Memphis Barbecue: Pork Sandwiches, Ribs and Beale Street

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Memphis is one of only two American cities, alongside Kansas City, whose barbecue is treated as a regional style in its own right. This overview leans on barbecue historian Robert F. Moss’s history of Memphis barbecue and on the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Tennessee BBQ oral histories, recorded with the people who run the city’s pits. It looks at the pork sandwich, the ribs and the people behind them; the story of one famous rib house is covered in our separate Rendezvous article.

What Defines the Style

Moss identifies pork shoulder and pork ribs as the signature cuts, with charcoal as the fuel of choice, unlike the split-log fires of Texas and the Carolinas. He describes the sauce as dark, tangy and sweet, built on tomato and molasses, with slaw and sweet baked beans as the essential sides. He also lists Memphis oddities: barbecued bologna and barbecue spaghetti, which he calls a Memphis invention. The Southern Foodways Alliance, describing The Bar-B-Q Shop, calls barbecued spaghetti “wholly local” and says the restaurant’s predecessor, Brady & Lil’s, was its supposed originator.

Beale Street and the First Barbecue Kings

Moss traces Memphis barbecue to the early twentieth century, when smoked ribs and pork sandwiches became lunch staples and late-night food for crowds on Beale Street. He ties the city’s growth to migration: Memphis’s Black population grew from about 3,800 at the time of the Civil War to more than 50,000 by 1900, as many people left farming for city work, with lumber laborers arriving on their days off, joined by riverboat crews and railroad-yard workers.

The most famous barbecue man of that era, Moss writes, was John H. Mills, an African American entrepreneur who opened a stand on Fourth Street in the late 1920s and had built a brick restaurant by 1932. Mills cooked shoulders and ribs over a charcoal pit, mopped the ribs with a peppery hot sauce, and served extra sauce on the side. According to Moss, his restaurant drew both Black and white customers, and he made Memphis famous for ribs roughly two decades before the Rendezvous began selling its dry-rubbed version. Mills ran the place until his death in 1949.

The Pork Sandwich

Moss reports that Leonard Heuberger opened Leonard’s in 1922 and that the restaurant claims to have invented the Memphis-style barbecue sandwich: chopped pork shoulder on a bun with finely diced coleslaw and a red, tomato-based sauce. That is Leonard’s own claim, and Moss presents it as such. He adds that the sandwiches sold two for a quarter in the 1930s. He also notes that Leonard’s served only white customers until segregation ended in the 1960s. Dan Brown, who bought the restaurant in 1993, told the Southern Foodways Alliance that a barbecue is a barbecue sandwich, meaning the word names the finished sandwich rather than the cooking.

The sandwich is not one thing. At Payne’s Bar-B-Q, which Moss dates to 1972, the Southern Foodways Alliance describes pork shoulders turned over hickory coals in a recessed pit, mild sauce simmering on the stove and bright green coleslaw between the meat and the bun of a chopped pork sandwich. At Cozy Corner, opened in 1977, the sandwiches and plates use sliced rather than chopped pork, and smoked turkey and barbecued Cornish hens are specialties. Moss adds that a popular item right after World War II was the rib sandwich, three or four bone-in ribs between slices of bread with slaw and a little sauce, still found at A&R Barbecue and Payne’s.

Ribs, Wet and Dry

Moss credits the Rendezvous’s spice rub, developed in the late 1950s, with creating the Memphis dry-rubbed rib; his account of Mills shows ribs mopped with sauce and served with more on the side in the 1930s. Today a shop can offer both. The Southern Foodways Alliance notes that The Bar-B-Q Shop offers half-and-half ribs, a split portion of dry and wet, for the indecisive or the taste testers. Its profile does not define the terms, and neither does Moss, so this article does not attempt to settle exactly where “wet” begins.

Many Hands, Many Cultures

The oral histories show a city that is more mixed than its reputation. Jim Neely, who opened Interstate Bar-B-Que, recalls being served through the back doors of barbecue joints, the Alliance writes. Tom’s Bar-B-Q was founded by a Greek immigrant, Tom Sturgis, whose rub includes oregano, thyme, basil, nutmeg and cinnamon; its current owner, Adam Itayem, is Jerusalem-born and Palestinian-American, and the Alliance says Memphis barbecue incorporates all cultures. Central BBQ, founded in 2002 by Craig Blondis and Roger Sapp, brought a competition-circuit approach and offers vinegar and mustard sauces the Alliance says are not commonly found in the city.

Competition is part of the modern picture, too: Memphis in May describes its World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest as the largest pork barbecue contest in the world, with a 48th edition scheduled for May 13-16, 2026.

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