Flickr/alenlin

Lindy and Grundy

Where's the beef? It's at these Los Angeles meat shops, which will most certainly be bustling in preparation for this weekend.

We've outlined a few recommandations for what to get a several of the city's most respected butchers -- locally sourced, organic, all that good business -- but we also name-dropped a few off-the-path places you might not of tried yet.

As Homer Simpson once said, "All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat?' I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad."

Just kidding vegan friends, we made enough gazpacho for everyone. Turn the page for 6 great Los Angeles butcher shops, listed alphabetically.

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djjewelz/Flickr

Pulled Pork at Bigmista's B.B.Q.

This weekend, you can haul out that backyard grill -- if it's not out already -- and join in on the great American tradition of grilling meat and vegetables (but mostly meat) to welcome the long days of summer. If, however, you have neither a backyard nor a grill, you can participate in another great American tradition of finding someone else do the work for you. Or most of it, anyway. Our list of the best BBQ and Korean BBQ joints in town should help, as should this flowchart that will lead you to just the right amount of smoke and meat to satisfy your cravings. Weber or not, great barbecue can be found right in your own backyard.

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Anne Fishbein

The Spice Table's beef rendang

Barbecue and beer. A pretty ordinary combination -- except when the chef adds coconut, or a dash of fish sauce. The Spice Table is partnering with the Bruery to offer a prix-fixe dinner May 23 at $75 per person. The Singapore-inspired restaurant will serve eight dishes, each accompanied by select beers from the Bruery. Hot links, char siu spareribs and collard greens could all be on the menu. Also Brussels sprouts garnished with fish sauce, potato rolls topped with coconut and sea salt, cornbread served with pork, dried shrimp and lap chong (Chinese sausage), and baked beans mixed with palm sugar and lamb bacon. For dessert, an apple crumble. No word yet on the drinks planned from the Bruery, but we have reason to believe the craft brewer will bring more-than-decent choices.

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ProfessorSalt.com

Pork shoulder presented three ways, competition-style

Legit barbecue contests like the ones you see on TV don't happen much in Los Angeles. Did you make it to the contest at Santa Anita Park we told you about? No? Well, the inaugural West Coast BBQ Classic drops anchor this weekend at the Queen Mary Events Park in Long Beach, and it is the last sanctioned contest scheduled this year in L.A. County. You will have to travel to Orange County if you want to attend any others remotely nearby for the rest of 2012.

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Javier Cabral

Pork Ribs

If you happened to be the kind of guy who takes his pair of Stacey Adams for a weekly polish at Chambers Shine Parlor and Shoe Repair -- proudly serving South Central since 1955 -- you may have noticed a change in atmosphere recently, an intoxicating plume of meaty smoke wafting from the space next door, a tiny storefront with the name Randolph's Smoke House neatly painted across its front window.

In fact, if you were curious enough to peer through a screen door that separates the smokehouse kitchen from the shoe parlor, you might see Randolph himself, clad in a soot-smeared apron, feeding the fires of his monstrous barbecue smoker with thick logs of hickory. You might even be lucky enough to gaze in as he swings open the wide, steel doors of the smoker to reveal a dozen thick slabs of pork ribs glistening in the hazy abyss.

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Anne Fishbein

grilled pork belly at Palsaik Samgyeopsal

Los Angeles' Koreatown probably doesn't need another BBQ place -- well, at least not another Korean one. There seems to be a restaurant with tabletop grills in every plaza, strip mall and food court, cannibalizing another one's business two doors down or across the street. Let's be blunt: Entrepreneurial first-generation Koreans are noted more for their work ethic and competitive streak than for their originality. Still, we love Korean BBQ and can't complain about having so many specialty restaurants to choose from. Turn the page for our picks for the 10 best Korean BBQ places in town.

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Anne Fishbein

Mama Leah's Coconut Beef

Johneric Concordia, a former community organizer who now runs The Park's Finest BBQ with his family in Historic Filipinotown, likes to tell his customers how he and his family got started behind the grill. "This was a rough neighborhood, in the '80s, '90s. BBQ kept us out of trouble. It saved our lives," he says. "Because you don't shoot the DJ, and you don't shoot the BBQ guy."

And thus is The Park's Finest, which is not to be confused with The Park, a homey little bistro in Echo Park, or Park's BBQ, the Korean BBQ restaurant in Koreatown. The name, rather, is a riff on The World's Finest, Concordia's favorite comic book store as a kid. (At Glendale Boulevard and Park Avenue, it was "less than a mile and five gangs away from our house," he says.) The family's Filipino-style BBQ was, the family joke goes, the best in the park -- the neighborhood one, or Echo, or Cypress, or Highland, or Elysian -- and so the name stuck.

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Screenshot of Bobby Flay's Twitter page

Anne Fishbein

Inside Smoke City Market's Smoker

It seems hardly a 12-hour smoke has gone by since the days when polling around for the 5 Best Barbecue Joints in L.A. inevitably elicited those, "Well, if you have to eat barbecue in L.A.," and similar asterisk-studded brisket conversations that ended in buying a side firebox smoker (literally). We're still dreaming of those two-day road trips to Lockhart, but today there are enough good BBQ restaurants in the L.A. area to make a solid showing in Lynchburg. In fact, one of our top picks did the competition circuit for several years before debuting his fantastically blackened slabs of meat to the organic produce-toting farmers market crowd a few years ago. Gotta love L.A.

And while we have nothing against our longstanding citified barbecue joints, or gastropubs that also happen to smoke some 'cue, and we certainly love any new barbecue-centric food truck (Mobile smoked meat!), those that follow are the places we'd be confident taking friends visiting from Texas, no rationalization required. The sort of tunnel-vision establishments that make no excuses for the occasional overdressed coleslaw and unmistakable Velveeta-tinted mac & cheese. These are not great places to have a beer, nor are they great places to linger for hours. In this old school-inspired smokers' club, it's all about the meat.

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ProfessorSalt.com

BBQ beef brisket, contest-style

A barbecue contest and a horse race in Los Angeles, of all places? We've seen a rodeo and BBQ competition before, but this combination is a new one for us. The Santa Anita racetrack is hosting both the San Felipe Stakes and the Winners Circle BBQ Championships on March 10. While the horses run at this tuneup for the Kentucky Derby, top West Coast BBQ teams will battle for the California State Championship title and $10,000 in cash prizes.

This is one of only two sanctioned barbecue contests scheduled within L.A. County this year. The public is invited to sample their way through the competitors' tents, and cast a vote in the People's Choice contest. The reigning California Team of the Year, Harry Soo's Slap Yo' Daddy BBQ, will be among the famous teams cooking on the infield of the racetrack. Full disclosure: This writer will be among the certified BBQ judges blind-tasting the entries.

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