Serious Eats Declares Lillie's Q Chicago's Best Pulled Pork Sandwich

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jul 1, 2013 4:30PM

The pulled pork at Lillie's Q. Photo by Nick Kindelsperger.

We are so into Serious Eats's best-of posts, we bookmark them in a special folder. Seriously; while our Chicagoist best-of posts are, of course, the greatest on the internet, Serious Eats Chicago picks just one single best in any given category. That takes guts - and statistics - and they have both. This time, they took on pulled pork sandwiches. Who has the best?

After a long discussion of the appropriate criteria for a pulled pork barbecue sandwich (because it wouldn't be Serious Eats without obsessive standards), editor Nick Kindelsperger decided to try out sandwiches at ten of the city's best BBQ joints. These included seven that were on our list of best barbecue places in Chicago, along with three additions that didn't make it.

The winner? The recently-reopened Lillie's Q.

I had a hunch Lillie's Q would come out on top. That explains why I waited to start this feature until the Bucktown restaurant reopened after a serious fire back in March. I just never knew exactly why I loved it so much, beyond the feeling that it was really, really great. But this time I made sure to taste it next to a few others, and doing this comparison finally allowed me to see the difference. While other places have nailed the texture and smokiness, Lillie's Q's pulled pork has a deeper, fattier flavor.

Go check out the numbers and the rest of the results, in case you think another should have taken home the gold. Did Serious Eats miss something amazing? Or do you think they got it right?