Federalist Pig (Photo by Kate Stoltzfus)

Much like the Season 4 premiere of Friday Night Lights, when a much bigger, more established high school football team totally clobbered Coach Taylor’s ramshackle team, Texas Monthly this summer came to D.C. and pretty much slammed our barbecue scene.

We have Post food writer Tim Carman to blame for this audit of the city’s ‘cue offerings. Let’s back up: Last year, in his annual ranking of the D.C. area’s best barbecue, Carman compared his first-place pick, Hill Country BBQ, to Franklin’s Barbecue in Austin, considered one of the best barbecue spots in a state that practically sweats barbecue sauce. “The brisket [at Hill Country] is as good or better than Franklin’s,” Carman wrote. It’d be like if the Cleveland Plain Dealer said “You know, the A Christmas Story House and Museum is just as good, if not better, than the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.” Imagine the DCist headlines!

According to Carman, every single person with a Texas address wrote him a nasty email about his assertion. And a year later, Texas Monthly’s barbecue editor, Daniel Vaughn tagged along on Carman’s tour of D.C. barbecue options, presumably to see if Carman was on to something. In his resulting story, published Monday, he systematically finds fault with most of our barbecue options, save for Adams Morgan’s Federalist Pig.

Vaughn is, essentially, a barbecue expert—his Instagram handle is @bbqsnob, for god’s sake. In addition to having been the magazine’s BBQ editor for the past five years, he’s penned a comprehensive guide to the state’s ‘cue, The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue.

In addition to testing out and thoughtfully rejecting most of our region’s restaurants, including DCity Smokehouse (“too dried out for any barbecue sauce to save”), America Eats Tavern (of a vegetarian barbecue sandwich: “the slimy mushrooms that didn’t squish out of the bun and onto the plate were overwhelmed by a sauce that was both too salty and sweet”), and Texas Jack’s Barbecue (“Out of mercy or laziness, I didn’t even bother to post a photo of the thin, dry ribs”), he finds barbecue nirvana at Federalist Pig. He deemed the wings “spectacular,” the sausage “juicy,” and the smoky burnt brisket ends preferable to the sliced meat.

He saved his most lyrical praise for the ribs:

What nearly did me in were the ribs. I couldn’t stop. Each tender bite demanded another. The smoky bark glistened with a sweet glaze slathered over a black pepper rub. They were the best bite at the best barbecue joint I tried that day.

Vaughn is hardly the first to praise Federalist Pig: The Adams Morgan restaurant from pitmaster Rob Sonderman, formerly of DCity Smokehouse, has made it on Carman’s best barbecue list both years it’s been open, and Washingtonian has also named it one of the city’s best. Our own Kate Stoltzfus called the brisket “so tender it falls off the bone.”

And what of Hill Country, the downtown restaurant that started this whole thing? Vaughn writes that on their visit, they were served less-than-fresh brisket, which he did not deem worthy of Carman’s earlier praise. “I had just one serving of Hill Country BBQ brisket on one day in D.C., but I’ve had better at Franklin Barbecue every single time I’ve eaten there,” he wrote.

Even his inspired experience at Federalist Pig wasn’t enough to prove to him that D.C. is a barbecue town: “Little of the barbecue I ate in D.C. would warrant a return visit, and I was glad to get back to Texas.”