All You Need To Know About Southern Smoke 2017

We now have the deets for this year’s Southern Smoke — likely Houston’s most thrilling charitable barbecue smorgasbord. This year’s event is happening October 22, and again event founder Chris Shepard is turning his restaurants Underbelly, Hay Merchant and Blacksmith into huge street party.

The goal of the event is to raise cash for the MS Society — $300K is the goal for this year’s bash. Tickets — $200 for general admission, $350 for the VIP treatment — go on sale August 7th at noon, so mark those calendars.

Fans of the event won’t be surprised to see that year’s line-up includes Southern Smoke favorite Aaron Franklin (the Austin-based multi-hyphenate who won the Best Chef Southwest James Beard award in 2015.) In addition to chefs from the HOUBBQ Collective, the 2017 roster is filled out with folks from further flung places — repping Charleston, South Carolina are Mike Lata, Rodney Scott, Jason Stanhope; Ashley Christensen hails from Raleigh, North Carolina. Also joining this year’s line-up is NOLA’s own John Besh.

There’s more news from the Southern Smoke crew: come 2018, the event will be twice yearly, with a spring event that promises to be a bit more intimate — think chef’s table dinners happening in private homes. Dates and more info on the spring happenings to come.