Well if you have any entrepreneurial ambitions bbqboy, that would be a perfect name for a BBQ restaurant in Ashland, Oregon! Or Asheville, NC, for that matter.
Salem, Or - WTH? That does not compute.
Wayzata, Minnesota not being on that list casts serious doubt on its accuracy.
Indeed it does, as well as the omission of my small town - heck we put BBQ on the map lol! 
Wow, I used to drive by there (within a couple of miles) nearly monthly on business trips to DFW area. Wish I’d know about it then.
It seems most of these “Best Of…” lists are nothing more than fanciful clickbait bearing little to no resemblance to a well thought out list.
Here’s another, also reported on Fox news (I was trying to find the source for that Salem Oregon list, but failed). The source for this was some org called “LawnStarter” that used restaurants, “access to barbecue”, how many bbq-type events were held, etc.
Edit - here’s the full list. And “LawnStarter” is a lawn-care company, much as you’d expect. What are they doing compiling (er… “researching”, as they put it) all these lists? They’ve got a lot of these lists, including “Best Cities For Naked Gardening”, LoL.
Top 10 Barbecue Cities in America
1. Kansas City, Missouri
2. Chicago
3. Houston
4. Cincinnati
5. Memphis, Tennessee
6. Louisville, Kentucky
7. St. Louis
8. New York
9. Minneapolis
10. Overland Park, Kansas
That’s stupid 
- Overland Park is just a suburb of KC.
And no Austin!
Absolutely agree with you - silly clickbait is exactly what it is! Amusing though.
Austin is #8 on that expanded list I linked. Or dies “no Austin!” mean that Austin should not be on the list?
Of course Austin should be on a top ten list.
I don’t know how Minneapolis could make even the top 20. Outside of the original Big Daddy’s in St Paul I never hear of BBQ.
Wonder if they think Wayzata is “basically MSP area”?
Good point!
The kicker is that the best barbecue isn’t in cities.
I used to fly into DFW a lot for work, a business in the South end of Fort Worth. Far enough South that the streets were like rural areas with neighborhoods and occasional restaurants interspersed. Madea’s Downhome food, Sista’s Kitchen, and Longoria’s BBQ were all good stuff.
I’ve been to Longoria’s many, many years ago and thought it was one of the better DFW bbq restaurants back then. I think DFW is better than it used to be, but I haven’t been there recently enough to try to places that get the praise now.
Maybe that’s why KC was ranked #1
They’re so “best” that you have to split them up.
