He’s making a list, and checking it many, many times

No matter how forcefully writers might decry them, lists are inseparable from food writing. Readers want to know where to find the five best burgers, the 10 can’t-miss sandwiches, and the 50 greatest restaurants.

In fact, eaters are so understandably eager for inside information that it’s common for media outlets to cobble together helpful-seeming lists by consulting press releases, ad pages, and other publications.

Just last month, for example, Southern Living’s Best New Restaurants list included Two Fish, a Burmese restaurant in Clarkston, Georgia restaurant which Wendell Brock profiled for The Food Section in January. While it’s possible that the magazine’s contributors dutifully scoped out every immigrant-owned restaurant in greater Atlanta, it seems more likely they followed Brock’s lead when determining top honors. (Congrats, Two Fish!)

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

HANNA RASKIN: Congratulations on the list. Talk about a daunting project! Before we get into the details of how it’s done, maybe the obvious question is: Why do it? What’s the purpose of this list?

DANIEL VAUGHN: It started in 1997 as a way of highlighting this cuisine that wasn’t talked about a whole lot. But people at Texas Monthly were talking a lot about the places they loved, and which one was better. So, they decided to go out and do this statewide list.

It’s only been since I’ve come on that it’s been codified as an every-four-year thing. Now that I can act as a full-time scout for it, it makes sense to put it on a more rigid schedule. I think [that’s] led to it being a well-respected food ranking. It also doesn’t hurt that it is always our bestselling issue, and we get a huge amount of traffic based on it.

RASKIN: Now that you’ve changed how people see barbecue, is this list meant to prop up or advance the genre in some way? Or is it primarily reader service? 

VAUGHN: It’s reader service. The trap that I could easily fall into is ego service. I know a lot of these [restaurant owners], and I constantly check against thinking, ‘How is this person going to feel?’ or ‘How is it going to affect this person financially?’ You have to check it at every turn.

It has to come down to the barbecue, because I can handle angry messages from people who aren’t included or happy about their position on the list. But when I hang my head is when somebody has a really terrible meal—maybe planned their weekend around it or took a long trip to go eat it—based on our endorsement.

RASKIN: As you say, ranked lists are the ultimate in reader service. But it’s incredibly hard for publications to do them and do them well. Can you walk through the steps that this project entails?

VAUGHN: That first step is me just being out there scouting. And by scouting, that means a lot of terrible meals and a lot of great meals and a lot of good meals.

RASKIN: Can I pause you? Just because I know this comes up when I’ve worked for magazines or with the Beard Foundation: Are there criteria for what qualifies for scouting, or is any place a candidate for consideration so long as they’re smoking meat?

VAUGHN: Well, it has to serve on a predictable schedule at a single location. But as far as where I visit, I want to go to as many [places] as I possibly can. I eat at barbecue joints whenever I’m on the road. I’m going down to Austin twice in the next two weeks and it’s like, ‘OK, what can I hit on the way down?’

As far as timing goes, we have a big meeting at the end of August, after the team members have been selected. We limited it to 25 people this time, plus me. Once we had all those people gathered, we ordered some Franklin Barbecue, and we ordered some Rudy’s (a San Antonio-based chain with more than 50 locations), and we had everybody taste.

I had a PowerPoint presentation showing what we’re looking for in great barbecue, and a discussion about the barbecue that was in front of us. We parsed it through each individual characteristic: the tenderness; the juiciness; the flavor; the smokiness.

RASKIN: Are some of those things harder for people who don’t spend their lives eating barbecue the way you do? 

VAUGHN: Well, let me get to the end of this really long answer.

RASKIN: OK, sorry.

VAUGHN: After that, everybody gets a different micro region. It’s usually 12 to 15 different barbecue joints that they are responsible for visiting over the next four months.

They’re scoring on actual paper scoresheets that track individual scores for brisket, pork ribs, sausage, and some poultry item, and then wild cards are in there as well, especially if they don’t serve one of the other items. Also, commentary on sides and sauces and desserts and atmosphere and things that might be interesting to include in a writeup.

At the end of December, those scores are compiled in an Excel spreadsheet. Then I weed out the places that are contenders and revisit as many as I possibly can. And that was 108 [places to visit] from January 1st through March 2nd.

So, that is a very long way of saying that if you opened right at the end of December or in the beginning of January, you’re not going to be considered for the list.

RASKIN: Obviously, there are some places that are going to shine in one area and be faulty in another. Say they make sausage and it’s inedible, but it’s just fun to hang out there. And the pork ribs are good. What happens with those places?

VAUGHN: In years past, those would be our honorable mentions. But these days, if you’ve got two terrible things on the menu, you’re just not mentioned: Barbecue is too good these days.

RASKIN: I know something else that comes up in making lists for awards or publications is the overall mix. Do you aim for diversity of location, history, ownership, and so on?

VAUGHN: We do look at geographic diversity, but we used to have to look at a place and say, ‘Man, well, good thing you’re in El Paso.’ Nowadays, we’ve got a top 10 spot in San Juan in the Valley. We’ve got one in Port Lavaca, of all places. Port Neches: Never would have considered that a barbecue mecca before this go-around.

But we don’t really look at history. The whole point of doing these tastings is: How is the barbecue right now? That’s why there’s always so much turnover on the list, and so many surprises.

Rossler’s Blue Cord Barbecue was one of those spots where I didn’t think they were terrible. They were on our list of best new barbecue joints in 2023, but when I made that list, I was like, ‘Well, probably the last list they’re going to make.’ 

Their score came back, and it was one of [the taster’s] favorites in the whole area. So, I was like, ‘Alright, I’ll go back and check it out.’

I hit them on the worst day. They’re a food truck in the corner of a dental center’s parking lot, and it was cold and windy, and I was in a hurry: I got a tray of barbecue, and I ate through it as fast as I could before the wind took all of the warmth out of it, and it was so good. I was like, ‘You’re doing the best barbecue I’ve ever had from you. This was a good day to have done it.’

RASKIN: But I guess the corollary to that is it could slip again next year. I mean, you’re going to have this list for four years, and I saw one of the places has already closed. 

VAUGHN: Yeah, one of our honorable mentions announced that they were closing on Saturday. I didn’t even have the heart to ask them, ‘Were you holding out to see if you made top 50, or did we really dodge a bullet by not putting you in the top 50?’ 

RASKIN: Let’s talk about all the money that goes into this. In the story, you mentioned the high cost of brisket. And with multiple visits, I imagine we are talking about a huge amount of money…

VAUGHN: $26,000 in reimbursements to our tasters for food, just food. And I don’t know what the travel reimbursement is. I know my expense reports were just ridiculous for three months in a row.

RASKIN: Almost nobody can pull that off. Knowing that, what do you think other media outlets should be doing when it comes to lists?

VAUGHN: But we have all of Texas to cover, and so many other publications out there have just a city or a region to cover. Their expenses are a small fraction of ours.

Some folks on the editorial team were a little hesitant to share how much money we put into this. But anybody who puts this level of work into something needs to share with readers the resources that go into it. Because these days, with every list that comes out, you have to wonder if it’s just an AI aggregation that costs zero money.

People constantly ask us to do this every year, but because of the resources and time required, we’d literally be spending half of our time on the barbecue list, which is ridiculous. But the other thing is that separation of four years allows turnover and a fresh perspective on the barbecue landscape across the state.

To call out my colleague Robert Moss, I think that’s a hindrance in the list that Southern Living puts out. You can see it’s hard to separate that great meal you had there last year from the one that you’re having this year.

RASKIN: I saw someone online saying Texas Monthly found a place in Dallas that D Magazine didn’t know about, which suggests your scouting is top-notch. What is your process for finding places to scout?

VAUGHN: It truly comes down to my giant Google Map and being on Instagram a lot. People know they can reach me there and tell me that they’re open or follow me or comment on my post or whatever, and I’ll find their barbecue joint.

Then I have a giant Google map, and I swear to God, this is the most useful thing I have. I put ’em all on the map because Texas is so big. When I’m going to a particular region, I might not even remember why it’s on that map, but I’ll look at photos; look at their hours; figure out if I can work them in to my route and visit. I don’t think you can do your research in a couple of months leading up to the story.

You could do like me and make the research your life. That’s not always the thing. But I think what you probably recognized in my work long, long ago is that I really love this subject. I’m really into it. If you don’t have somebody who’s really into pizza, maybe a pizza list isn’t the greatest idea. If you’re a food editor, and your dining critic isn’t really into barbecue, maybe a barbecue list isn’t the greatest idea.

RASKIN: Research is huge. But it seems like part of the integrity of this process is you making yourself available to anyone who reaches out to you.

VAUGHN: And we put out a call before the first of September, saying we’re going to be out looking for the top 50. What are your recommendations? And those are recommendations that we consider necessary visits. This was recommended by a reader, and we must go now if we haven’t been.

RASKIN: What else do you think are the hallmarks of this process that might be possible to replicate on a much smaller scale for a much smaller publication?

VAUGHN: It doesn’t need to be a team of 25, but a team of two is a lot better than a team of one—both in the way that readers perceive it and in the process itself. So, try to make sure you get people with differing opinions and talk through things.

RASKIN: I’m sure some places that didn’t make the list probably felt like the process was unfair in some way. What are the procedural complaints you’re hearing?

VAUGHN: One of the complaints I’ve seen is how could we feel like this top 50 is definitive if we’ve only gone to 319 barbecue joints? Well, I went to hundreds [outside of the seven-month period] to not waste our time. I know places in that category would hate to hear me say that, but that’s just the fact of it.

The strange thing about what the top 10 has done to our list is I get more anger from people about not being in the top 10 if they’re in the top 50. People have been more universally gracious for being in the honorable mentions than for being in the 50, but not the 10.

RASKIN: What else should serious list makers out there know?

VAUGHN: Plan out your schedule, and schedule it so you don’t overload yourself at the very end and hate yourself and hate what you’re doing, because that’s going to affect your scores. That’s going to affect your perception too.

I wanted to leave some places I knew had really high potential to the end without making it a whole recency bias problem, but I wanted to have things to look forward to as well. So, there’s that back-and-forth.

Know what your capacity is. Can I eat at three pizza places for lunch, or can I eat at six? I don’t know. I get salt fatigue in my palate. I’ll recognize it and know that I’ve got to take a break. I’ve got to just sit and drink some water and maybe hang out for an hour before I try to go eat anywhere else.

RASKIN: Well, thank you for pressing on, and for spending this time with me. I hope we catch up soon.

VAUGHN: Alright, yeah, good talking.