Best Barbecue Joint In FL 2025 Grills 'Hot And Fast': Southern Living

TAMPA, FL — Southern barbecue lovers have named the regional "kings of the grill."

The readers of Southern Living have voted Big John's Alabama BBQ in Tampa as Florida's 2025 Best Barbecue Joint, the magazine announced this month.

Southern Living hosted a survey that included at least 10,000 voters making their selections from July 10-Aug. 21 last year.

Being served a taste of victory, Big John's was named among 16 of the South's best barbecue eateries that were decided by readers. This year marks the second consecutive that the longtime Tampa restaurant earned a spot on the regional list.

"The results have been fairly consistent in recent few years, with a familiar cast of old favorites tending to bubble to the top. There are always a few surprises in the mix, though, and the top picks for 2025 are quite reflective of the current state of barbecue in the South," Southern Living writer Robert F. Moss wrote in his report.

"For starters, there’s a blend of old and new. Roughly half the joints in this year’s list are more than 50 years old, and the other half were founded in the 21st century. Only one opened during the fallow years of the 1980s and '90s."

Big John's made a home in East Tampa in 1968, according to the restaurant website. It was founded by the late Rev. John A "Big John" Stephens, who died in 1994. The eatery has since been nominated for Best Barbecue Restaurant at multifaceted comedian-actor Steve Harvey's Hoodie Awards, according to the restaurant website.

Its menu boasts macaroni salad, chicken, ribs, sausage, center cut sandwiches, cole slaw, potato salad, corn, collard greens and various desserts.

See what Southern Living says about Big John's Alabama BBQ:

"As Florida boomed as a tourist destination in the decades after World War II, migrating entrepreneurs brought barbecue styes from around the South down to the Sunshine State. Among them was the Rev. John A. Stephens, who moved to East Tampa from Eufaula, Alabama, and opened Big John’s in 1968. Today the restaurant is run by Stephens’s grandchildren, and it still features outstanding chicken, sausage and ribs cooked hot and fast over blazing wood on an Alabama-style open brick pit."

Big John's Alabama BBQ: 5707 N. 40th St.; (813) 623-3600

See Southern Living's full ranking online.