Lannie’s Bar-B-Q Spot, a Selma institution and one of the oldest barbecue restaurants in Alabama, has been named one of USA Today’s 2025 Restaurants of the Year.

The USA Today list includes 45 restaurants in 27 states — from white-tablecloth restaurants to taco stands and burger joints.

Lannie’s is the only Alabama restaurant on the list, which was compiled by food writers across the USA Today Network.

The USA Today writers chose “restaurants that surprise and delight them, ones that they return to again and again, ones they like to recommend to out-of-towners.”

About Lannie’s, the Montgomery Advertiser’s Marty Roney wrote for USA Today:

For five generations, Lannie’s Bar-B-Q Spot has served customers just across Minter Avenue from where it all started 80 years ago.

Along the way it has weathered storms, both natural and political, and is ready to face the coming decades in a brand-new building. The operators are not the only generational component in this formula of smoked pork and fried fish; burgers and fries. Customers, too, have been coming here for generations.

The fiery red, vinegar-based sauce is just as engrained in the history here as the dark prairie soil that gives the Black Belt region its name.

A part of Selma’s history

The Lannie’s story goes back to 1944, when founders Lannie and Will Travis started barbecuing hogs in a cinder-block pit next to their Minter Avenue home.

Last summer, a year after tearing down their old building, the grandchildren of the founders reopened the family business in a new, larger space that will continue the Lannie’s tradition for years to come.

RELATED: Historic Alabama barbecue restaurant reopening in new building

Tucked away in a historically Black neighborhood in eastern Selma, the family-owned barbecue joint has always been a place where everyone felt welcome, Lula Hatcher, who ran the restaurant after her mother and stepfather died, told AL.com in a 2018 interview.

Even during the turbulent 1960s, when Selma was on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement, Lannie’s was a calm in the storm, she said.

“They wanted the barbecue, so they came and got it,” Ms. Hatcher said. “They were welcome, anybody that came. They were comfortable.”

In 2015, voters in the Alabama Tourism Department’s online Alabama Barbecue Battle chose Lannie’s Bar-B-Q Spot as the winner in the “Legends” category, and that same year, Lannie’s also was one of the inaugural inductees into the state tourism agency’s Alabama Barbecue Hall of Fame.

Also, AL.com featured Lannie’s on its Alabama Barbecue Bucket List in 2021 and, earlier this year, included it among the 12 Alabama restaurants to put on your 2025 calendar.

The Lannie’s menu includes pork plates, ribs, wings, catfish and cheeseburgers, but it is best known for its pulled-pork sandwich, which is doused with a house-made barbecue sauce and topped with crispy barks of pork skin when available.

Lannie’s Bar-B-Q Spot is at 2115 Minter Ave. in Selma, Ala. The phone number is 334-874-4478. For more information, go here.