If you are going to St. Louis and I get wind of it, you’ll be subjected to me enthusiastically telling you that you HAVE TO EAT AT PAPPY’S.

It doesn’t matter if I have known you 5 seconds or 5 years you will have to listen to me tell you everything to order until it is seared in your brain to eat there while in town. Then you will do it and come back and thank me. You’re welcome.

I remember the first time I went to Pappy’s in 2012. I didn’t even live in St Louis anymore. In fact, I had lived in St Louis for six years of my life and never even heard of it. I found it by searching “best BBQ in St. Louis” and decided to take my grandmother and mother for dinner while I was visiting for Christmas. We didn’t go out to eat much when I was a kid and if we did it was typically a chain restaurant, so something hole in the wall like this was exciting for my mom and grandma.

We waited in the half-hour-long line that purposely makes you walk through every person eating in the restaurant, a literal gauntlet of ribs, burnt ends, pulled pork, and brisket. You are primed to order half the menu by the time you get to the front, and you should because everything here is BBQ heaven. We sat down at the table after ordering all the meats and coleslaw, potato salad, and baked beans, and I hadn’t seen a smile like that on my family’s faces in quite some time. Not sure how much of it was the food and how much was just having time to spend with me, but the image of them happily plowing through a plate of perfect ribs will not leave me anytime soon.

I can’t go to St. Louis now without Pappy’s being my first stop from the airport. It just feels like home. I’d wait in that line for even an hour for some pulled pork and burnt ends. I regularly stock up on their BBQ sauces while I’m there, hoarding them in my suitcase like a squirrel stockpiling nuts before winter.  Sometimes I bring extra back and hand them out to friends saying “I’ve got this BBQ sauce, it’s gonna blow your mind.” That’s how you know I love you, if I gift you that sauce.

I know the enthusiasm seems a bit much, but you have no idea how impossible it is to get good BBQ in California where I currently live and how much good BBQ there is in St Louis.

Get the burnt ends, if they haven’t run out by the time you get there. Even the 24-hour burn of the Stonehenge of smokers flanking the restaurant can’t keep up with the carnivorous appetites of the after-church Sunday crowd and will render Pappy’s sold out and closed by 4 p.m. The pulled pork is among some of the best I have had. The ribs are perfection. This Memphis-style BBQ place has somehow become the definition of St Louis BBQ to me and remains one of my favorite places to eat in the US.

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