/josephg.

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