For barbecue in Inglewood, the most interesting question is not which restaurant earns half a point more on a review site. It is how two branches of one Los Angeles barbecue story ended up feeding generations of people around this city.
Start with Woody’s Bar-B-Que. In a Los Angeles Rams profile, Rodney Phillips explained that his parents started Woody’s in 1975 and that he opened the Inglewood location in 1995 after college. He described its method as cooking over live oak fire in a brick pit rather than using a rotisserie smoker.
That Inglewood location on Market Street makes Woody’s useful for more than a food story. It can be paired with our Market Street guide, turning lunch into a broader look at downtown Inglewood.
Then there is Phillips Bar-B-Que. Current Los Angeles Times coverage describes Phillips and Woody’s as Inglewood branches of Los Angeles’ broader first-family barbecue tradition: Woody’s was founded by Woodrow “Woody” Phillips, while Phillips Bar-B-Que traces to his cousin Foster Phillips. The paper highlights Phillips’ ribs and “small ends,” a cut it says the restaurant helped popularize locally.
Woody’s gives you seating and a Market Street context. Phillips keeps things closer to old-school takeout barbecue. That distinction is more useful than forcing the two into a winner-and-loser format.
SMOKE. SAUCE. MARKET STREET.
Be Inglewood before the first bite and after the last one.
For a first visit to Woody’s, ribs, rib tips, links and sliced beef all fit the classic Los Angeles barbecue vocabulary. Its current official menu lists pork ribs, beef ribs, sliced beef, beef links, chicken links, chicken, rib tips and combinations. The restaurant’s history and live-fire approach are the bigger story, so this is an article where original Be Inglewood photographs of the pit, counter and Market Street exterior could do real SEO and brand work.
At Phillips, the editorial angle is continuity. Los Angeles Times reporting notes that the Inglewood shop became the remaining Phillips location after the Crenshaw outlet closed in 2024. That gives the Centinela shop more weight than simply “another barbecue restaurant near the stadium.”
Event visitors should build either stop into their route rather than treating barbecue as an afterthought. See where to eat near SoFi, where to eat near Kia Forum and where to eat near Intuit Dome for venue-specific planning.
The final advice is the same as with any old-school institution: do not assume yesterday’s hours are today’s hours, especially around major events. Check the restaurant directly before making the trip.
But do make the trip. Inglewood’s barbecue story is not a sidebar to the stadium district. It was already smoking before SoFi opened.
Sources: official venue calendars, the City of Inglewood, the Los Angeles Times and LA28 materials as of September 13, 2026. Dates change; confirm with the venue before you go.
