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After telling friends I’d enjoyed an excellent pastrami sandwich and a two-meat plate at Memphis Minnie’s, I was met with some suspicious looks. Yes, the quality of barbecue at the long-running Haight Street joint deteriorated sharply before it closed last September. But a former line cook resurrected it earlier this year. “It’s good again,” I insisted to anyone willing to listen. And it is! Still, I could sense the skepticism.

San Francisco has a right to be wary. This city teems with high-quality meat — at luxe steakhouses, smashburger stands, old-school Italian delis, and hard-partying Korean barbecue spots — but saucy, messy, American-style barbecue? Not so much. 

Given the challenge of obtaining a table at House of Prime Rib, it’s clear San Francisco’s lack of slow-smoked meat doesn’t come from a bias against beef. But after talking to some of the city’s best (and only) barbecue masters, I realized we may be doomed to a brisket deficit for the rest of time. 

Admittedly, many solid barbecue spots have shuttered over the years, including CatHead’s in SoMa, Kansas City Barbecue near Oracle Park, and Matt Horn’s much-loved empire in the East Bay. Others, including Bernal Heights’ Baby Blues BBQ, have endured but suffer from middling reputations. As one measure of the Bay Area’s position in the pantheon, Yelp’s annual list of America’s Top 100 (opens in new tab) barbecue spots, which was released last week, included several local KBBQ restaurants but none serving Texas-style brisket or Kansas City pork ribs.

There are structural reasons for this, says Andrew Ghetia, owner-operator of 4505 Burgers & BBQ on Divisadero Street. Owning any restaurant is hard, but barbecue in San Francisco adds a few variables to the equation. For example, you can’t hire just any cook. It takes a long time to accrue the skills required to produce high-volume barbecue properly, creating a chicken-and-egg phenomenon. Ghetia uses this analogy: San Francisco has many pizzerias, so there are many talented pizza-makers. San Francisco has few barbecue spots; therefore, few experienced pitmasters. 

Barbecue also suffers from a perception that it’s more affordable than it is. Ghetia says the wholesale price of beef jumped 20% from March 2025 to March 2026, with another 8% rise expected this year. Brisket fans expect value, but they’re also there for hefty, Instagrammable trays of meat. “There’s nothing to hide behind,” Ghetia says. “A burrito is maybe a quarter pound of protein wrapped in rice and beans, not carnitas on a plate with a cup of salsa and a tortilla on the side.”

Another concern is space, which barbecue requires lots of. It’s not just room to fit the smokers but also the wood necessary to run them. “If we were doing this outside the city, we could back up a truck full of wood once a quarter,” says Ghetia, a native of Oklahoma, where space is far easier to come by. “But we’re getting a quarter cord of hickory every week,” which further increases costs.

Those smokers, by the way, are difficult to source. Whereas the barbecue-heavy South and Southeast have plenty of producers, California’s boutique manufacturers usually have an 18-month waitlist. “It’s not an off-the-shelf item — especially whole-hog cookers,” he says. “I can’t go to Forest Restaurant Supply and find one on an aisle, like a fryer.”

There’s also the issue of the smell. Using two 500-pound smokers kept at approximately 225 degrees, Ghetia’s team cooks up to 1,500 pounds of brisket a week in the summer — to say nothing of ribs, pulled chicken, and hot links. That generates a lot of odor and smoke. Luckily, 4505 is located in a single-story detached building that vents away from its neighbors. Plus, the site has been home to a succession of barbecue joints for decades, so the neighborhood understands. “Popeye’s smells like Popeye’s, the doughnut shop smells like doughnuts, and 4505 — like any good barbecue place — smells like barbecue,” Ghetia says. “We have good juju on Divis.”

Other barbecue pros take the risk of opening in San Francisco only because they have friends in high places. When Fik Saleh was opening Fikscue, his “Indo-Tex” barbecue spot at Chase Center’s Thrive City last year, both the venue and the Golden State Warriors offered assistance with permitting. It helps that the area has relatively little housing; complaints from a neighbor in Alameda forced Saleh to smoke dino ribs off-premises for a period. Would Saleh open another San Francisco location without the aura of a professional sports arena? “Probably not,” he says.

Brisket also takes between 12 and 16 hours to cook. That means restaurateurs can’t fire more on the fly. Expanding requires literal, physical expansion. “I’m not knocking anybody, but this isn’t like a taqueria, right?” says Daniel Ramirez of Smokin’ D’s BBQ on Irving Street in the Sunset. “And we make it to sell out.”

He uses a custom-built smoker from the aptly named Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas. (He won’t disclose what he paid for it, other than that it was “in the tens of thousands of dollars.”) He uses a commissary kitchen for prep. He’s gearing up to open a second location on Clement Street in the Richmond, which, besides allowing him to consolidate operations, means more brisket grilled cheese sandwiches. 

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It also presents the same risk that deters Saleh from opening additional restaurants. Smokin’ D’s has a good relationship with its neighbors on Irving, but Ramirez is concerned that his two-story, 7,000-square-foot second location — almost four times the original’s size — may not be to all tastes in the tonier Richmond. “I’m a little worried about Clement,” he says. “They don’t know us yet.” 

City regulators, at least, aren’t standing in the way, several barbecue pros agreed. Department of Building Inspection spokesperson Patrick Hannan says property owners who construct barbecue pits or cooking facilities will likely need a building permit for the construction work. But his department doesn’t regulate smoke and emissions — just vents and hoods. “That falls under the Department of Public Health, or the Bay Area Air District or the Cal Air Resources Board.”

Ghetia says that in his experience, the Department of Public Health wants everything in a neat bucket, requiring an extensive back-and-forth about how exactly to categorize a smoker. “You have to explain that it’s like an oven, but different,” he says, recalling a conversation. “‘Like a wood-fired oven?’ ‘Not quite, but closer.’ ‘What if we called it a rotisserie?’ ‘OK.’” Still, he’s never had an issue with compliance.

The Department of Public Health declined to comment. So I put the question directly to Ralph Borrmann of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, who said the agency distinguishes between commercial cooking (which is considered essential) and residential wood-burning (nonessential, and the real culprit as a smog contributor). “There are no restrictions on restaurant smokers in our regulations,” Borrmann says.

There is an exception: Chain-driven charbroilers cooking 400-plus pounds of beef per week, of the kind found in some fast-food restaurants, must register annually. Curiously, chain-driven charbroilers are what Santa Maria barbecue — California’s only homegrown style — is prepared on.

So, if San Francisco’s air-quality monitors have all but erected a “keep out” sign aimed at the smoky, garlicky Central Coast, then maybe barbecue just isn’t meant to be part of this city’s culinary soul the way It’s-It, Fernet, or cioppino are. Even its champions seem to have little regard for their competition. “San Francisco has a lot of good other cuisines,” Ramirez says. “But to be honest with you, when I’m in San Francisco, the last thing I want to eat is barbecue.”