Best Barbecue, readers' choice: Smoque

Craig Goldwyn

Reader’s Choice

Honey 1 Barbeque

The sweet scent of wood smoke provides the backdrop for Chicago’s holy trinity of barbecue: spare ribs, tips, and hot links. Ribs have an almost delicate exterior, their crisp outer layer yielding to moist, flavorful flesh, tender yet toothsome and subtly enhanced by smoke as opposed to being overpowering. Tips have a bit of fat and are chewy, gnarly, and bursting with pockets of flavor—time to get your caveman on. Hot links are juicy and authoritatively spiced, pairing perfectly with the ubiquitous white bread and a drizzle of Honey 1’s house sauce. An artist with an eight-foot Chicago-style aquarium, pit man Robert Adams makes barbecue that’s as much a piece of Americana as a Norman Rockwell painting—Adams’s medium just happens to be pig.  2241 N. Western, 773-227-5130, honey1bbq.com. —Gary Wiviott

Readers’ Choice

Smoque

 3800 N. Pulaski, 773-545-7427, smoquebbq.com.

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