Barbeque is a curious thing. It carries with it not just a method of cooking but also some serious cultural trappings. You don’t often see a restaurant spill out of its dining room to encompass patios, music stages, boat docks and play areas for the kids, but you will see this with barbeque joints, which often sprawl like smoky kudzu across rural landscapes.

The smoked meat is exemplary — if I had to pick two, it would be beef and boudin — and they’re flattered by sauces house-made with local ingredients, such as Steen’s cane syrup and molasses. Other details (like the salt) seem to borrow from the playbook of fashionable bistros.

Burgau, best known for his French-leaning Southern bistro cooking at Patois, brings a touch of erudition to the proceedings — the kitchen is stocked with Maldon sea salt — but Central City isn’t about pushing barbecue into a higher tax bracket. For proof that New Orleans barbecue has finally arrived, pull up a bar stool.

Today we reached out to The New Orleans Saints rookie, Marcus Williams to show our respect and admiration the best way we could think of...with BBQ!
What can ease the pain of blowing a win in a playoff game? How about a plate of smoked meat. Central City BBQ wants to show the rookie Saints player Marcus Williams that there are no hard feelings about how the game went Sunday night. They invited him into the restaurant to have some barbecue on the house.

Grab a roadie for the walk to the Dome and remember that no matter the outcome of the game, the pits at Central City BBQ will still be smoking after the final whistle blows.

Restaurant critic Brett Anderson toured New Orleans-area barbecue restaurants over the past few months in an effort to find the finest smoked meat in a barbecue scene that has never been more competitive. The results are listed in alphabetical order.