Now Open in Kansas City: The World’s First Barbecue Museum Offers a Sensory Delight

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Jump in the bean-themed ball pit, solve a pork puzzle and pose with a championship mustard belt at the new Museum of BBQ

Sarah Kuta – Daily Correspondent

April 18, 2025 10:18 a.m.

Barbecue, a celebrated cornerstone of American culinary heritage, is now the focus of the newly opened Museum of BBQ in Kansas City, Missouri. Officially inaugurated on April 12, this innovative venue showcases the rich traditions associated with smoked meats and accompanying sides.

Announced in the previous fall, the museum features ten engaging installations aimed at enlightening visitors on the history and cultural importance of barbecue. Attendees can interact with various exhibits, including a sampling of five types of wood commonly used in smoking meats and a sensory experience where they can smell traditional barbecue spices and engage in a ring toss game that explains the formation of the “smoke ring” in meats during cooking.

Designed with families in mind, the museum offers a playful ball pit, containing 8,000 brownish orbs that cleverly represent barbecued beans, as noted by Kansas City Star’s Tammy Ljungblad.

Hands-on exhibits continue with a pork-themed puzzle and a unique sauce room featuring squishy floor tiles inspired by different barbecue sauces. The museum entrance mimics the facade of a commercial smoker, welcoming visitors with an authentic barbecue atmosphere.

A significant portion of the museum is dedicated to exploring the diverse barbecue styles across four notable American regions: the Carolinas, Texas, Memphis, and Kansas City. Each segment emphasizes the distinctive customs and traditions tied to its local barbecue practices.

Interactive fun extends beyond exhibits into the photo opportunities available, such as posing with a championship mustard belt that pays homage to the popular mustard-based sauces of South Carolina. Visitors can also find humor in “rib ticklers,” a collection of barbecue-themed dad jokes.

For those looking to take a piece of the experience home, the museum offers an extensive gift shop stocked with a variety of barbecue-inspired merchandise, including sauces, rubs, and spices, along with other memorabilia.

Spanning about 4,000 square feet, the museum bursts with vibrant murals that enhance the interactive nature of the exhibits.

The concept for the Museum of BBQ was developed by Jonathan Bender, a food writer and barbecue judge who dedicated over six years to bringing this vision to life. He partnered with Alex Pope, a local butcher and chef who co-owns the whole animal butcher shop Local Pig.

For Bender, barbecue embodies community spirit. He shares, “One of the things I love about barbecue is that you’re going to tell me your favorite place and I’m going to tell you my favorite place. We can argue or banter back and forth, but we’ll still sit down and have the meal together afterwards, which feels great.”

Bender contends that Kansas City, home to over 100 barbecue restaurants and hosting numerous barbecue competitions such as the World Series of Barbecue, is the ideal location for the world’s first barbecue museum. The city is also home to the renowned Barbecue Hall of Fame.

The history of Kansas City barbecue traces back to the early 1900s with the introduction by a Black chef named Henry Perry, who gained fame for cooking meat in a brick-lined pit after migrating from Memphis. Known as the “Barbecue King,” Perry laid the groundwork for what would become a long-standing culinary tradition in the area.

“Barbecue and Kansas City have been inexorably linked for more than a century,” Bender articulates, reinforcing the strong connection between the city and this beloved cuisine. “It’s a true melting pot of barbecue. When we thought of where to put the museum, no other place in the world made sense.”

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www.smithsonianmag.com