the great smoky mountains (of meat)

Our next travelogue takes us the slow-cooked way home: to America's haven of barbecue, wherever it shall be found.  In 2005, lucky David Plotz made the quest:

I had read all the books (Smokestack Lightning, The Barbecue! Bible, Barbecue America etc.), seen the movie (Barbecue: A Texas Love Story), and glutted on Food Network barbecue shows. Now I decided to set out on a pilgrimage in search of the greatest barbecue joints in America, an R.W. Apple-ian gut-stuffing to sample as much 'cue of as many different varieties as I could in a week, to try to figure why barbecue was so distinctly American and where you should go to eat the best meat in the world.

He began at Oklahoma Joe's, which, I can attest, produces some of the finest pulled pork in Kansas City, which is to say, the universe.