Oklahoma is no longer home to the world's best barbecue. Well, technically we never were but it's about to be official.
For the past 15 years or so, Oklahoma Joe's BBQ in Kansas City has widely been considered to be one of the premier BBQ joints in the world. It always tops those click bait lists, restaurant guides and Food Network / Travel Channel shows where some annoying dude travels the world stuffing his face with delicious food you'll never get to eat.
Well, the free ride is over. Even though the restaurant was started in Oklahoma, the owners are changing the restaurant's name to reflect its Kansas City home.
Via The Tulsa World:
The popular Oklahoma Joe’s Bar-B-Que in Kansas City will lose Oklahoma in its name by the end of the year.
The Kansas City Star reported Wednesday that the new name will be Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que. Co-owner Jeff Stehney told the newspaper the change will happen by the end of the year.
“It’s not a knock on Oklahoma or the Oklahoma name,” Stehney told the Star. “We are super proud of our Oklahoma beginnings. But it has been 17 years that it has been one hundred percent Kansas City owned. This will better represent the city as one of the top — I think it’s the best — barbecue destinations.”
That's disappointing. Although I always thought it was kind of weird that Kansas City's best barbecue restaurant had Oklahoma in its name, I wasn't going to complain.
Maybe to balance this out, can we get the people who own Billy Simm's BBQ to change their name over to Jamaal Charles Smokehouse or something like that. If Kansas City is going to take our name off the good one, at least help us disassociate with the bad one. Or better yet, just open up a Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que in Oklahoma City. We'll get the Video Vigilante to review it.
Actually, there are a couple of Oklahoma Joe's in Tulsa that are owned by the guy who co-founded the Oklahoma Joe's in Kansas City, but his Oklahoma Joe's doesn't have anything to do with Kansas City Oklahoma Joe's that's about to be Joe's Kansas City BBQ. Got that?
Oklahoma Joe’s was founded in Stillwater as a partnership between Stehney and Joe Don Davidson. Davidson now owns two Oklahoma Joe’s Bar-B-Que restaurants in the Tulsa area.
Stehney now co-owns the Kansas City restaurant with his wife, Joy, who have owned the Kansas City store outright since 1997, according to their website.
The two Oklahoma restaurants — at 333 W. Albany in Broken Arrow and 423 N. Main St., inside Cain’s Ballroom — opened in 2011. The Cain’s Ballroom location serves during lunch and on show nights at the venue.
The Tulsa places aren't bad. In fact they're pretty damn good, but according to some fat people I've talked to, the two places are not really the same when it comes to food quality. It's kind of like comparing the original BBC "Office" to its American counterpart. They have a similar taste and style, but the original British version is far superior. When you boil the American series down to the bone, it's a cheap knock off.
