(FORTUNE Magazine) – Even if you're among the best in the business, launching a new product isn't easy. Here the business is restaurants--where by some estimates 80% fail or change hands within two years of opening. The boss is Danny Meyer, who runs Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern--New York City's two most popular spots, according to food bible Zagat Survey. And the product is Blue Smoke, a Manhattan barbecue joint that opened in March after three years of planning, 62,044 miles of research, tons of anxiety, and transplantation of a few best practices. Meyer's mantra, "enlightened hospitality," may sound like hogwash. But it is the ingredient that has made him his industry's role model. "Hospitality," he says, "is the degree to which you feel we're on your side."

In search of the world's best barbecue, Meyer and his team trekked to metal-sided shacks and hole-in-the-wall shrines around Memphis, Kansas City, and Austin's hill country--though in Texas, mind you, "they don't consider pork real meat," says Michael Romano, Meyer's business partner and Union Square Cafe's executive chef. At Cooper's in Llano, Texas (above), locals chow down on beef that is charred in billowing open pits (inset middle). At Salt Lick in Driftwood, Texas, Romano discovered the "best coleslaw" in the state. On to Murphysboro, in southern Illinois, where Romano (inset right, on the left) and Blue Smoke's executive chef, Kenny Callaghan (far right), got lessons from Murphysboro's Mike Mills (center), the three-time Grand World Champion of the Memphis in May BBQ Cooking Contest. Mills' BBQ advice: "Low, slow, and steady." Callaghan gained 20 pounds on R&D duty.

After engineering glitches, a tough time installing custom-made rotisserie smokers, and cost overruns (final tab: nearly $4 million), Meyer scrambled to make the March 19 opening. That night the computers crashed. The water heater broke. The fire alarm blared. As the affable Meyer (above left) fanned off firemen ("Sorry, guys--false alarm"), Blue Smoke managing partner David Swinghamer placated such diners as Tom Brokaw and writer Calvin Trillin, who waited 30 minutes-plus to get drinks. Still, almost everyone agreed the grub was worth the wait. Now the pros are fixing service and shaving prices. So this is life at the top? Meyer laments, "I never feel like I'm at the top."