New York City / Barbecue
Best BBQ
in NYC
What a pound of brisket actually costs, who sells out and when, and the four happy hours that make this affordable.
Four deals run here — Mable’s from noon, Virgil’s and Pig Beach from 3pm, Dinosaur from 4pm.
- 17 verified pits
- 4 real happy hours
- brisket $40–$49.50/lb
- a plate from $12
The short version
- Best barbecueHometown in Red Hook — brisket $20 a half pound, and they close when it is gone.
- Best dealDinosaur in Harlem — $4 pulled pork sliders and $6 drafts, Mon–Fri 4–7pm at the bar.
- Best valueRoyal Rib House in Bed-Stuy — $12–18 plates, and the same rating as rooms charging double.
- Skip itMorgan’s charges $49.50 a pound for brisket. Hometown is better and 20% cheaper.
- Simplest dealButcher Bar — $19.99 for any meat and two sides, all day, every day.
The best BBQ in NYC is Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook, at $20 a half pound for brisket, with Bark in Bushwick close behind and Royal Rib House in Bed-Stuy doing the best cooking per dollar in the city. New York barbecue is expensive and wildly inconsistent, so this guide leads with the two things that actually decide your afternoon: what a pound costs, and whether they will have sold out by the time you arrive. Brisket runs $40 a pound at Hometown and Pig Beach and $49.50 at Morgan’s, which is the clearest overpay on this page. Four smokehouses run a real happy hour, and one — Dinosaur — publishes every price on it. Everything below was checked against the venue’s own menu in August 2026, and five well-known NYC barbecue names that have closed are named in the FAQ.
At a glance
The deal where there is one, the per-pound price where there is not. Tap a number on the map to place it.
| Smokehouse | The deal or the price | Days | Window | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dinosaur Bar-B-Que | $4 sliders, $6 drafts, $10 cocktails | Mon–Fri | 4–7pm | $$$ |
| Virgil’s Real Barbecue | Pints from $5; all-day happy hour Mondays | Mon–Fri | 3–6pm, 9pm–close | $$$ |
| Pig Beach BBQ | Happy hour Tue–Thu; brisket $40/lb | Tue–Thu | 3–6pm | $$$ |
| Mable’s Smokehouse | Lunch specials Mon–Fri; Frito pie | Mon–Fri | 12–4pm | $$$ |
| Hill Country Barbecue Market | $6 well drinks; pitmaster special $32 | Daily | 4–7pm, 10pm–close | $$$ |
| Butcher Bar | $19.99 meat plus two sides | Daily | all day | $$$ |
| Hometown Bar-B-Que | Brisket $40/lb; spare ribs $16 per half pound | Tue–Sun | 12–9/10pm | $$$ |
| Bark Barbecue | Salt-and-pepper brisket; Dominican sides | Daily | varies | $$$ |
| Izzy’s Brooklyn Smokehouse | Kosher brisket, burnt ends, dino ribs | Sun–Thu | to 10:30/11:30pm | $$$ |
| Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque | Platters, brisket and burnt ends | Daily | 11:30am–9:30pm | $$$ |
| Royal Rib House | Rib plates $12–18; sides $5–7 | Daily | call ahead | $$$ |
| 9 Bells BBQ | Two meats and two sides, about $25 | Weekends | varies | $$$ |
| Hudson Smokehouse | Half-pound meats $13–19; beef ribs Sat only | Tue–Sun | 11am–9pm | $$$ |
| John Brown BBQ | Burnt ends; half-pound meats $13–20 | Daily | 11:30am–9/10pm | $$$ |
| Morgan’s Brooklyn Barbecue | Brisket $49.50/lb; Holy Trinity platter $48 | Daily | 12–11pm | $$$ |
| Cote | Butcher’s Feast $82pp | Daily | from 5pm | $$$ |
| Let’s Meat | AYCE Korean BBQ, 100 minutes | Daily | all day | $$$ |
Map: where these 17 spots are
Brooklyn carries the cooking, Queens carries the value, and the only two rooms you can sit and drink in are in Harlem and Times Square.
Pins are numbered to match the table above – tap any pin for the detail and directions.
Barbecue with a real deal
Four verified happy hours plus two standing fixed-price plays. More discounted bar food in our best bar food in NYC guide.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que On now
The best barbecue deal in New York, and it is fully itemised on their own menu. Four to seven, Monday to Friday, at the bar: pulled pork slider $4, cheeseburger slider $5, three deviled eggs $6, three wings $8, fried green tomatoes $8, chicken cracklings $8. Drinks: six drafts at $6 including Brooklyn Lager, Bronx Pale Ale and Five Boroughs Pilsner, Genesee Cream Ale $4, Bud and Coors $5, house cocktails $10, frozen rosé $12. The local move: a $4 pulled pork slider and a $6 Brooklyn Lager is the cheapest good hour in Harlem. The honest caveat: bar only. Show up as six people wanting a table and you are on the full menu.
dinosaurbarbque.com · See our Harlem happy hours
Virgil’s Real Barbecue On now
Worth it for the deal, sceptical about the rest. Howdy Hour runs 3 to 6pm and again from 9pm to close, Monday to Friday, with pints from $5, cocktails from $7 and snacks from $9 — and Mondays it runs all day. That double window is genuinely rare. It also opens at 8am seven days with a pit-smoked Southern breakfast, which almost nothing else in this category does, and there is live music Wednesday and Friday from 6. The honest verdict: at full menu price this is Times Square barbecue owned by the Carmine’s group — competent, sauced, not remotely Texan, and priced for tourists. Go for Howdy Hour and the room, not for the ribs.
virgilsbbq.com · See our Times Square happy hours
Pig Beach BBQ On now
Prices are published properly here, which in this category is worth saying out loud: beef brisket $10 a quarter pound and $20 a half, pulled pork $7/$14, smoked lamb shoulder $11/$22, turkey $8/$16, baby backs $12 a quarter rack and $24 a half. The local move: skip the per-pound maths entirely — “Meat and Two” is $28 and the Sampler is $42. Happy hour runs Tuesday to Thursday 3 to 6pm. The honest caveat, and it matters: the Gowanus original with the big courtyard has closed. This is the Astoria room, the site says nothing about outdoor space, and the happy hour window is published without any prices attached. Closed Mondays.
pigbeachnyc.com · See our Astoria happy hours
Mable’s Smokehouse On now
The menu here is short on purpose and would work perfectly well in Austin, which is about the highest compliment available in New York barbecue. Order the Frito pie, served in the Frito’s bag — that is not a gimmick, it is the correct order — then the brisket, the pulled pork sandwich and the St. Louis ribs. The local move, and people miss this constantly: the entrance is on North 11th Street between Berry and Wythe, not on Berry itself. The honest caveat: the lunch special is advertised Monday to Friday noon to 4pm with no menu and no price attached anywhere. You find out what it is by walking in.
mablessmokehouse.com · See our Williamsburg happy hours
Hill Country Barbecue Market
Full Texas market service: you carry a punch card to the meat counter, order by the pound, watch it cut, and settle up on the way out. Two floors — bar, communal tables, outdoor seating and sports upstairs; a stage with live music downstairs. Happy Happy runs $6 well drinks and $6 shot-and-beer combos, 4 to 7pm and again from 10pm. The honest caveat, and it is the entire design: the punch card is built to make you lose track. A quarter pound across five meats gets you to $60 a head without noticing. The local move: order the $32 pitmaster special — brisket, pork ribs, chicken, sausage and two sides — and stop there. Note the happy hour days are not published, so confirm at the bar.
Butcher Bar
The most straightforward deal in this guide: $19.99 for any meat and any two sides, all day, every day, plus a $21.99 steak special — both advertised on their own homepage. Open seven days, 11:30am to 10 or 11pm, and from 10:30am at weekends, so it covers brunch as well. It is a literal butcher shop as well as a restaurant, and the meat counter is part of the operation. The honest caveat: they publish those two headline prices and then no menu at all — every menu page on their site 404s — so there is no per-pound brisket price to check the combo against. Take the $19.99 and do not go hunting.
butcherbar.com · See our best cheap eats in NYC
Texas brisket
Where the smoke is taken seriously, and what a pound costs. See also best burgers in NYC.
Hometown Bar-B-Que
The best barbecue in New York, and the prices are honest about it: brisket $20 a half pound, turkey $20, pulled pork $17, spare ribs $16, beef rib $40 a pound and sold as a single rib. You queue past the smokers and order at the register where the cutters are working. The honest caveat, twice over. Red Hook has no subway — budget fifteen minutes’ walk from Smith-9th or Carroll Street — and both locations close “or until we sell out”, which on a Saturday afternoon is a real risk. The Industry City branch can be done by 6:30pm Tuesday to Thursday. Closed Mondays. The local move: go early on a weekday and you walk straight up.
hometownbbq.com · See our Carroll Gardens happy hours
Bark Barbecue
Salt and pepper only, which means the meat tastes of beef, salt, black pepper and smoke and nothing is hiding behind sauce — and by most accounts this is one of the juiciest, smokiest briskets in the city. The pitmaster brings Dominican influence to the sides: torta, the Dominican cornbread, with spiced honey syrup, and maduros that people build straight into pulled-pork sandwiches. Started as a roadside stand in Ozone Park before the Bushwick flagship. There is also a stall in Time Out Market in DUMBO with a bridge view. The honest caveat: their own website is JavaScript-only and publishes no prices, hours or menu — you cannot plan a trip from it, and the DUMBO stall keeps market hours rather than its own.
barkbarbecue.com · See our Bushwick happy hours
Izzy’s Brooklyn Smokehouse
A properly certified kosher smokehouse under OK supervision, which makes it the only real option in this guide for anyone keeping kosher — and good enough that plenty of people who do not, go anyway. The menu runs well past Texas: brisket, pulled beef and burnt ends by the half pound, dino ribs, back ribs, lamb ribs, Thai sticky ribs, plus a full taqueria section built on the smoked meats and pulled beef egg rolls. Sandwiches land around $16 to $24 and rib plates around $28 to $36. The honest caveat, and plan around it: closed Friday and Saturday for Shabbat, which removes the two nights most people want barbecue. Its own menu lists no prices.
izzyssmokehouse.com · See our best kosher restaurants in NYC
Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque
The chain option, and it tastes like it: consistent, fine, never thrilling. Counter service, cafeteria style — order, they cut to order, you carry the tray — built around two- and three-meat platters, brisket and pulled pork sandwiches, and burnt ends. Five NYC locations as of August 2026: Battery Park City, West Village, Midtown West, Gowanus and Forest Hills. Note for anyone working from an old list: the East Village and Upper East Side rooms are no longer on the official locations page. The honest caveat: for a five-location operation it publishes no prices anywhere — not on its site, not on its ordering platform — which is a strange thing to make people work for.
mightyquinnsbbq.com · See our West Village happy hours
Ribs, value and the outer boroughs
The best price-to-quality in the city, plus the Bronx and one sidewalk operation. More in best cheap eats in NYC.
Royal Rib House
The best price-to-quality ratio in New York barbecue. Plates run roughly $12 to $18, sandwiches $9 to $13, sides $5 to $7 — and it scores the same on The Infatuation as Hill Country and John Brown, at roughly half the money. An old-school rib house on Malcolm X Boulevard, a block off the A/C at Utica. The local move, straight from Time Out: go on a Thursday afternoon to miss the worst of the wait. The honest caveat: there is no website, no published hours and no phone listing we could verify. Treat it as a neighbourhood walk-up rather than something you book an evening around, and bring cash.
See our Bed-Stuy happy hours
9 Bells BBQ
The best straight value on this page and the biggest commitment: roughly $25 for two meats and two sides, cooked on the sidewalk at Eastern Parkway and Franklin Avenue, right on top of the 2/3/4/5 and the C. Known locally as the Eastern Parkway BBQ Man long before anyone wrote it up as 9 Bells. The honest caveat, and it is not a small one: the wait can stretch past two hours, there are no published hours, and there is no website. This is a weekend-afternoon plan with a book in your bag, not a weeknight dinner. Bring cash and do not count on them still being there at 7pm.
See our Crown Heights happy hours
Hudson Smokehouse
The only Bronx entry here and one of very few serious smokehouses in the borough, on Bruckner Boulevard in Mott Haven — walkable from the 6 at 3rd Avenue-138th and a short hop over the bridge from Harlem. Half-pound meats run roughly $13 to $19, sandwiches $9 to $13, sides $6 to $8. The thing to plan around: beef ribs are a Saturday-only item and they go early. If that is what you came for, it is a Saturday-morning proposition, not an afternoon one. The honest caveat: the official site publishes no menu prices at all, so the only numbers available are third-party. Closed Mondays.
hudsonsmokehousebx.com · See our best cheap eats in NYC
John Brown BBQ
Kansas City, not Texas, and that distinction is the whole point: order the burnt ends, thick with bark and tender inside, and the ribs. Half-pound meats run roughly $13 to $20, sandwiches $9 to $13 and sides $6 to $8, which makes it one of the better value-per-pound plays in Queens. There is a backyard in good weather. The honest caveat, twice: the brisket itself skews a little dry — the burnt ends are where the same meat goes right — and this is an unapologetic Kansas City Chiefs bar, complete with shrines to Mahomes. On a Sunday in season that is either the reason to go or the reason not to.
johnbrownbbq.net · See our best sports bars in NYC
Morgan’s Brooklyn Barbecue
The tourist-priced outlier, and the numbers make the case: fatty or lean brisket is $29.50 a half pound and $49.50 a pound — roughly 25% more than Hometown charges for a better piece of meat. Pulled pork $19.50/$35, pork belly $22/$35, half chicken $20.50, pork ribs $23.95 a half rack. The local move if you are going anyway: the platters are much better value than building a spread by the pound — Holy Trinity $48, Three Pigs $41, smoked chicken $29. What it does have that nothing else in Brooklyn does: noon to 11pm every day of the week. Its homepage advertises “Happy Hour Food” but no happy hour appears on the actual menu, so do not count on one.
morgansbrooklynbarbecue.com · See our Prospect Heights happy hours
Korean BBQ
Kept deliberately short — the full treatment is in our best Korean restaurants in NYC guide.
Cote
Korean barbecue crossed with an American steakhouse, with dry-aged beef grilled at your table. The Butcher’s Feast is $82 a head and covers beef consommé, four cuts including hanger and dry-aged ribeye, banchan, kimchi and doenjang stews, egg soufflé and vanilla soft serve with soy caramel. For four courses of dry-aged beef in Flatiron that is a genuinely good number, and nearly a decade in it is still the no-brainer group dinner. The honest caveat: booking is the whole problem — tables release 30 days out at 10am and sources disagree on whether walk-ins happen at all. Go here instead if you have not planned: Undercote, the cocktail bar downstairs.
Let’s Meat
A hundred minutes of unlimited ordering — marinated hanger steak, pork jowl and spicy marinated chicken are the ones to keep ordering — with all-you-can-eat sundubu-jjigae and spicy rice cakes included. Soju is $15 a bottle and they pour bong towers of beer. It is loud, two floors, and built to absorb a big party on short notice, on Fifth Avenue at the north edge of Koreatown a block from Herald Square. The honest caveat on price: the same publisher lists two different sets of numbers — $46.99 and $52.99 in one place, $39.99 and $45.99 in another. Treat any all-you-can-eat figure as approximate and confirm before you sit down.
See our Koreatown happy hours
NYC barbecue: FAQ
How much does a pound of brisket cost in NYC?
Between $40 and $49.50 at the places that publish it. Hometown Bar-B-Que charges $20 per half pound and Pig Beach charges the same, both working out at $40 a pound. Morgan’s Brooklyn Barbecue is $29.50 per half pound and $49.50 per pound, the highest number in this guide. Several well-known operators, including Bark, Mighty Quinn’s, Izzy’s, Butcher Bar and Hudson Smokehouse, publish no per-pound price at all.
Which NYC barbecue places sell out, and when?
Hometown states ’or until we sell out’ on its own site for both locations, and the Industry City branch can be done as early as 6:30pm Tuesday to Thursday. Morgan’s meats run out Friday through Sunday. Pig Beach’s lamb goes fast. Hudson Smokehouse’s beef ribs are a Saturday-only item and go early. Go before 2pm at weekends if a specific cut matters to you.
Which NYC barbecue restaurants have a happy hour?
Four are verified. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Harlem runs Monday to Friday 4-7pm at the bar with $4 pulled pork sliders, $5 cheeseburger sliders, $6 drafts and $10 cocktails – the only one that publishes every price. Virgil’s Howdy Hour runs Monday to Friday 3-6pm and again 9pm to close, with pints from $5 and all day on Mondays. Pig Beach in Astoria runs Tuesday to Thursday 3-6pm. Hill Country runs $6 well drinks and shot-and-beer combos 4-7pm and 10pm to close, though it does not publish which days.
Which famous NYC barbecue restaurants have closed?
Several that still appear on other lists. Blue Smoke has closed all locations. Fette Sau, Southern Hospitality and Arrogant Swine are gone. Brother Jimmy’s has no NYC locations left – its own site lists only Orlando. Pig Beach’s Gowanus room at 480 Union Street is permanently closed, though Astoria survives, and Mighty Quinn’s East Village and Upper East Side branches are off the official list. Hill Country, contrary to a common assumption, is still trading at 30 W 26th St.
Where is the best value barbecue in NYC?
Royal Rib House in Bed-Stuy, at roughly $12 to $18 a plate and $9 to $13 for sandwiches – it scores as well as rooms charging double. 9 Bells on Eastern Parkway does two meats and two sides for around $25, though the wait can pass two hours. Butcher Bar in Astoria runs a standing $19.99 any-meat-plus-two-sides combo, all day, every day.
Last updated: August 2026. Prices and hours change – confirm with the venue before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
