Atlanta’s Best New Restaurants 2017

B’s Cracklin’ Barbeque

Photograph by Johnny Autry

Barbecue is a regional game. A Carolina pitmaster, for example, would no sooner slather his meat in red sauce than open a vegan restaurant. But Bryan Furman, a former welder, is beholden to no style but his own. “Even if I show you how to do it, you’re not going to be able to do it like me,” he says, winking. When he opened the original B’s in Savannah in October 2014, Furman was one of the first to bring heritage pork to the barbecue world; he currently raises six breeds of pigs, Duroc and Chester White among them, in Statesboro pastures.

Photograph by Johnny Autry

On the table (“sauce is supposed to be a condiment, not part of the cooking”), Furman offers a red sauce, a North Carolina–style vinegar sauce, and—inspired by South Carolina with a nod to Georgia—a mustard and peach sauce. Sides are no afterthought: Collard greens taste like collard greens, not fat and salt; slow-simmered pork hash is the most comforting of comfort foods, an umami-rich gravy on top of steaming rice; and instead of cornbread, you’ll find lacy-edged crackling hoecakes. Furman opened the Atlanta location just one year ago, but its V-ceilinged dining room, fragrant with smoke, already feels like an heirloom. Georgia doesn’t need its own famous style of barbecue; we’ve got Bryan Furman.

Illustration by Valero Doval

Must-order: Ribs
Furman cooks the pork over hickory and cherry coals. What ends up at your table is a meat that pulls cleanly off the bone, and every bite of it—every morsel, even—has been suffused with smoke.

2061 Main Street, 470-765-6966