Before she could launch one of New Jersey’s best barbecue joints, Embark Smoked Meats in Boonton, Jasmine Gomez first had to become an Elk.

“I became an Elk so that I could use their parking lot to smoke meat,” she said, amused. “I would drive the smoker and use their kitchen and their parking lot until I found a smoker I could put inside my restaurant.”

She calls the experience a “blessing in disguise” and that though the Elks were nice and gracious, “it’s not some place I’d [otherwise] hang out or frequent or all,” she said.

But such is the barbecue life in New Jersey. You might catch a glimpse of roadside smokers like The Real Deal in Clinton, or stumble upon a barbecue menu at a local brewery, like Bearded Baby Que at Alias Brew Works in Vernon. Still yet, you may discover North Carolina-style barbecue at Brothers Smokehouse in Ramsey, award-winning ‘cue at Local Smoke in Monmouth County, or taste the best barbecue of your life at a local festival from a tax accountant who dabbles in smoking meats on the weekend.

While other regions may have renowned styles of barbecue and long-standing institutions serving those meats, New Jersey — long considered bereft of good barbecue — is home to a growing number of cooks who draw from wide influences to create great barbecue.

“What makes New Jersey barbecue interesting is it is a melting pot,” says Eric Shenkus, chairman of the New Jersey State Barbecue Championship (July 11-13 in North Wildwood). “What I see from these teams is folks tend not to just only do one traditional style, they’re not just gonna do a dry rub or just Carolina-style sauce or Kansas City-style sauce but it’s more a melting pot and a combination of various styles which makes it interesting, and I attribute that to the diversity of New Jersey.”

Does New Jersey have (good) barbecue?

Barbecue tray at Brothers Smokehouse in Ramsey

“Barbecue in New Jersey, I think, is burgers and dogs, and I get a lot of inquiries for that," said Brian Hochstaedt, who launched Bearded Baby Que four years ago. "For everyone else in the country, that’s a cookout and then there’s barbecue.”

It’s worthwhile to make the distinction. Barbecue refers to the general category of smoked whole-muscle meats like pork, beef, chicken and turkey as well as ground meats like sausage. And he’s not kidding about the ignorance of that distinction: I was once an ignorant 17-year-old who, when attending a “barbecue” on a maiden visit to Alabama, was surprised to see trays of pulled pork instead of burgers. (I think they’re still laughing at me.)

But within the category of barbecue we’re talking about here, there are regional differences too numerous to name but which you’re likely familiar with: saucy Kansas City-style, moist briskets of central Texas (which can be sectioned out into city-based styles), grilled spare ribs of St. Louis, mustard-based sauce of South Carolina, eastern and western North Carolina… the list just goes on and on.

And while we're talking primarily about the American barbecue tradition, it's worth noting that New Jersey is home to plenty of restaurants serving global barbecue, from Korea to Portugal and hybrids therein, like Robert Austin Cho's Kimchi Smoke. The point is, there are a lot of influences here, and the savvy smokers take heed of them all.

“Everybody has their own version of what barbecue is,” Gomez said. “To me, barbecue might be smoked meat. To somebody else it might be over charcoal. To somebody else, it might be on a grill with propane.”

Gomez, a culinary school graduate who first cut her chops (literally) by cutting smoked meats at a shop in Manhattan, said she didn’t grow up with smoked meats in her Puerto Rican North Jersey home, but she found a barbecue style using her own compass and relying on YouTube videos, her culinary background and trial and error.

“People are like, ‘Where does your influence come from, is it Texas, Carolina, Kansas City?’ For me, I’m not one of those places like, ‘This is authentic Texas barbecue,’ that’s not me,’ she said. “I tried a bunch of different stuff and I came up with things that I enjoy that I think taste really good and I made it my own thing.”

So while others might consider our lack of barbecue dogma a knock, it might be what defines our style.

But that’s not the case for everybody, of course. Hochstaedt was working a corporate gig during the pandemic when he stumbled upon Chef, in which Jon Favreau’s character visits the illustrious Franklin Smokehouse in Austin, Texas. Inspired, he took a Masterclass led by Aaron Franklin, tried his hand at brisket and brought the results to a family party.

“Everybody was eating the brisket and not the food truck they had hired and I said, ‘Huh, maybe there’s something to this,’” he said.

Hochstaedt does Texas-style barbecue, but adds local terroir by using local wood to smoke the meats. He puts another Jersey spin on his offerings, spurred by requests from patrons.

“Brisket in central Texas is holy; you don’t put sauce on it,” he said. “But as I was making it, people were asking for sauce. I came up with my ‘Moo Sauce,’ and that’s been pretty successful: apple cider vinegar, ketchup, some spices, molasses, dark brown sugar and let it simmer until everything combines, and it adds a nice accent.”

Chris Farella, who runs Brothers Smokehouse in Ramsey and two other locations in New York with his brothers, makes barbecue grown from his family's North Carolina roots. Visiting family during the summers there, the Farella brothers fell in love with a specific type of barbecue they brought to New Jersey and New York over 15 years ago.

The Farella brothers outside their restaurant, Brothers Smokehouse in Ramsey.

“It was our interpretation of what we were always seeing, what we were always tasting,” Farella said of the trio’s barbecue. “Me and my brothers got together in 2008 and started cooking together over the summer and we were like, ‘We can do this, and we can share our family’s food.’”

In addition to pulled pork, ribs (babyback and St. Louis-style), fried chicken (using their aunt’s recipe), brisket and more, they make a North Carolina specialty called chopped BBQ. I came across it at some roadside shack outside Raleigh a few years back and loved the abundant vinegar and succulent texture akin to tuna salad. The Brothers’ version is killer — addictively tangy and chopped thick so you get some flavorful edges — but Farella said they’ve modified the recipe to suit Garden State palates.

“Usually when they do it [in North Carolina], they season it with vinegar and red pepper. When I’m making that for Northerners, I don’t go that far. I had to make a sauce and introduce that sweetness. … You gotta play to the people.”

Growth of barbecue in New Jersey

The New Jersey State Barbecue Championship is a three-day event in North Wildwood.

Gomez’s Embark Smoked Meats opened in December 2023, and Hochstaedt was able to quit his full-time job to focus on Bearded Baby Que last year. He said he’s noticing others turning to barbecue in the area.

“I think it’s starting to catch on, I’m seeing more and more guys pop up,” he said. "Brisket, I’ve seen a couple other places popping up, whether that’s other guys seeing what I saw or something catching on in the Northeast.”

Shenkus would know; he’s been involved with NJ State Barbecue Championship for the better part of its 27-year run.

“I’ll bashfully admit that back in the early days before getting involved with the event, barbecue to me, like most other folks in Jersey, was something that comes out of a bottle: sauce,” he said. “But it’s been amazing to see the growth of barbecue on the East Coast and in New Jersey.

“When we started this way back in 1999, it was one of the only events on the East Coast, and now it’s one of the largest events in the country,” he added.

Now, competition barbecue is different from restaurant barbecue. The folks who compete in these events often do so as a hobby, which is not to minimize the sweat and time put into their operations. Sometimes they do lead to brick-and-mortar restaurants, as is the case with Local Smoke, which won the NJ championship four times and now has five locations near the Shore.

“We’ve had everything from Wall Street bond traders who were into smoking as a relaxation on the weekends to a group of architects who were barbecue aficionados,” Shenkus said. “We have some teams that are giving it their first try, to all the way up to the top-rated teams in the country.”

Some of the dozens of contestants — most of whom come from New Jersey, Shenkus said — will have their barbecue for sale at the event (which coincides with the Anglesea Blues Festival; it’s a good time, you should go), and Shenkus said you can really taste the difference between local competition barbecue and the more common fare you might get at a restaurant.

“The quality of barbecue they’re producing is … hard to describe; it’s something you have to try and taste,” he said.” For ribs, they have to make a minimum of six ribs but they may smoke off 6 racks of ribs to get the perfect ribs. The brisket these folks are entering… the top teams are often entering American Wagyu brisket smoked for 48 hours.

“There’s a saying in the barbecue world that good meat ain’t cheap and cheap meat ain’t good, and these guys certainly subscribe to that,” he added.

The Championship is a showcase for the best barbecue the state has to offer and, maybe the country: one team, South Jersey’s Uncle Pig’s Barbeque Pit is currently third in the Kansas City Barbecue Society’s national rankings and has racked up prestigious national competition titles.

New Jersey barbecue is about ‘being creative’

So, if we can make title-winning barbecue and folks are opening and growing successful barbecue operations in New Jersey, are we on the path toward recognition of being a barbecue destination?

Not quite, and part of that’s on us. Both Farella and Hochstaedt say they’ve had to explain to guests why their meat is pink (it’s because of the smoking process). Too, barbecue just isn’t a Jersey food yet — Farella jokes that if he took Brothers’ barbecue down South, they might judge it the same way we would judge pizza down there… which is to say, poorly.

“Down South, people eat barbecue like up here people eat pizza,” he said. “If I went down South, and I went to a pizza spot, I’m going to get [crappy] pizza. The culture’s not there for that food.”

But maybe, with places like Embark Smoked Meats and Bearded Baby Que opening, spots like Brothers and Local Smoke thriving and competitions like the NJ State Barbecue Championship hosting the best smokers in the country, we’re on our way to instilling a culture for barbecue in the Garden State.

And maybe what might be perceived as a knock on our barbecue — that we have no dogma about meats, styles and sauces — is actually our greatest asset.

“Everybody’s way of smoking meats is so different, I think that's the beauty of it,” Gomez said. “It’s not all the same. You have to be innovative. It’s not about recreating something down South; sometimes it’s about being creative.”

Matt Cortina is a food reporter with NorthJersey.com/The Record. Reach him at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: They say New Jersey doesn't have good barbecue. Tell that to these award-winning smokers.