New York City's up-and-coming barbecue borough

The proliferation of Texas-inspired barbecue joints in New York is still one of the more remarkable side effects of the Texas barbecue renaissance that's unfolded over the past 10 years.

To this day, many barbecue fans refuse to believe that the Big Apple can produce barbecue worthy of the Lone Star State. And for the most part they're right. With a few exceptions, the barbecue offerings in New York range from average to inedible.

The two most famous boroughs of the city, Manhattan and Brooklyn, have led the way in the development of high-quality Texas-style barbecue restaurants. Hill Country Barbecue kicked off the trend in 2007 when it opened in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Former Houstonian Hugh Mangum would bring excellent barbecue to the East Village in 2012 with the opening of Mighty Quinn's BBQ.

Starting about 2013, the center of barbecue activity shifted across the East River to the borough of Brooklyn. The pop-up restaurant BrisketTown morphed into Delaney Barbecue in the Willamsburg neighborhood, joining the likes of Morgan's Barbecue and Fletcher's Brooklyn Barbecue. The Brooklyn barbecue phenomenon reached a pinnacle with the opening of Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook, where owner and pitmaster Billy Durney continues to make barbecue that rivals some of the best in Texas.

North of Brooklyn, in the borough of Queens, barbecue has been slower to take hold. Indeed, the workmanlike and ethnically diverse character of Queens has always existed in the shadow of its highly gentrified, hipster-birthing neighbor.

Which isn't to say there is no barbecue there. On a recent weekday afternoon, I hopped on the F train and headed to Queens in search of smoked meats.

My first stop was John Brown Smokehouse, which opened in 2010 in Long Island City, a neighborhood previously known for industrial businesses that has transformed into a hub of finance and technology. John Brown sits in the middle of a work-a-day block of 44th Drive, down the street from a taxi-staging yard and across from a food-cart-repair shop.

Entering the narrow storefront reveals an even narrower dining room that shares space with an order counter and a couple of Southern Pride Smoke Chef cookers.

The barbecue at John Brown is billed as "Kansas City style," so I ordered a batch of burnt ends, some traditional brisket and house-made sausage. The burnt ends were good, but the brisket was nothing to write a column about. The sausage was stellar. In an homage to the traditionally Greek inhabitants of Queens, it's made of lamb and redolent of basil, garlic and cheese. That sausage may be a reason I make a return trip to Queens in the future.

From there, I took the N train to Astoria, a neighborhood known for its rich ethnic diversity anchored by a large Greek population. Walking past Greek restaurants and food stores, I headed to Salt & Bone Smokehouse, which opened in early 2017.

There is a Texas-style menu here with lots of options to order meat by the pound. I ordered a quarter-pound of brisket and an all-beef sausage made to the place's recipe at a farm in New Jersey. Many New York barbecue joints haven't quite figured out how to serve ribs - they usually offer them only in half or full racks. Trying to order one or two ribs just to get a taste is a lost cause.

The brisket was very good, as was the densely packed sausage. Two Oyler brand, all-wood-burning, nonrotisserie pits are prominently displayed in the open kitchen. I asked the pitmaster on duty, Thomas Smith, about the genesis of such an ambitious barbecue joint in Queens. He explained that it was started by former employees of the now-closed Delaney Barbecue in Brooklyn.

That's something of a turning point for New York barbecue. In Texas, barbecue joints often rise from the figurative ashes of places that have recently closed. Salt & Bone Smokehouse seems to be one of the first "second generation" barbecue joints in the era of craft barbecue in the Big Apple. That it opened in Queens, rather than Brooklyn, may be a harbinger of things to come.