Barbecue Quest

Kansas City- Booked

2010-12-22T20:37:00.000-08:00

My New Year's Resolution: complete the bbq tour. With that in mind, I've booked a trip to KC for the last weekend in January. Going to try and fit in at least 6, maybe 7 places in under 48 hours. Any suggestions? I'm thinking Bryant's, Gates, LC's, Oklahoma Joe's and a couple others.

After that, I'm hoping to do South Carolina and Kentucky, with a trip to 17th St in Illinois.

Cheers!

BBQ Tour Magic

2010-06-18T18:10:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago I set out on a two week bbq tour across the country. If you recall (and I imagine those without my last name don't), there were some non-bbq adventures, the highlight of which was a night at the Broken Spoke in Austin, TX.

Click here for a refresher course.

I'm excited to announce that tonight, JP put on the big boy pants and popped the question. Congrats JP!

I'm thinking a bbq tour of Kansas City might be a fitting bachelor party?

Flood in Middle, TN- Part Two

2010-05-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

What would you do if you came home one day to find 8 strangers removing everything you owned from your home?

That happened today to a 55 year old woman who lives in a forgotten part of East Nashville. I know because I was one of the people moving her stuff out of her house.

In this case, the woman erupted in an understandable fit of anger. Someone from FEMA had told her not to touch anything in her apartment until they had inspected it. She came home to find that her landlord had gathered a group of volunteers and was moving everything out into her side yard.

The fact that the landlord had to get the carpet up in order to avoid mold ruining his property was of little consequence. This woman had just lost everything she owned and here we were wrecking her only hope to get her life back together. She yelled at us to stop and put everything back. For a moment we did, though we knew we had to keep going.

Soon she and the landlord got into it. The landlord’s plight that he had to save his property fell on deaf ears. When you’ve just lost everything you own, empathy isn’t an emotion that’s in your tool kit.

Then her daughter showed up and things got even more intense. The daughter didn’t see us as volunteers trying to help. She saw strangers ruining her mother’s life. She absolutely lost it…screaming irrationally at the top of her lungs. It was the kind of raw emotion that scares you…the kind where the person has clearly lost control of herself. For a moment, I thought that things might get violent.

The daughter’s outburst seemed to have a calming effect on the mother, which allowed her to understand and accept that one of the relief coordinators received approval from FEMA to remove the possessions as long as the damage was documented.

The back story is that the landlord had already taken pictures and tried to get in touch with the woman before we entered to inform her of what we were doing. I’m not sure where the breakdown in communication was, but the bottom line was that if the carpet didn’t come up, he stood no chance of stopping the mold before it ruined the whole place.

A few minutes later, the woman came back into her house. She understood the situation and asked us to promise to put all of her things back. Visibly shaken, her anger soon turned to tears.

Watching the woman break down, the reality of the situation hit me. When you can drive home from the cleanup site to a clean house with a fridge full of food, it’s hard to really walk a mile in the victims’ shoes. But when you see a person who’s lost their home break down in front of you and sob uncontrollably, you start to gain a little perspective on the emotional toll this disaster is taking. With every “I lost everything” and “I don’t know what I’m going to do”, you start to understand the pain these victims are going through.

You realize that long after the amazing community outreach efforts have subsided, there will be thousands of Middle Tennesseans still trying to pick up the pieces and put their lives back together.

You hope that they can.

Flood in Middle, TN- Part One

2010-05-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted to this site in a while, and unfortunately this post isn't going to be about BBQ. I've spent some time in the areas hit hardest by the flood in Middle, TN and am going to post a couple of stories about my experience.

I spent the first two days of the flood relatively oblivious to the devastation. My neighborhood flooded a little bit, but within 12 hours everything was back to normal. A day later it was warm and sunny. Pretty much business as usual.

On Wednesday after the flooding, I went to lunch with a couple friends, still pretty unaware of the extent of the damage. Sure I knew people whose house had been flooded, but it didn’t really hit me until later that afternoon what that really meant. It wasn’t until I pulled off the interstate in Bellevue that I saw one of the areas hit by the flood that I finally got it.

It’s hard to describe what it looks like. No matter what I write, I can’t do it justice. Unless you watch TV on an iMax, you can’t imagine the scope of it. Devastation everywhere. Utter and complete ruin.

Imagine taking everything you own, trashing it, and then throwing it out in your front yard. I’m talking everything from your couch and toilet down to your salt and pepper shakers. Then rip up the

floors, tear out the drywall and throw that out there too. That’s what it looked like when I drove out to my friend’s house.

Every worldly possession the flood victims owned was sitting in a dripping mess by the road. Five to six feet high, and twenty to thirty feet deep. All across the front yard. Photo albums, tax documents and baby toys sat amongst dripping piles of insulation and drywall. A lifetime of memories laying in ruin. House after house after house. Destroyed.

A friend from elementary school was one of the victims. She, her husband and their kids barely made it out of their house before the water hit. In their garage sits a now-brown mini-van. There’s a layer of filthy sludge over all of it from where it was submerged. The two car seats in the back make for a pretty chilling image. Inside their house, volunteers are purposefully destroying the walls and floors. Everything wet must go. Somehow, my friend and her husband both manage to smile as they greet their frien

ds coming to help.

Across the street, another victim looked at his home, his life’s work, now in shambles. He’d just paid off the house after thirty years. Now it was gone. Like most victims living outside the flood plain, he doesn’t have flood insurance. This would be a devastating blow to anyone at anytime, but after the financial meltdown of the past two years, it’s crippling. He said that if his wife and kids weren’t with him yesterday, he probably would have shot himself. He wasn’t speaking metaphorically.

A couple miles southeast, a drive through River Plantation will literally take your breath away. If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s a very densely populated group of townhomes and houses that stretches for well over a mile. Almost every home on one side of the road is now vacant, the streets littered with devastation. Were the frames of the houses not still standing, you could easily think you’d driven into the city dump.

Just down the street is a house one of my high school friend’s grew up in. My friend woke his folks up early Sunday asking if they were all right. His mom got up, looked out the window and screamed no. In less than an hour, they were in waste deep water in their front yard. That same morning, another of my friends who lives just a few doors down launched his hunting boat in the street and helped rescue his neighbors off of their roofs.

This type of thing isn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Middle TN.

In the course of two days, the hopes and dreams of thousands of friends, neighbors and fellow Tennesseans have been destroyed.

Now, we’re all left to pick up the pieces and move forward.

The initial outpouring of volunteer efforts has been overwhelming. A FEMA rep said that that he’d never seen a community respond the way we have. Countless community groups, churches, businesses and individuals have acted swiftly and selflessly to help those in need.

In the first two weeks, we’ve shown the kind of community spirit that makes Nashville a place we’re all proud to call home. Now the real work of rebuilding begins, and we’ll need even more of that spirit in the weeks ahead.

BBQ Blogs to Check Out

2009-10-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've posted a couple of good barbecue blogs to the left side that you might want to check out. The first is called 3rd Degree BBQ by Andrew Bernstein. The other is called Full Custom Gospel BBQ by Daniel Vaughn. Both are worth checking out and offer some great spots to eat all over the U.S.

I'm off to Martin's Barbecue Joint in Nolensville this afternoon.

Music City BBQ Festival

2009-10-11T08:00:00.001-07:00

24 slabs of ribs, 40 lbs of pork shoulder, six whole ducks and one ridiculously good time. That was the final tally for our teams at the first annual Music City BBQ Festival in downtown Nashville.

Part college reunion and part bbq competition, the weekend turned out to be a first class sh&t show. And I mean that in a good way. We entered two teams, Nice Racks and Marr-B-Q, in the backyard division. My friend Andy Moats and I captained Nice Racks, while Adam and Aaron Marr were at the helm of Marr-B-Q. Dave Morris played Switzerland.

The pre-event emails might as well have had “VEGAS” in the subject line. The gloves were off from the opening salvo when it was suggested that Nice Racks needed to be called Nice “rhymes with rocks”. A Zima reference soon followed and it was downhill from there.

In order to do the weekend justice, I’m going to try my best to recount it chronologically.

Wednesday

2:52 PM- Andy sends email with subject line: “Nice Racks gets mention in Tennessean” with a link to the article

4:33 PM- The Marrs respond with a claim that the Metromix is a social website for metrosexuals. More Zima references.

7:00 PM- Andy and I drive to his family’s Golden Rule BBQ restaurant in Clarksville, TN to pick up supplies (the original Golden Rule is in Birmingham).

Thursday

12:30 PM- Andy and I blow up the inflatable pig in the driveway. The last time I was that excited for a giant toy was when my grandparents pulled up on Christmas morning with beanbag chairs and the Cobra Rattler plane.

2:30 PM- After a grocery run and loading the trailer with smoker, chairs, coolers and astro-turf (a touch of class), we arrive at the site. The location was awesome. Downtown Nashville on 1st Ave, stumbling distance from Broadway and the honky tonks.

3:00 PM- The Marrs leave Atlanta.

3:01 PM- the first sh%t talking text is sent. This would continue for the entire drive.

4:00 PM- The LA Grillers arrive next to us. A father, son, grandfather/father-in-law team, these guys were a wonderful addition to our weekend. The LA stood for Lower Antioch, and they would turn out to be everything you could hope for in a competition neighbor.

6:30 PM- The Marrs arrive and the first beer of the long weekend is cracked. Aaron has a fantastic ‘stach for the weekend. His wife is less than thrilled.

8:00 PM- Adam realizes his truck is dead.
8:15 PM- Adam gets a jump from the LA Grillers.
8:16 PM- Adam closes the door with the truck running.
8:16:01 PM- Adam locks his keys in his truck.
8:16:10 PM- I fall on the ground laughing with tears in my eyes.
8:16:11 PM- Adam is not amused

8:30ish PM- Cops show up to help open the car. With a slim jim in the door and a cop working to open it, a lady walks up to Adam and asks “y’all lock your keys in the car”. Adam approaches meltdown. Luckily the future Darwin winner walked away before things got ugly.

8:45 PM- I pick up a 1/6 barrel keg of Blackstone’s porter. Quite possibly the best beer you’ll put in your mouth (if you like porter). Thanks to Kent for providing Nice Racks with good beer.

9:00 PM- Prep ribs a little bit and sit on the back deck until way too late in the evening.

Friday

8:00 AM- I awaken the Marr brothers to a triumphant yell and a suggestion of what they can do to themselves after finding the bbq festival story mentioning Nice Racks on the front page of the Tennessean weekend section. They don't share my excitment.

9:00 AM- A potential showstopper occurs as Aaron and I drop the Marr’s glass jar of secret rub while loading the trailer.

9:15 AM- Adam makes up a rub from my spices from memory. Crisis averted.

10:00 AM- We arrive at the site and decide that in the spirit of friendship, we will merge Nice Racks and Marr-B-Q into one team with two entries, splitting any prize money and avoiding situations like you see at the YMCA where grown men in jerseys scream at each other during pickup basketball games. We vow to focus our sh$t talking on the LA Grillers.

10:01 AM- First beers. At this point Marr-B-Q “gears up”…t-shirts, head bands, sweat bands and aprons. Nice Racks makes mental notes for next year.

10:02 AM- Start charcoal chimney to get fire going. Nice Racks is using a 10-year-old Oklahoma Joe’s smoker with a firebox on the side and Marr-B-Q is using a Weber charcoal grill. The LA Grillers are using a Green Egg. Cheaters.

The fun (and sometimes frustrating) part about barbecue is that you are responsible for every part of the process. Unlike cooking in an oven where you punch in a temperature and just worry about prepping the food, with barbecue you have to decide what type of fuel you want (mix of charcoal and hickory for us), figure out the right amount to get the temperature you want (around 225), and then you have to make sure the smoker stays at that temperature for 8 hours or so. I’ll probably add fire about once an hour for twelve hours. While not a Herculean task by any means, keeping the smoker at temperature does get a little more challenging when things like weather, beer and bantering with the LA Grillers get in the way.

10:30 AM- “Meat Inspection”- Thankfully we didn’t need the services of our in-house urologist, Dr. Dave, for this process. At every bbq competition they come around and make sure that the meat is held at the proper temperature (or just on ice) so that you won’t kill the judges.

11:00 AM Start prepping ribs and shoulders (15 racks and 2 shoulders).

It’s kind of cool to see every team lined up working. There’s not a lot of talking…it’s kind of like a longer version of Iron Chef. Everyone is on the clock to make sure they get their times right, and while still in a good mood, there’s definitely an element of competition going on.

12:30ish- Cooks Meeting- all of the backyard cooks gathered to talk about the rules of the contest, turn in times, and suggested servings for the judges (6 samples with enough for two bites each). Two things we noticed about the cook’s meeting:

1) Adam and I were the only cooks to bring beer to the meeting

2) It’s odd to see a giant redneck with a beard and camouflage UT hat ask “so would you recommend a garnish or not”

1:00 PM- Ribs go on the smoker. My plan is to smoke them for about three hours with just the rub on them. Then I’ll baste them with our sauce and wrap them in foil, putting them back on the smoker at the opposite end as the firebox. I’ll unwrap them with about a half hour to go. That way they get a good smoke flavor and stay moist without getting overdone or too bitter from the hickory.

1:30 PM- Herb from the LA Grillers asks if we’ll help carry his trophy back.

1:31 PM- We inform Herb that the YMCA bbq festival is next week and everybody will get a trophy.

3:00 PM- Adam pulls open the lid on his smoker to find that a couple of his racks are burning. Not good. The triage unit comes running with foil and Marr-B-Q sauce. The barbecue godfather, Danny Marr, is called in for a consultation. There is debate as to whether they saved the ribs in time.

4:30 PM- Nice Racks ribs are starting to pull away from the bone. Time to pull them off, lightly sauce them and wrap them in foil.

6:15 PM- Open up the foil and let the slabs caramelize a little…the sauce and the moisture from the foil need to cook off a little.

6:40 PM- With 20 minutes to go, both teams are scrambling to find their best six pieces. I enlist the help of some trusted advisors to make last minute sauce and rub adjustments. I’m pretty pleased with the results. Adam seems to think that the Marr-B-Q ribs will finish runner-up to the last place entry. Both us place our best offerings on a bed of parsley in the numbered containers the organizers provided us with.

6:55 PM- I’m not going to lie, I was pretty excited about turning in my first competition entry. The thirty minutes leading up to turn-in actually made me a little nervous.

6:57 PM- Nice Racks and Marr-B-Q make our way down 1st Ave to the turn-in table.

I think they should have theme music for folks as they make the walk… the scene in Office Space where everyone is walking in slow motion to “Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta” comes to mind.

7:00 PM- “I just turned in turd-on-a-bone” was Adam’s description of Marr-B-Q’s entry. The rest of us disagreed whole-heartedly…I thought his ribs were pretty damn good. We’d find out Saturday at 6 PM what the judges thought.

7:02 PM- With the competition over, it was time to eat some bbq and really start drinking. In the words of the immortal Tex…“It’s On”.

We go through all of our ribs in about twenty minutes. A couple hours later, the first pork shoulder goes as fast as we can put in the platter.

Special thanks to Tim for bringing the hoecakes…they were so good that by the weekend he was known as “Timmy Hoe Cakes”. Hopefully for his sake that nickname doesn’t stick.

10:45 PM- Just as we’re getting ready to head to Broadway, I decide to check the coolers with the meat. The ice is all but melted in the meat cooler.

Motherf&cker.

Of course the ice truck has long been shut down, leaving us with three options:

1) try and get a cab as the concert at the arena was letting out
2) drag a cooler to the hotel nearby and pull a bush league move by draining every icemaker they have
3) take the pull-cart to the gas station on the other side of the river

Wow those options all sucked. For whatever reason, option 3 seemed like the best idea, so Andy and I took the “rickshaw” across the Shelby Street Bridge all the way to the Exxon.

Here’s a picture of me dragging the ice back across the bridge. It seemed like a noble venture the first ¼ of a mile, but then the reality set in that it was at least a mile and a half to the store. If you Google buzzkill, you’ll see this picture.

12:15 AM- When we left there were probably twenty people and the girls in the group were starting the late-night-girl-dancing that guys for years have mistaken as code for “so you’re saying there’s a chance”. We returned to find just Adam, Dave and LA Grillers Mike rocking out to Journey. Needless to say I was a little disappointed. No offense, fellas.

12:30 AM- Our shoulders and ribs on ice, we head down to Roberts for some PBRs, completely oblivious to the fact that we look like bus boys who just got off the “sloppy joe night” shift at Sizzler.

2:00 AM- We return to our tent for some late night whiskey shots and “pork tacos”- a phrase Adam used to describe open faced pulled pork sandwiches with Cool Ranch Doritos on top. This seems like a great idea at the time.

3:00 AM- Cab drops us off at home.

Saturday

9:00 AM- “What A&*hole made this a two day festival?” is the first thought that runs through my throbbing head. A look around the room for the cat that pooped in my mouth turns up empty and I begrudgingly get up to start the whole process over again.

10:30 AM- Dave drops his fruitcup on the grass outside the gates of the festival. He’s got a long drive to Memphis ahead of him for a wedding. His wife Betsy deserves a wife of the year award for letting Dave join us on Friday and putting up with what I can only imagine was not his A game at the wedding.

We take inventory of our beer situation, realizing that of the two kegs that we “floated” the night before, only about ½-¾ of each were actually consumed. An unspoken understanding went through the group that maybe we couldn’t quite bring it like we used to. That notion, however, would not stop us from trying as Aaron went to restock our supplies.

10:35 AM- We get to the site to find LA Grillers Mike has cleaned out the ashes from our smoker and already put a couple loads of lit charcoal into our firebox, thus saving us at least an hour of cooking time. I could have hugged the guy. Not to go off on a barbecue koombaya rant, but the people at barbecue festivals are just good people. They all look out for one another, even though they’re competing.

11:00 AM- Our hangover shaken off, Adam and I get to work seasoning 9 racks of ribs and four boston butts. Once those are on the smoker, we turn our attention to the whole ducks that we had marinating overnight. We wrap them in bacon and put them on Marr-B-Q’s grill for a little over an hour.

11:15 AM- Adam sears his calf on my lit charcoal chimney. Burning flesh anyone?

12:00 PM- The day of gluttony begins.

The duck came off much better than we expected…while one was a little dry, most of them were really pretty good. I think the duck started what became one of the coolest parts of the weekend…sharing samples with our neighbors.

We started out by taking some duck over to our neighbors on either side.

They returned the favor with chicken.

Then we did smoked sausage with a little sauce on Tim’s Hoe Cakes….you talk about baby-making good.

Then some ribs from next door…

Then our ribs…

Then some smoked wings from our other neighbor….

Then some ribs from our friends at Jimmy Carl’s…

And beer. Lots of beer.

It just doesn’t get much better than that.

6:00 PM- We make our way down to Riverfront Park for the announcement of the winners. I’m not sure if I’d been down there since Dancing in the District back in high school.

6:05 PM- The music stops and the tournament organizers take the stage. Hats off to Frank, Brian and Tom for doing an awesome job with the event.

6:10 PM “And the winner of the Backyard division for ribs goes to….MARR-B-Q!!!

With that announcement our group erupted in the type of noise usually reserved for lottery winners and the victims of panty raids. With proud parents Danny and Pam looking on, Adam and Aaron took the stage to claim their prize. It took about 5 minutes for our crew to shut up. Sorry about that Frank.

Much to the chagrin of some of our competitors, Marr-B-Q made the best ribs of our division on a Weber Grill. Just goes to show you that there’s a lot more to barbecuing than fancy rigs.

There was a writeup of the big win in the Cleveland, TN newspaper (Marr-B-Q’s birthplace). What I like most about the article(which has been taken down) is that most readers won’t know that the sweet ‘stach Aaron is sporting is a joke.

7:00 PM- We pull two shoulders off of the smoker. They had a great flavor but were pretty tough; no doubt a result of my mismanagement of the smoker temp throughout the afternoon. Luckily most folks had pickled their taste buds with some celebratory shots, so the texture wasn’t a big hang up.

Saturday night is the night all of the teams let loose, and at almost every tent there was a party. It was fun to visit the people who had become new friends over the weekend. Everyone was eager to share a beer and a story, and after a few hours it became clear that Sunday morning was really going to suck. Not just your garden variety of sucking…we’re talking early Sunday morning flight home after a bachelor party sucking.

10:30 PM- We pull the final two shoulders off the smoker. They’re just about perfect. Falling apart tender, great smoke ring and very flavorful. Unfortunately we’re all ridiculously full and ready to go out, so we wrap them in foil and leave them on the side of the smoker for a post-bar snack.

10:45 PM- 2 AM- One of those nights where everyone is in a good mood and every place we go is playing a great mix of 80s butt rock and old-school country.

2:30 AM- The last two men standing, Adam and I head back to our tent in eager anticipation of tearing into the shoulders we left.

2:33 AM- The shoulders are gone.

Someone went through everything edible we had, including the nasty duck carcasses that had been sitting out for twelve hours.

We wondered how something like that could happen until we saw the off-duty cop sound asleep in his car at the “security” gate.

While I was pissed at the time, looking back it was probably for the best that Adam and I didn’t have 12 pounds of pork shoulder between the two of us. We’ve been known to overindulge at times, especially when left unattended late at night.

Finale- I’m going to leave off the god-awful cleanup on Sunday, but suffice it to say that after three days of a highly abnormal sleep/alcohol ratio, Sunday was a strong, swift kick in the nannies.

That being said, the weekend was an absolute blast. It’s rare that an event lives up to expectations, but our first bbq competition went above and beyond. If you like bbq and are looking for a good excuse to get your friends together, I highly recommend next year’s Music City BBQ Festival in late August.

Jimmy Carl's Lunch Box-Nashville, TN

2009-08-10T22:22:00.001-07:00

“You got the money to start a barbecue restaurant from winning a game show?”

That’s how my conversation with the owners of Jimmy Carl’s Lunch Box started earlier this summer at Yazoo Brewery. A couple of beers later, Russell Nelson and Pat Isbey had told me how Russell won $14,600 on Trivia Pursuit- America Plays, hosted by Peter Brady (Christopher Knight). Soon after, a phone call to Pat put the wheels in motion, beginning what is arguably the best business start-up story ever.

While there is plenty more to the story than just winning some money, that teaser alone was enough to get me interested in checking out Jimmy Carl’s, which is named after the original drummer in Frank Zappa’s band.

Pat & Russell opened Jimmy Carl’s Lunch Box on May 6th inside the Station Inn, which is a legendary music venue in Nashville. Set amid the trendy Gulch area, the Station Inn is a total dive that is famous for bluegrass. A draft beer joint in what’s now a fancy-lad-drink part of town, the Station Inn is a Nashville relic. Long before condos with names like Velocity and Icon made the Gulch the place to be seen in the latest designer t-shirt, the Station Inn was hosting famous bluegrass jams seven nights a week.

This plays well for Jimmy Carl’s, as one of the hardest parts about opening a new barbecue restaurant is trying to replicate the character of the places that have been doing it for 30 years. By leasing a place with personality dripping from the walls, Jimmy Carl’s checked that hurdle off the list.

The first time I went there for lunch, I was impressed by the giant smoker that sits parked outside the Station Inn. With the smell of hickory and smoked ribs, chicken and pork wafting to the parking lot, the smoker sets the stage for what’s in store on the inside.

After several successful visits trying everything on the menu, my go-to order is the smoked thighs with beans and a rib tasting (2 bones). The chicken has a great smoke taste and is very well seasoned. The juicy dark meat explodes with flavor when you take the first bite and there is more than enough of it to fill you up.

The ribs are very good as well, and I love that they offer the sampler as a way to get the best of both worlds without feeling like a total tank ass. Pat, who mans the smoker, starts the ribs out with a rub of salt, pepper, chili powder and cumin. He places them on a grill first for a few minutes, then wraps them in foil before putting them on the smoker. After a while he unwraps the ribs and lets the smoke sink in. Before serving he puts a little bit of honey on top and finishes them on the grill.

I had never seen a preparation method like that before, but it’s hard to argue with the results. The ribs have a great flavor-the honey, cumin and chili powder seem to balance each other out and the smoke ring is very prevalent.

Pat is probably one of the few pitmasters out there that has been formally trained in a gourmet kitchen (Rumours East under Hernan Borda). His knowledge of food preparation and experience with different flavor combinations allows him to prepare some outside-the-box, yet delicious barbecue dishes. I’m not one that likes to stray too far from the traditional barbecue path, and I’m happy to say that Pat succeeds in pulling off his unique twists to the timeless classics.

The beans, for instance, are baby-making good. They are loaded with pulled pork, and packed full of flavor. They start by caramelizing onions similar to the preparation for a french-onion soup (a nod to his formal training), only he uses drippings from the smoked pork shoulder to add a great smokey flavor from the beginning. Then comes the beans, seasonings, sauce and loads of pork. I don’t like baked beans and I think they’re fantastic. In addition to the beans they offer a spicy slaw and a macaroni salad, both of which I liked. They have two sauces, hot and mild. Try them both.

Smoked bologna is a unique item on the menu, and it’s actually pretty damn good. Throw out whatever mental image you have of soggy, luke warm sandwiches from grade school and give it a shot. Probably not healthy enough to eat every time, but definitely worth trying, maybe as an appetizer if you have a group.

The food at Jimmy Carl’s stands on its own merit. It’s legitimately good barbecue in a town tragically lacking a barbecue superstar.

In addition to the food, Russell and Pat are great guys that go out of their way to make you feel at home. Russell handles the front of the house and if they’re not slammed he’s more than happy to sit down and chat with you about their food, sports or really just about anything. On your second trip, Pat will welcome you back as you pass him outside on the smoker and likely will come visit your table before you leave as well.

They’re the kind of guys you want to have a beer with, which I imagine they’d be more than happy to do with you if they’re not catering an event at night.

So if you’re in the mood for barbecue, get a group of your coworkers together and do something a little different for lunch. There is plenty of free parking and it’s easy to get in and out in an hour.

Jimmy Carl’s Lunch Box is open Tuesday through Friday for lunch (11-3) and they’re also available for catering.

Mississippi Delta, Handy Andy & Mo's

2009-07-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

The Mississippi Delta struck me as the land that time forgot. As I drove south on the Delta Blues trail, the only way you could notice it was 2009 was the cars on the road. Other than that, it could just as easily have been 1959 in most of the historic towns.

There is a mix of sentiment and sadness in the Delta. On one hand you have the rich historical ties to the blues, and on the other you have a deep, almost third-world standard of living for many of the residents. There are amazing old buildings next to abandoned storefronts and charming homes are one street over from houses that should be condemned. There is alcohol abuse, rampant obesity, and poverty, but there is also a strong sense of community, friendliness and a genuinely welcoming attitude. I didn’t see any outward signs of the racism the state is known for, which made me naively hopeful.

I did however hear some things on the radio from the area church services that made me realize that the “thought leaders” for the communities weren’t quite on the cutting edge of open-mindedness. The preachers seemed blissfully unaware of how much hate surrounded their message of “God’s love”, which is apparently reserved for heterosexual churchgoers, women who obey their husbands and men who aren’t afraid to show a little discipline to their family. While I’d never listened to radio church service before, I found myself unable to turn the station...the kind of sensation you have when you pass a wreck on the interstate. You don’t want to look, but you find yourself staring. As offputting as the sermons were, there was an infectious, almost magnetic quality to the gospel music that followed. Confusing and tragic, yet somehow uplifting. But enough about church.

The Delta Blues Society has done a great job with the historic markers along the blues highway, and I spent the entire day driving down Highway 61 to Greenville and then back up Route 1 along the Mississippi River to Clarksdale. With Muddy Water’s complete compilation as my companion, I drove through cotton fields from town to town, stopping a couple of times for sweet tea and once for fried chicken (and holy bejesus was it good).

Back in Clarksdale, I pulled into the Shack Up Inn, an old cotton gin plantation that has been transformed into the coolest motel I’ve ever seen. In addition to the ten rooms inside of the actual gin building, they remodeled about ten old shacks on the property.

Each one is named after a person or theme, and mine was named Pinetop after Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, a legendary blues piano player who stayed there while working on the Hopson Plantation as a sharecropper.

In addition to the unique accommodations, the thing I really liked best about the Shack Up Inn was that everyone would sit out on their porch when the sun was setting and drink a beer or two. Most folks would walk around and visit with their neighbors, creating a communal experience usually reserved for overseas travel. If you go in the summer, make sure to bring bug spray for the mosquitoes. They are vicious.

On Monday morning I woke up and headed for the Delta Blues Museum in downtown Clarksdale, which was an hour very well spent. On the way back to Nashville, I went to Handy Andy’s Grocery and BBQ in Oxford, MS.

It’s a cool mini-mart looking place that’s mostly a bbq restaurant. I would recommend knowing what you want to order, as the lady behind the counter is long on sass and short on patience. After fumbling through the menu I got a pork sandwich, which was good but not great.

An hour later or so later in Tupelo, I passed a red gas station that said “Mo’s BBQ”. Immediate U-turn. Mo’s has a smokehouse off to the side of it, and the smell of hickory was evident when I opened the door.

Inside Mo’s is more convenience store than restaurant, so I took my sandwich to go. I was pleasantly surprised when I tried the pork by itself. Great smoke ring, tender, juicy and full of flavor. The sauce complimented it well and the slaw, well the slaw was slaw, but overall it was a great experience. The guy behind the counter was really friendly and enthusiastic...he made you excited to order.

As I sat enjoying the sandwich on the hood of my car, I noticed the sign out front. I really don’t think I need to add any commentary.

If you ever find yourself in Tupelo, I would head to Mo’s for sure.

My BBQ/Delta Blues tour over, I reluctantly headed back home via the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Red's- Clarksdale, MS

2009-07-28T13:36:00.001-07:00

I came to the Delta in search of an authentic juke joint. The kind of place you read about in magazines but aren’t sure really exists. The kind of place you pull up to and wonder whether it’s safe to get out of the car. The kind of place where you can get lost in the blues for hours.

I got a recommendation for a juke joint called Red’s from the guys at Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art. They said it was on the street I drove in on, which I found strange because I didn’t see a thing on my way in. I drove back the same way, carefully checking out what amounted to a lot of abandoned buildings until I hit the end of the block. Nothing. I turned around and drove back up the street, beginning to think I was the victim of some sort of inside joke Clarksdale plays on tourists.

As I was sitting at a stop sign, I looked to my right and was drawn to a couple of old smokers sitting outside a presumably condemned building. Next to the smokers was an old refrigerator, some trash cans that hadn’t been emptied in a while and some extra plywood- probably leftover from boarding up the windows. When I drove forward just a bit, I noticed that the refrigerator was blocking a sign that said “Red’s Blues Club”.

My first thought was “are you shitting me?”, quickly followed by “this is fantastic”.

I parked my car and walked over to the front door. In front of the building was a guy looking for something on the floor of his car. When I got closer I asked him if Red’s was open. He responded “it can be”, at which point I knew I was talking with Red himself.

Red was probably 55-60ish. He had a stocky build and wore sunglasses, an open shirt and a white hat. I imagine this was his signature look. He told me to go inside and that he’d be in as soon as he could find his keys.

Walking into Red’s, I knew I’d found exactly what I was looking for. It was only about 5:30, but it might as well have been midnight inside. Red’s has no windows, and the only light comes from beer neons and some red rope light in the shape of music notes along the walls. R.L. Burnside was blaring from the house speakers.

The place is tiny, maybe 20x40, with a giant fan roaring in the corner in an attempt to make up for the poor window unit’s valiant but feeble attempt at beating the oppressive Delta heat. When Red walked in, he went behind the counter and brought out two 24 oz Budweisers, sheepishly acknowledging that his keys were in his pocket the whole time.

He walked over to the wall and asked if I knew who was in the picture. Thankfully I recognized John Lee Hooker, and my correct answer earned me some sort of “tourist with a clue” status.

For the next hour Red and I sat and talked about the blues. He told me about all of the people who had come through his joint. Mostly they were names I’d heard of or seen on compilation records but wasn’t really that familiar with-T-Model Ford, Junior Kimbrough, Big T, Lightnin' Malcolm, and Big Jack Johnson.

Our conversation was intermittent. We’d talk for a while, then sit in a silence for a few minutes. But it didn’t seem awkward. I was just soaking everything in, figuring that when Red wanted to talk he would. Every now and then he’d pop up and take me over to another picture on the wall, pointing out Carlos Santana in one of them and Buddy Guy in another.

After a couple of beers, I told Red that I was doing a bbq tour of the country. His head perked up- I’m assuming his eyes opened a little wider as well but couldn’t be sure. Red kept his sunglasses on the entire evening, inside and out. I told him I went to Abe’s but was disappointed. Without saying a word, he pointed his head towards the door, and we walked back out front.

In one of those “it doesn’t get much better than this moments”, Red opened up one of the smokers on the sidewalk to reveal a pork shoulder covered up in foil. Are you kidding me? He took off the foil to reveal a beautiful dark brown hunk of barbecue goodness. Red’s doesn’t serve food, so he was just doing this for himself. And luckily me.

“Go inside and get the knife and white bread”, he barked in my direction. I went inside and found a huge grill knife that hadn’t been cleaned in years sitting next to a half loaf of Wonder Bread. Not wanting to come off as the city-boy patsy that I am, I took the knife out as is and proceeded to slice into the shoulder.

Sitting out on the sidewalk, sweat running down my face, eating smoked shoulder on white bread with the owner of a Delta juke joint. That’s good living.

Just when I thought life couldn’t get much better, Robert “Wolfman” Belfour pulled up and started getting ready for his evening show. To be honest I’d never head of the guy before, but he looked exactly how you would hope a blues musician would. Sixty-nine years old, Mr. Belfour had salt and pepper hair, and wore glasses and a suit. He had an easily inducible laugh that revealed a kindred spirit and a lifetime of stories.

Red told him that I was looking to get educated about the blues, and after he set up he told me to pull up a stool. Smoking a Doral and drinking a Bud Light, he started with telling me that he grew up watching his father play the guitar with a pocket knife for a slide. Once older he’d work during the day and play at nights on the weekends. Back in the old days, before there were clubs, he said they just went to somebody’s house where there was gambling and liquor. They’d give you $5 and all the liquor you could drink. Drunk on homemade white whiskey, he’d play until the sun came up, when everybody would walk home.

He talked about playing on Beale Street back when “Beale was alive”, his eyes lighting up as he took his own trip down memory lane. He threw out names like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, friends and influences of his through the years. I just sat there in silence, drinking deeply from all of the stories he was telling.

After forty-five minutes and a couple of beers, a few more people strolled in, and Mr. Belfour decided it was time to play. And play he did. For almost four hours straight, he sat up on stage and played the best solo blues show I’ve ever seen. He told me earlier that he never learned chords, which meant he played only notes on the guitar. All I can say is wow. In between songs he would conduct his own, much cooler version of VH-1 Storytellers. There’s a clip or two of him on YouTube that I’d recommend checking out.

At one point I decided to walk down the street to Ground Zero Blues, Morgan Freeman’s club that he opened a few years back to revitalize his hometown. Red had mentioned it in the afternoon, saying its “popular with the white tourists”. Had I not just come from Red’s, I would have thought that Ground Zero was great. I was after all a white tourist. It was much bigger and had a full band of really skilled blues players playing the familiar blues favorites.

But you can find a place like that in most cities in America, so I decided to head back to Red’s after two songs. On the way back I could see why most people might not go to Red’s. Not that it looks nice during the day, but once the sun goes down it looks like a real hellhole from the outside. And if you couldn’t hear the music playing, the only indication that a show was going on was a sheet of paper with “Tonight: Robert Belfour, $5 cover”.

I walked back in and took my same bar stool. Red welcomed me back with an “I told you so” look, sliding another 24 oz Budweiser down the bar to me.

Sometime after 1 in the morning, Mr. Belfour finally stopped playing. After a few minutes he walked over to the bar. I thanked him for everything and he said “hope you enjoyed it son”. Before I could respond Red belted out “I told you he’s good”.

Possibly the understatement of the year. After walking back to my hotel through the outskirts of Clarksdale (which I do NOT recommend doing by yourself at 2 AM), I couldn’t go to sleep for a couple hours. I just sat there thinking about all of the stories I heard and how cool the day/night was. For a dive bar loving, blues listening, barbecue eating idiot like myself, it just might have been the perfect day.

Abe's Bar-B-Q in Clarksdale, MS

2009-07-21T20:52:00.001-07:00

After finishing the judging school, I headed south to Clarksdale, MS, home of the Delta Blues and Abe’s Bar-B-Q.

I had wanted to do a Delta Blues tour as part of my 3 week barbecue excursion, but Hurricane Ike pushed my travels farther north and the trip was postponed until now. In researching the Delta, I kept coming across a place called Abe’s Bar-B-Q. It got rave reviews time and again, so I was really looking forward to this little stop.

I pulled into town and drove straight up to the restaurant. From the outside, Abe’s has absolutely everything a legendary barbecue place should have, and then some.

History- Check. Abe’s has been open since 1924

Cool location- Check. Abe’s has character inside and out

Loyal following- Check. People love this place

Cool story- Check and check mate. Abe’s sits at the crossroads of highways 61 and 49, which is the famous intersection where blues legend Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil in order to play the blues. It simply doesn’t get much cooler than that.

I walked into the front door of Abe’s and happily took a seat at a booth. Articles from magazines and newspapers featuring Abe’s covered the walls. One in particular caught my attention, as it explained that the sauce was so good that then Governor Bilbo named it “comeback sauce” because he always kept coming back for it.

After the waitress brought me sweet tea and took my order for a rib plate, I decided to walk around the place and look at the articles and pictures on the wall. I could not have been more excited to eat. There was blues music playing in the background. Smoke from the pit lingered faintly in the air. I almost needed a drool bib.

And then I heard it. The unmistakable, unforgiveable sound of a microwave door opening in a barbecue restaurant. My head snapped towards the counter just in time to see the door close back.

A few seconds later, the waitress brought over my food and confirmed my worst barbecue fear. When I went to try the ribs, my fingers were met with the scalding heat that can only come from something that’s been nuked.

Microwaved. Are you kidding me? Why in the world would you spend hours smoking something only to ruin it by heating it up in the antithesis of a slow cooker? You might as well put a frickin’ McRib on my plate.

The ribs were so bad that I had couldn’t finish them. Not only were they rubbery, but they didn’t taste smokey at all. If I didn’t know better, I would say they were par-boiled as well.

I wanted to give Abe’s the benefit of the doubt, so I ordered a pork sandwich, praying to God that it didn’t get warmed up in the microwave as well. Fortunately I watched them prepare it by putting the meat on the flat grill as they toasted the bun. Not a slow heat, but better than a microwave. The sandwich came with slaw and their famous Comeback sauce.

I really wish I could say that I enjoyed the sandwich, but the meat really didn’t have much flavor on its own. The Comeback sauce tasted almost exactly like Arby’s sauce, which isn’t a bad thing...it’s just not really what most people think of for a barbecue sauce. When you put everything together, the slaw, sauce and pork actually had a pretty good flavor...just not what I’d consider a traditional barbecue flavor.

Now I will be the first to say that regional differences account for a lot of the intrigue and passion behind barbecue, and that it’s unfair to make blanket generalizations about a place based on one meal. Everybody has a bad day, and maybe I caught them on one. I’m sure the Clarksdale’s residents and Abe’s loyalists would shout from their rooftops in defense of Abe’s. After all, it’s been around since 1924, so they’re obviously doing something right.

But there’s no excuse for microwaving barbecue. Ever. Even at home. That’s just plain silly.

Barbecue Competition Judging School- Memphis

2009-07-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

I decided that the next logical step in my barbecue dorkdom was to become a judge for the Memphis in May championship. As I went about exploring the process of how you get to be a judge, I found out that there actually is a pretty elaborate process.

The barbecue competition judging circuit is very similar to the world of professional golf. Each has a “Q” school where you have to prove yourself, and then you have to do well on some satellite tournaments before you get invited to play in the majors.

Fortunately the Memphis Barbecue Network’s version of ‘Cue school is a heck of a lot easier than the PGA’s to get into and to pass. All you really need is a $65 check, the ability to sit through six to eight hours of class and a brain that allows you to score better than 400 on the SAT. You probably don’t even need the last part.

The mental image I had for the barbecue school was of me and about 45 Uncle Jesse-esque characters sitting around a Moose Lodge talking about barbecue the way fishermen talk about fish. While I was looking forward to the experience, there was a part of me that was leery of listening to a bunch of barbecue blowhards yack away for an entire day.

Much to my surprise, when I opened the door to the room I saw a pretty diverse cross-section of folks. I would guess that the ages ranged from 25 to 75, with most folks falling in the 40-50 year old category. Some had experience competing and were looking for pointers; some had spouses that competed and wanted to have something to do to fill the hours on weekend; others just loved barbecue.

Everyone I met was very friendly, which makes sense when you think about it since barbecue is a communal event. While there is an occasional surly pitmaster, for the most part barbecue people are people people. They like to entertain. They like to bring folks together. They like to talk, tell stories and laugh. They can also get a little long winded when talking about their barbecue, but that just goes with the territory.

The morning session was mostly lecture. We went through the different parts of a pig, the format for the contests and how you actually judge barbecue. For anyone interested, here are the highlights:

The categories are appearance, presentation, texture, flavor and overall impression.
There is a preliminary round and a final round.
For the preliminary, the teams are put into groupings of three, and the judges visit each of the three teams tents to score them.
There is also a blind judging section where the judges score the three entries without knowing who is who.
It’s a comparative judging process, where you score the teams in relation to the other two. In some ways this seems unfair, because if the best three teams are paired together in the first round, only one of them will likely advance. But there really isn’t any other way to do it, since you can’t have every judge taste every team’s entry.

A mysterious multiplier is then applied to each category and the adjusted scores are added up to determine who advances to the finals. I say mysterious because the MBN officials won’t reveal what it is, other than to say that flavor counts the most. In my mind this unnecessarily opens the door for controversy. It doesn’t really make sense to me why they wouldn’t be transparent, especially since many of the competition teams do this for a living and spend thousands of dollars each weekend to be judged.

When I pressed the official on why they aren’t open about the scoring process, the response I got had the feeling of a jovial country club board president defending his membership policy. He gave me a friendly yet elusive “well they don’t really need to know”, followed by one of the competition team members saying “it’s been this way for 30 years”. At the risk of becoming a muckraker, I decided that I’d retire the issue for another day.

The second part of the school was experiential learning. They brought in two competition teams, Pigs with Attitude and Yazoo Barbecue to talk about competing, show us how they present their barbecue and of course, to give us a taste of competition bbq. Pigs with Attitude had only recently started competing, but Yazoo Barbecue had been on the circuit for many years. They split the class into two and we went through a mock presentation of how they greet judges and walk them through the judging process. While they didn’t bring their smokers, they did bring two whole pork shoulders, which we got to sample.

Each team gets between 10 and 15 minutes to do a presentation for the judges. It’s the team’s chance to entertain, educate and build rapport. The two teams had very contrasting styles of presentations.

Yazoo Barbecue was very scripted, polished and well rehearsed. It was very entertaining and educational, though maybe a little intense at times. A husband and wife team, the Yazoo folks walked you through the cooking process and told you why they did certain things and what that would mean for the flavor. When the judges sat down to taste the barbecue, the husband/pitmaster would talk about the different flavors the judges were about to taste, similar to how a good winery owner will walk you through the different flavor sensations of each wine. While some might argue that they’re leading the witness, I think it’s a very clever way to boost the scores. Most people’s palates are not finely tuned enough to pick out different flavor profiles on their own, but if given a little guidance, that sweet/smoky flavor can quickly become caramelized sugar with hints of the peachwood used to smoke it.

The Pigs with Attitude presentation was more like what you’d get at your friend’s cookout. Very down to earth, friendly and humble. A relatively quick presentation, they preferred to get down to business and have you taste their shoulder, rub and sauce rather than tell you about it.

The best part was watching them pull apart the different cuts of the shoulder. They would start by effortlessly pulling out the three large bones, a sign that the barbecue was tender and done. Then they would pull away some of the beautiful, dark outer layer to reveal a deep smoke ring and then place four different samples on the plate. Fortunately we were able to taste the barbecue as well, and it was interesting to see how some parts were full of flavor and moisture, while others were a little dry. My guess is that the shoulders were cooked earlier in the morning and probably continued to cook in the foil a bit too much in parts. But the flavor was great for both teams.

From there we all sat down at the tables and went through a blind judging exercise. Three containers full of barbecue sat in front of us, and before we could start tasting we had to judge on appearance. It’s actually pretty hard to score barbecue, especially when comparing it to another. While it’s easy to say “I like this one best”, it’s harder to quantify why you like it. I ended up having to go back and forth between a few samples, which is tough because the second round of samples is colder than the first. An enjoyable dilemma to have for sure.

After the judging was over, we had a Q&A session with the MBN officials and the teams and then took a test to gauge our barbecue judging IQ. Fortunately I passed, along with everyone else in the class. So I’m officially a trained barbecue judge with a credential that designates me as a blowhard with an opinion that matters.

Barbecue aside, the coolest part about the day for me was seeing how the teams, judges and officials interact. Sure they argued over some things and bickered about others, but they did so in the way that you argue with your brother or sister. Most of the time they were going back and forth telling stories, laughing about their experiences and talking about how they love the friendships that they get to make with folks from all over the country. It’s very similar to the bond you find among brewers, artists and musicians. People that are passionate about their craft really seem to look out for one another and are usually very welcoming. Probably because they love what they do.

J.D.'s BBQ Barn-Somewhere in West TN

2009-07-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

I got off the interstate at the Lexington, TN exit in search of a place I had heard about and eaten from, but never been to. A friend’s mother used to bring it up on her way from Jackson to Nashville and I remembered her describing the place as an old country shack with a huge smokehouse attached to it. How I remember that from ten years ago is beyond me.

I pulled up to a place called Scott’s at about 4:30 PM and knew that I was at the right spot. The smokehouse seemed to be twice the size of the restaurant. As I pulled in, my excitement was met with the reality that I was the only car in the lot. For a brief second, I had a Griswaldian moment where I thought that maybe I was the first one there, but the sign on the door confirmed my worst fears. Sorry Folks, Park’s Closed, the moose out front shoulda told ya.

Sold Out. Son of a bitch.

I parked the car and went to look at the giant smokehouse for a moment or two before reluctantly getting back in my car, determined to return another day.

I’m not always a believer that one door opens when another closes, but in this case it did. Twenty miles south of Lexington, at the intersection of highways 22 and 100, at a place called J.D.’s Barbecue Barn.

The intersection of 22 and 100 doesn’t even have a name. You won’t find the town on a map, which meant that J.D.’s had a chance to be legendary.

When I walked into the small building, J.D. himself greeted me with an almost-friendly “what can we getch u?”. Now J.D. is a man who is not afraid to sample some of his own product, and his thick southern accent is exactly what you’d hope for in a place like this. Behind him was a young girl I would assume was kinfolk of some kind.

A quick look around the joint told me that most folks probably do takeout. There were three tables, one of which was occupied by a guy that will likely be there the next time I go back.

Knowing that I was eating at the Bar-B-Q Shop in a couple hours, I reluctantly limited my order to a small pork sandwich with slaw and hot sauce. “Is that all you want” I heard come from the guy in the corner, his tone intimating that his teenage daughter would order more than I did. I regrettably had already reached into the cooler at the moment he said that, and when I pulled out a Diet Coke, I sheepishly waited for him to say “you city boys really are pussies, aren’t ya”.

Fortunately he didn't say a word, and I eagerly took my sandwich to a table eight feet away on the other side of the room.

I’m happy to say that the pulled pork sandwich at J.D.’s was one of the best I’ve ever had. The meat was well smoked, and the sandwich had a great mix of juicy inside meat mixed in with chunks of the outside bark. The slaw was purple and there was just enough of it to add a little bit of texture, but not much in terms of flavor-which I believe if you’re going to add slaw is the only way to do it.

The sauce was hands down the best vinegar sauce I’ve had (sorry North Carolina). The spice mixture he puts in it really gives it a great flavor, whereas normally the vinegar overpowers whatever spices get put in there. This one had a slightly salty/sugary balance that really worked well.

I savored every bite, counting my blessings that Scott’s was closed.

After I ate I asked J.D. if I could take a look at his pit, which he happily agreed to show me. He smokes over hickory, doing shoulder, ribs and chicken. He no longer does whole hogs he said, lamenting the fact that there just aren’t many small hog farmers anymore.

J.D. told me that he’s had this place for two years,and before this one he’d had another closer to Lexington that he and a partner ran for five years. When I complimented him on his sauce, he told me that he got the recipe from a non-blood relative of his aunt’s.

He recounted the story of how he got the recipe...

“the guy who gave me this was one of those guys that does everything spot on. Don’t matter if it’s hunting, fishing or fixing cars, he does everything spot on. So right before I was getting ready to start my first place we’re driving somewhere and he looks over and says “so you reckon you’re fixin to open a barbecue pit”...when I said yeah, he said “get you a pencil and right this down”....then gave me this recipe from memory”.

That’s one hell of a family heirloom.

After standing out and sweating near the pits chatting for another five minutes, we shook hands and parted ways, with the promise that I would be back.

I pulled onto old Highway 100 for Memphis, rolled the windows down and turned the music up, thankful for the unexpected surprises that life throws at you every now and then.

Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest

2009-07-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

I could smell it before I could see it. As we walked down the hill leading to Tom Lee Park, the collective smell of literally hundreds of pits full of hickory smoke, ribs and shoulder was overwhelming. Right there on the banks of the Mississippi lay tent after tent of competition barbecue teams, all of whom were competing in the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

The Memphis in May (MIM) Barbecue Championship is an amazing spectacle.

Imagine throwing a party in your front yard for 150-200 of your closest friends. Not a casual little gathering that ends early, but a party where you wake up to find your furniture in the front yard. Now imagine your next door neighbors on either side do the same thing. And their neighbors and their neighbors, all the way down the block and around the corner to the next couple of blocks. Take that image and shrink everybody’s yard down to about a 30’ by 20’ space, put a fence in between each and then open the whole thing up to the rest of the city. That’s what the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest feels like...for three days.

As if that’s not enough, all of the parties are theme-parties...the kind where everybody gets into it and plans for months. There are dance floors, DJ’s, ice luges and beer bongs. Speaking of beer, there is a refrigerated truck that sells kegs all day to the teams and provides dollies for team members to haul the kegs back to the tents, a very common site throughout the day. Folks even make multi-level structures to take the party to the roof.

Since the health department cracked down on samples years ago, the MIM barbecue championship has become a very divided world of the haves and the have nots.

If you are on someone’s guest list, you are able to enter the pearly gates, feasting on pulled pork, ribs, chicken and beer. Lots of beer. If you aren’t on a list, you are relegated to walking around and smelling the barbecue from the teams. There are a couple of vendors selling pretty good bbq, but it’s just not the same as sampling the best from a real competition team.

In years past I had visited on Saturday and joined the masses wandering enviously from tent to tent, hoping to befriend someone on a team so I could taste some of the barbecue. It never worked.

But this year I’d received my own version of Wonka’s Golden Ticket when my friend John Stephany invited me to be a guest of his competition team, Magically Piglicious.

Magically Piglicious is made up of a group of twenty or so guys who share a love of barbecue, beer and good times. Each guy puts in $250-300, which covers the entry fee, tent and equipment rentals, meat and beer for the week.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and immediately was greeted by friendly folks and a cup for beer. With a cold beverage in hand, I promptly made my way over to the smoker, where cooks David Mekeel and Jack Koban were rubbing down a test batch of ribs to put on the smoker.

David and Jack were thrust into the role of pitmasters the week before when the regular chef had a work emergency and couldn’t make the trip up from New Orleans. Going from experienced backyard bbqer to cooking for the World Championship would be kind of like getting a call in single-A baseball that you’re pitching in the Show the next night. Totally unexpected but a cool opportunity you just can’t turn down.

I’m happy to say that David and Jack, with some help from assistant pitmaster David Egner, performed pretty darn well in their debut, finishing 77th for their ribs. When you consider that many of the teams that entered cook barbecue for a living, that’s saying something.

After pestering David and Jack, I settled into the couch by the fence for some of the best people watching I’ve ever seen. The crowd at MIM is one part State Fair, one part fraternity reunion and 1/8 part strip club-dancers and patrons.

After taking in a few beers on the couch, John’s friends Micah and Dave joined me for a walk around the grounds, where we saw some absolutely ridiculous sights. My favorite sideshow was a make-shift driving range, an ingenious invention where guys were using a rib bone for a golf tee and driving balls out into the Mississippi.

From there I walked over to the Patio Porker division- a lower cost contest for backyard bbqers- where Big Al and the Butt Rubbers held court. Big Al’s group was made up of six or so gentlemen that were putting the wisdom of their years to use. In addition to barbecue, these guys had a couple hundred Jello shots, which they happily offered to the young girls that walked by, saying “you should only have your butt rubbed by a professional”, then pointing to the sign that qualified them as professional butt rubbers. Tip of the cap, gentlemen. Well played.

Back at the Magically Piglicious tent, the fellas were pulling the shoulders off the smoker for the evening feast. A line 50 deep waited patiently for some really good barbecue, and within minutes three giant trays of pulled pork had vanished. At that point John broke out leftover smoked chicken from the night before. Again, gone in minutes. For the first and only time all night, the tent was relatively quiet as folks devoured everything in sight.

That’s when I noticed the tent next door to ours consisted of only three guys hanging out by their smoker. These guys from Arkansas clearly meant business, and they were visibly unimpressed with all of the tomfoolery that surrounded them. Luckily for Magically Piglicious, the tent on the other side of them had an ice luge and a DJ, so our ridiculous good time seemed tame by comparison.

While a few teams are at MIM only for the competition, most teams are there for a mix of competition and good times. The guys who are actually cooking usually exit stage left at a reasonable hour, leaving the late-night partying for the rest of the crew. The judging begins on Saturday relatively early in the day, which means they return between 3:30 and 4:00 A.M to fire up the smoker-where it’s not uncommon to see folks leaving for the night. I imagine if you’re entering shoulder you just stay up all night and curtail the drinking a little bit. Maybe.

As the night went on, I got the pleasure of being part of the very informal judging panel for Magically Piglicious’ ribs. David and Jack had tried a few different rubs, so we had 4 racks to sample from, with the winning rub being used the next morning for the competition. I believe the unanimous choice was the first batch, which had a sweet brown sugar rub, but by that point in the evening the palate and the mind were not as sharp as they might have been earlier. Either way, there’s not much that's better than eating ribs that have been smoking for a few hours after an evening of drinking beer...all outdoors on the banks of the Mississippi.

The rest of the evening ended as most good nights do...in a bit of a haze. I remember a rooftop argument at John’s condo with a vegetarian about why there isn’t a tofu division of the Barbecue Championship. You can imagine how well that went over.

I had to leave the next morning before the awards, but all in all, my behind the scenes look at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest was an absolute blast. A big thanks to the Magically Piglicious team for being incredibly welcoming and for throwing one hell of a party. Hope to see you next year.

CNN Article on BBQ Quests

2009-05-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

CNN ran a piece on barbecue and the quest for the best last week. In case you missed it, here's the link.

BBQ Quest on CNN

Congrats to the Bar-B-Que Shop

2009-05-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

While I was in Memphis for the World Championship Barbecue Contest, I picked up the local weekly, The Memphis Flyer and noticed that the Bar-B-Que Shop won the top honor in the Best Ribs in the City feature. Congrats to Eric Vernon and the Bar-B-Que shop for winning yet another award.

Despite already having lunch at Central Bar-B-Q, I went by the Shop for a rack on my way out of town. I'm happy to say that the ribs were amazing again, and that the Bar-B-Que shop remains my favorite barbecue restaurant on the planet.

Tex- Richmond, VA

2009-05-11T21:33:00.001-07:00

The first time I drove by Tex on the corner of Semmes and Cowardin I did a U-Turn and pulled in. An hour later, I left excited, full of delicious barbecue and great stories.

"Tex" is hidden jewel on the Richmond culinary circuit. He's a one man show. Equal parts pitmaster and showman, Tex makes it a point to entertain you as well as feed you. When I walked up he excitedly yelled to the four other people "we've got a virgin!".

Before I had the chance to feel awkward, Tex had nicknamed me Shorty and welcomed me to my initiation. He informed me that his smoker was named Bertha, and that they'd been together quite a while. When I asked what was best, he replied, "whatever you want". When I said I wanted to try a couple of things, he smiled, shook his head and gave out his trademark "It's On".

First he started by slicing a small piece of brisket for me...damn. "It's On" Then he told me that he was going to give me five different tastes from his ribs. He explained that he was a trained chef, and that he could make a steak taste different by cutting it with two different knives. After the second rib sample, I didn't question him. "It's On". The ribs, all five tastes, were all well smoked, and true to his word, deliciously different.

After sampling the brisket and the ribs, my mouth was watering. When I asked what kind of sausage he had, he responded "the kind you've never had before". What he meant by that was that his sausage isn't just a smoked sausage, it's what he calls a Tuxedo, a delicious combination of a butterflied smoked sausage filled with diced brisket, sauteed onions, bbq sauce and a little mustard all on a bun.

When he handed it to me, he confidently said "I'm gonna get ya". Holy bejesus was he right. The Tuxedo is one of the better things I've ever put in my mouth. It should get nominated for a James Beard award. After my first bite he saw my eyes light up, howled in laughter and said "It's On!"

Every time I went back to Tex, which was a lot, I would order a tuxedo as a starter. I might change up the main dish from ribs to chicken to brisket, but the Tuxedo was my north star. It let me know that everything was right in the world.

With that said, I don't mean to downplay the rest of his barbecue. It's all great. He prides himself on doing things the right way, low and slow over real wood. Bertha is an old school pit, meaning there's no sensors or gauges on her. He does it all my feel, touch and look. And a thermometer to keep the health department off his back.

Everything he does is incredibly well smoked, flavorful and moist. His chicken may be the best I've ever eaten, and his ribs and brisket aren't far behind. But just as good as the meat is the show he puts on.

I encourage you to go with some free time on your hands, eat a tuxedo and then let another customer or two go ahead before finishing your order so you can take in Tex's humor. He welcomes everybody like they're family, and after a while that's how you'll feel. If you come back often enough, you'll soon learn he's a former Navy pilot and that he was the first black state trooper in the state of Texas. He was also a chef for a while and dabbled a bit in corporate America. I'll leave the rest for him to tell you, but suffice it to say you'll enjoy hearing his stories about his many different careers. What you'll enjoy most are his one liners. Stuff will come out of his mouth that you wish you could write down to retell later. But it's probably for the best that you don't, because your delivery won't be near as good as his.

Since Tex's shop is a trailer, be prepared to eat on or in your car. And don't go to Tex if you're in a rush. You'll spend at least 30 minutes with him, and that's if you're the only customer. But trust me, it'll be time well spent.

Tex is out there on Mondays and Fridays for sure, more often than not on Thursdays, and occasionally on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. After your first trip you'll have his cell phone so you can call to make sure "it's on".

Living the Dream

2009-04-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

I absolutely love barbecue. I'm addicted to it. I love making it, I love eating it and I love talking about it. For ten years I thought about taking a trip to visit the best barbecue places in the southeast. I read books, magazines and websites and got advice from everyone I could talk to about where the best places were.

In August of 2008 I quit my job in Arizona to try to open a brewery with a friend of mine in Richmond, VA. On my way across country, I decided to fulfill my dream of doing the great American barbecue roadtrip.

For nearly three weeks, I would travel from Texas to Memphis to North Carolina, sampling some of the best barbecue our country has to offer at 19 different places. In Texas it was brisket, sausage, ribs and random blocks of cheddar cheese. In Memphis it was ribs(wet and dry) and pulled pork sandwiches and in North Carolina it was shoulder, slaw and hush puppies.

Along the way, I would meet some of the legends of industry, often getting a personal tour of their pits and a behind the scenes look at where the magic happens. I would talk with the locals to get a sense of the pride and passion they have for their revered locale. Every person had a story and over the years those individual stories had become interwoven to create the legend of each barbecue shrine.

Finding the "best" barbecue place is simply not possible, because barbecue is much more than just the food. It's a combination of flavors, sights, smells, sounds, people and stories. So as I recount my gluttonous journey across the southeast, I do my best to tell the story of each place, offer what my favorite places were, and encourage you to try them all for yourself. Trust me, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

My BBQ Obsession

2009-04-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

I've been a barbecue fanatic since college, when my roommate Adam brought home some of his father's ribs from Cleveland, TN. Danny Marr's ribs were legendary among our group of friends, and I quickly bought my first smoker to start experimenting. Soon after we went to the World Barbecue Championship in Memphis, and my eyes were opened to a whole new world of barbecue.

Imagine the smell of your neighbor's charcoal grill. When the wind is right, the scent travels halfway down the block. Like Pavlov's dog, your mouth starts to water and no matter how long it’s been since you last ate, you're instantly hungry. Now imagine hundreds of smokers lined up on the Mississippi River, all of them full of ribs, pork shoulder and chicken. Wipe the drool.

Before the health department cracked down on samples, you could walk with beer in hand through row after row of bbq teams and meet friendly, well marbled folks eager to let you try their best barbecue. I imagine a similar setup behind St. Peter’s pearly gates.

After Memphis, I did a lot of small road trips in search of legendary barbecue spots. Trips to Alabama (Dreamland, Big Bob Gibson's, Golden Rule), Kentucky (Moonlight BBQ), Tennessee (Rendezvous, Interstate, Carl's Perfect Pig, Jack Daniel's BBQ Competition), North Carolina (B’s, Lexington #1, Bill Ellis). Mississippi (Leatha's Bar-B-Que Inn), Texas (Salt Lick) and Kansas City (Bryant's, Gates, LC's, Oklahoma Joe's, Fiorella's Jack Stack, Guy and Mae's). Each time I would do a day trip or a weekend jaunt, I kept thinking how great it would be to do a barbecue tour across the country. To see the different regional styles and savor the local flavor of each town and city.

Some people dream of doing a baseball stadium tour. Others want to climb the highest peaks in each continent. Me, I wanted to make a pilgrimage to my own personal mecca...the hallowed halls of the legendary barbecue spots.

Buzzie's Bar-B-Q in Kerrville, TX

2009-04-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

After years of making my list of places and talking about making this trip, I was finally on my way. My first stop on the tour was Buzzie’s Bar-B-Q in Kerrville, TX. Buzzie’s was voted Top 50 in Texas by Texas Monthly magazine, but at only sixteen years in existence, it was a mere pup compared to most of the places I would visit.

In college basketball parlance, Buzzie’s was the Athletes in Action of the barbecue tour. It was an exhibition game before the regular season started, providing a nice little warm-up for the real competition ahead.

Make no mistake about it, Buzzie’s serves good barbecue. I had the brisket plate, which came out with a nice smoky flavor. However the meat was pretty dry, a theme I would find with most brisket. The potato salad was amazing, with egg, onion, pepper and pimento all working together. A fire burned down the original location, so the place had a very modern, almost sterile feel to it. If you happen to find yourself in Kerrville, I would certainly head over to Buzzie’s, but don’t go out of your way to make the trip.

City Market in Luling, TX

2009-04-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

A few hours later, I found myself in Luling, TX. A quaint little town south of Austin, Luling is famous for the Watermelon Thump and the City Market. As I walked inside the restaurant, I was filled with a sense of validation. I was in the presence of greatness.

You walk inside and the place looks exactly like you think a classic barbecue joint should. Part general store and part butcher shop, the wooden walls hold the smells of decades of barbecue.

The most unique part of the famous Texas barbecue spots is that they have separate rooms for ordering meat and sides. The pit is usually kept sealed off in the back, so you go in, order the meat you want and watch them open the pit to pull out the brisket, sausage and ribs. They slice it right in front of you and weigh it by the pound. From there they put it on butcher paper and ring you up, and you go out into the seating area to find a table and order your drink and sides at another counter. Wonderfully odd.

As I walked into the pit room at City Market, it was like entering heaven. The smell of smoked meat was overwhelming, and I felt like a kid looking at his first Playboy when they opened the pit to reveal hundreds of pounds of smoked goodness.

The four men working the pit stood proudly, like kings of the castle. When I told them I had driven in from Phoenix, they simply nodded, basically telling me “that’s cute son, let me know when you’ve crossed an ocean”.

Despite the blow off, I happily ordered a pound of brisket and a sausage link (I arrived too late for ribs) and walked out into the seating area. I went up to the front counter and ordered a Lone Star and some white bread. That’s when I noticed the small blocks of cheddar cheese laid out in 50, 60 and 75 cent increments. Proudly unrefrigerated and wrapped in plastic, this was definitely a new thing for me. As was the barbecue sauce in an old hot sauce bottle sitting open on the counter. I ordered a $0.60 piece of cheese and took the bottle of orange, spicy, mustard flavored sauce to my table.

If you walked into a normal restaurant and saw open sauce bottles and warm cheddar cheese on the counter, you would probably walk right out. But here it just seems to make sense, adding to the character.

The sausage had a crisp casing and popped with juice when you bit into it. Not overly flavorful, it had a unique taste that was much different than the smoked sausage I grew up on. The brisket was the real deal. It had a dark, flavorful outside and a wonderful smoke ring all the way around. While a couple of pieces were dry, others were tender, juicy and quite simply wonderful. An amazing combination of smoke and meat that left no doubt in my mind why this place was famous.

Happy and quite full, I left to scout out the next day’s locales.

JP

2009-04-12T15:49:00.000-07:00

The next day I picked my friend John Purcell (JP) up at the Austin airport. JP and I were roommates in grad school and we try to get together for a road trip once a year. JP lives in Houston, so the plan was to meet in Austin, spend two days eating bbq and then head to Houston.

I picked JP up at the airport with a couple of tall boy Budweiser Cheladas. Don’t ask why. We had a half hour drive on Texas backroads, so it just seemed like the right thing to do. A mixture of Budweiser, Tomato and Clam Juice, it tasted like a can of stewed vomit. I had two sips only because I needed to prove to myself that the first taste really was that bad. Somehow JP finished his.

Kreuz Market in Lockhart, TX

2009-04-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

Kreuz Market (pronounced Krites) has been in business since 1900 and the current pitmaster has not taken a day of vacation in 21 years. Waiting behind the counter, a nice lady who looks like a grandmother from Central Casting takes your order. She’s exactly who you hope to find at a place like this. She let me know that in 1999, a family feud led Rick Schmidt to take the name Kreuz to this location, while sister Nina kept the original location and named it Smitty’s.

The new Kreuz Market is a Texas sized dining hall, with two huge seating areas (seats 560) and a pit room with two giant pits. If you’ve ever sat in a big church when no service is going on, you know what JP and I felt like at Kreuz. The lady at the counter told me they do almost 50% of their business on Saturday, so on our Thursday afternoon visit we had the place almost to ourselves.

JP and I ordered a half-pound of brisket, a half-pound of ribs and two jalapeno cheese sausage links, which they pulled out of the giant smoker and sliced in front of us. Then we went into the dining room and ordered two Lone Stars and a small block of cheddar cheese.

The brisket had a smoky, peppery flavor to it. Similar to City Market, some pieces were dry, while others were juicy, tender and simply fantastic. The ribs, while a little dry, had a great smoke flavor to them. Having been smoked for hours with post oak, they were completely pink all the way through. The jalapeno cheese sausage was the best sausage I had on the trip, full of flavor and smoke. I invented a cardiologist’s dream sandwich by pouring sauce on some of the drier brisket, piling on chunks of cheddar cheese and sausage and smushing it all between white bread. I was pretty proud of myself.

All in all, Kreuz lived up to its reputation. JP and I walked out quite full, having just learned a valuable lesson in portion control.

Smitty's in Lockhart, TX

2009-04-12T15:33:00.002-07:00

Five minutes after finishing at Kreutz, we pulled into the parking lot at Smitty’s. You enter in the back, and as you turn the corner into the pit room, you could very easily plant your foot in the fire used to heat the smoker. It’s a large pit of smoldering oak just lying open on the ground, radiating heat in all directions.

When I asked if they were worried someone might step in it, the lady laughed and said “honey, if you feel that fire on your leg and still step in it, that’s your own damn fault”. Excellent point.

Aside from the open flame, the pits at Smitty’s looked exactly like Kreutz’: giant, black, iron pits full of brisket, ribs, sausage and shoulder. When I ordered some of all of it, I’m pretty sure I heard John’s stomach whimper.

Unfortunately Smitty’s barbecue did not taste as good as it looked and smelled. The brisket, ribs and beef shoulder (I thought it was pork when I ordered) were all really dry and the sausage was fairly plain, especially after the jalapeno cheese links we had just eaten. Everything had a good smoke flavor, and I imagine if we had gone during lunchtime it would have been a much different experience. This place normally has a line out the door, and I don’t imagine it’s because they have dry meat.

The pitmaster was very accommodating. We talked for a while and he walked me through how he works the smoker. He explained that they start with the meat near the oak fire and then work it slowly over away from the heat, letting it sit on the far end in a holding pit of sorts when it’s ready to be sliced. They don’t use thermometers or a timer. After years of doing this, they just know when it’s done.

I would definitely give Smitty’s a second chance if I were in the area again, but my vote goes to Kreutz in this family feud.

Hurricane Ike

2009-04-12T15:33:00.001-07:00

No trip would be complete without some type of natural disaster, and on the second night of tour, it seemed likely that a hurricane brewing in the gulf would touch down near Galveston and Houston. Hurricane Ike was picking up strength, and as evacuation warnings were issued, folks started pouring into Austin.

Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, TX

2009-04-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

The next day we drove into Taylor, TX, home of the famed Louie Mueller Barbecue. I would say that this place is straight out of a movie, but there have been at least three already filmed there (most recently “The Rookie”), not to mention multiple visits by the Food Network, a Stevie Ray Vaughn album cover and an MGD commercial. The place is both vintage Texas and vintage barbecue.

While the City Market’s atmosphere was impressive, this place was better. Classic beer neons adorn the wall, along with pictures of famous people and other Texas relics. There’s a classic jukebox in the corner. It was timeless Texas and infinitely cool. The kind of place you could spend all afternoon lifting longnecks and listening to Johnny Cash.

Louie Mueller’s has their pits out in the open behind the counter, which added a whole ‘nother level of barbecue goodness to the place. As we made our way up to order, the nice man behind the counter informed us that they were out of everything but brisket and chopped beef sandwiches due to the influx of Ike evacuees. This would not be the last time Ike would interfere with my trip.

The guy behind the counter turned out to be Wayne Mueller, the third generation owner. Wayne and I bonded over the fact that he also used to work in sports marketing, most recently for the Houston Rockets. I told him about my trip and he told me that he had started getting back into the family business a few years ago, working weekends to get a good feel for the business. He said his grandfather Louie started the place in 1949 and his father Bobby took over in 1974. He then told me that his father Bobby had passed away unexpectedly the previous weekend, so it looked like he was going to be running the place sooner than he imagined. I was amazed at how nice and accommodating he was, especially given the circumstances.

Wayne was a great guy, and I imagine he’ll utilize his marketing experience to ensure that nothing skips a beat in terms of customers. He also mentioned that someone had been apprenticing under his father on the pits for ten years, and that “he’s ready”. Can you imagine that? Working ten years as an understudy to learn how to barbecue meat? To an average person, that probably seems absolutely ridiculous. But that’s what makes these places famous.

When I tasted the brisket, I instantly appreciated the ten years of hard work that led to quite possibly the finest piece of beef I’ve ever eaten. Seriously, if you offered me a medium rare bone-in ribeye from Ruth’s Chris or a pound of brisket from Louie Mueller’s, I’d take the brisket hands down. And that’s coming from a guy that salivates over Ruth’s Chris.

The brisket had a dark peppery crust and a deep smoke ring. The meat was tender and juicy with just the right combination of meat, smoke and a little fat. Each bite I took validated why Texans feel so strongly about brisket.

The other great thing about Louie Mueller’s was the hot sauce sitting on the table in giant old-timey Listerine bottles. Only at a famous barbecue joint would you find something as inimitably endearing as hot sauce in a mouthwash bottle.

Louie Mueller would turn out to be my favorite in the brisket category, 2nd favorite in atmosphere and 2nd favorite overall.

Southside Market in Elgin, TX

2009-04-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

After Louie Mueller, we (really I) decided that we should head down to Elgin, TX and Southside Market, the home of the hot sausage. I know, “home of the hot sausage” just sounds wrong.

Southside Market was the anti-Mueller. It was a huge, mass produced place that had the feel of a cafeteria. It did have an impressive butcher shop with all kinds of meat, but the building lacked the character of the four previous stops.

I figured “when in Rome” and stepped up to order a hot sausage. The lady pulled something out of the holding pit that would make an adult film star blush.

“Uh, do you have anything smaller?” I awkwardly asked.

What the lady put on my plate resembled a long piece of animal feces, causing JP and I to break into the Anchorman “I will not eat cat poo” routine. Luckily it tasted better. Actually it tasted pretty awesome, and had I not stuffed myself beforehand I’m sure I would have enjoyed their other offerings.

As it were, we decided to head on back to Austin, and proceeded to spend several hours in traffic with the Ike evacuees. Later that afternoon, my selfish fears came true, as the folks at Snow’s informed us that they’d made the decision not to open the next day due to the torrential rains and hurricane force winds that were projected for Lexington on Saturday morning.

Snow’s is only open on Saturday mornings from 8:30 until they sell out, usually before noon. Texas Monthly rated it as Texas’ best, so this discovery was a crushing blow to the trip.

The Broken Spoke in Austin, TX

2009-04-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

If you are in Austin, TX and want a change of pace from Sixth St, please visit the Broken Spoke, an old school country-western dance hall. JP saw that Texas legend Gary P. Nunn was playing, so we made the jaunt down there (no, I didn’t have a clue who he was). You walk through the restaurant to the dance hall, where the stage is at one end, a giant wooden floor is in the middle and tables fill either side.

Like Louie Mueller, this place is also straight out of a movie. JP and I took our chicken fried steak, chicken nachos and pitcher of Lone Star to our table and watched in awe as folks walked in all decked up in country attire. We were the only guys not wearing cowboy boots.

When Gary P. Nunn took the stage, almost everyone in the crowd got up and took the dance floor. I’ve never seen anything like it. Couples old and young got up and line danced, two-stepped and swing danced their way through the evening. They wore cowboy hats, boots, button down shirts tucked in and large belt buckles. Whatever picture you have in your mind right now, I guarantee there were two of them at the Broken Spoke. Hell, there were even two Texas flag button-down shirts.

Of particular note was the 80 year old couple that had been doing this every Friday for over 50 years. The old man in his cowboy hat, bolo tie and Texas belt buckle appeared to have been taken from God’s waiting room for the evening, but once he got out on the dance floor he danced his wife effortlessly across the room all night long.

The other great thing about these types of places is that guys go up to girls and ask them to dance and they actually say yes. It’s the damndest thing. JP became the beneficiary of this custom, as after several pitchers of Lone Star I convinced him to ask the cute brunette two tables over to dance. Turns out she was an Ike evacuee from Houston and she joined us in closing the place down. JP and Jody are still dating six months later. God Bless Texas.

The Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX

2009-04-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

While we didn’t go there on this trip, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX. Go when the weather is nice and experience one of the coolest bbq atmospheres around. The place is out in the country and there is usually a line. When we went, we waited nearly two hours. Normally this would be a huge negative, but at Salt Lick it’s actually a positive. There is a giant outdoor waiting area with picnic tables amidst huge oak trees. And, wait for it….the place is BYOB. That’s right, you can bring your own cooler full of beer and hang out with friends outdoors, listening to live country music as the smoke builds your hunger. It’s like having a cookout in your backyard except there is awesome people watching, live music and the food is much better than yours, likely.

The bbq is served family style. Don’t get the peppers if you want to feel your tongue. All you can eat barbecue this good should be a crime. Brisket, ribs and sausage stole the show the night we were there. I’ll be making a trip back to Austin to go to Snow’s in the future, and I’ll be sure to visit Salt Lick as well.

(photos taken from web)

Peggy Sue BBQ in Dallas, TX

2009-04-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

With Ike having blown through Houston, JP was left homeless as inbound traffic was blocked through at least Monday. With no other real choice, he decided that the best thing to do would be to “telecommute” and continue on with me to Memphis. There was a slight feeling of guilt we had about enjoying our gluttonous voyage while so many were having their homes ravaged by devastation. But the human mind has an amazing capacity for shallowness when things are out of sight, and this was the case as we eagerly headed toward the land of pork barbecue.

En route we visited JP’s family in Dallas, ending up at a Purcell family staple, Peggy Sue BBQ. Peggy Sue was an unexpected addition to the tour, a sponsor’s exemption if you will. Set just outside of SMU’s campus, it has a small town feel in the middle of the richest area of Dallas.

We had a mix of brisket, ribs and chicken. All of them were very good, but none would make the favorite list at the end of the trip.

Memphis

2009-04-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

I could barely control my excitement when I thought about the Memphis leg of the tour. The phrase “puppy with two peters” comes to mind. I had grown up on Memphis-style barbecue and pork barbecue in general. While I loved some of the brisket in Texas, it’s just a different flavor than what my mind conjures up when I hear the word barbecue.

I decided that at each place we would go with the house specialty, and in cases where they did everything, we would try the ribs half & half (dry & wet) and either a pulled pork sandwich or just pulled pork. There’s great debate in Memphis over wet or dry ribs. To me, the best ribs are dry with a little bit of sauce added to taste at the table.

Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Q in Memphis, TN

2009-04-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Even if you haven’t heard of Interstate Bar-B-Q, you probably have heard of the Neely Family or seen the Neelys on the Food Network and the Travel Channel. It all started with Jim Neely in 1972 at Interstate Barbecue. A successful insurance agency owner, Jim bought a grocery store in a bad neighborhood and transformed it into a barbecue institution. Over the years, his nephews started Neely’s Barbecue in Memphis and Nashville Tennessee, and he opened Jay Bee’s BBQ in California. Then nephew Pat and his wife Gina (Neely’s Bar-B-Que) got a TV show “Down Home with the Neelys” and the family name became nationally known.

But it all started at Interstate Bar-B-Q, and that’s the first place we headed on our tour of Memphis.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I had planned on doing Neely’s on the second day, but let’s just say JP and I had a little fun when we first arrived in Memphis. Here are two pieces of free advice:

1. Cozy Corner is located at 745 N. Parkway, not 745 S. Parkway. JP and I drove around for an hour trying to find Cozy Corner at the latter. If you have seen the scene in Vacation where Chevy Chase pulls up for directions in St. Louis, you have an idea of how we felt at the mythical 745 S. Parkway location.
2. Cozy Corner and Payne’s are closed on Mondays. It’s quite frustrating when you drive around for an hour risking your life at the wrong location, only to arrive at the right address and find it closed. It’s downright crushing to drive another twenty minutes or so to another location to find it closed as well. Live and learn.

When we pulled up to Interstate, I could have eaten the ass end of a rhino. Luckily they were serving delicious, delicious barbecue, so I was spared that experience.

Interstate is what barbecue should be about. Pickups and BMWs in the parking lot is always a good sign. Not to wax sentimental on you, but one of the great things about barbecue is that it brings people from all ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds together. My nose welcomed the smell of pork barbecue, and we quickly sat down and placed our order of pork sandwiches, ribs and Interstate’s original, barbecue spaghetti.

The walls are adorned with pictures of celebrities and local civic leaders. We saw blues legends like BB King and Bobby “Blue” Bland, Mike Tyson (pre-facial tattoo) and our favorite M.C.Hammer.

The food came out and I was in heaven. The ribs are served wet, which isn’t a bad thing considering how good Jim Neely’s sauce is. While they were a little tough, they had a great flavor. The BBQ Spaghetti is an acquired taste, with probably a little too much sauce for the average person. But you have to try it, because it’s on the menu.

The star of the show is the pork sandwich, which comes with sauce and slaw on it. I can’t describe how good the combination of the smoky meat, slightly sweet sauce and crunchy slaw tastes. It’s otherworldly. It’s also pretty huge, so brace your self.

After we ate, I awkwardly poked my way around in the serving area to talk with Jim Neely, hoping to get a photo. After talking for a minute, I hesitantly asked if I c ould see his pits (the ones he cooks meat on). To my surprise, he graciously spent the next 20 minutes showing me and JP around the back of his restaurant. He proudly showed us the pits he had built specifically for the restaurant. He has two inside and more outside. He showed us the new additions to the restaurant and talked in generalities about the secrets to his success…how his pits keep the moisture locked in with the vapors from the dripping grease.

For a barbecue geek like me, having a personal tour of Interstate led by the Godfather of Memphis Barbecue is about as good as it gets. I know. I’m a little off.

Interstate had the best pork sandwich of the tour. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

Bar-B-Q Shop

2009-04-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

On our tour of Interstate’s inner workings, I asked Jim Neely about the Bar-B-Q Shop in Midtown. He said it was one of the few places he recommended folks go other than his family’s shops. When you get a positive recommendation from a barbecue owner about another place, you should go. Don’t ask questions, just go.

So that’s what we did, leaving Interstate immediately and heading to Midtown Memphis. The Bar-B-Q Shop has been around for years, and exists as a very well kept secret to folks outside of town. But if you are ever in Memphis, you simply must go there.

As you walk in, you see the interior is full of dark wood and red painted walls, which creates a warm, cozy feel in the place. Then you notice that the wooden benches they use for tables are old church pews. And a close look over to the bar will cause most Catholics to do a double take, as the back of the bar is a converted confessional unit. Absolutely brilliant.

It’s under that backdrop that owner Eric Vernon and family have been serving what I believe is the best barbecue I’ve ever eaten. Eric bought the restaurant from his parents after getting his MBA from the University of Memphis. Unlike some of the owners I met on the tour, Eric was incredibly friendly from the beginning. I told him about what I was doing, and I showed him some of the pictures from the places I had visited. He told us about the history of his restaurant and how he came to owning the place after a venture outside of the family business.

Eric took us on a tour of their pits. They have an old pit up front where they keep some of their meat, and a new Southern Pride smoker in the back that has made life a lot easier for their pitmaster. Eric personally makes all of their sauce by hand, and it’s ridiculously good. He makes hot and regular, and I would caution against taking a heaping tablespoon of the hot before your drinks have arrived (trust me). I tried like hell to get him to tell me what was in the sauce, but he artfully dodged my questions with the ambiguity that would make a White House press secretary proud. Just as he should have.

We ordered half and half ribs and pulled pork, and as I anxiously waited for the food I took my first sip of sweet tea. That’s when I had to cry “uncle” for the first time in 20 years of drinking the sugary, Southern goodness. Most people say that sweet tea isn’t right unless there’s enough sugar to make the spoon stand up in the middle of the glass. At the Bar-B-Shop, the spoon might not even make it through the ice. The outgoing waiter saw my reaction, laughed and generously offered to make me a glass of ½ sweet, ½ unsweet. He explained that many of the regulars love the sweet tea, but a lot of folks take it ½ and ½. The new concoction was perfect, but I must admit I felt a bit of shame at my request.

The food arrived looking like a picture out of a magazine. I went first for a dry rib with a little bit of sauce, and I wanted to fall out of my chair…er, pew. It was the perfect combination of smoke, meat and spice. The dry rub formed a slightly crispy crust that gave way to succulent, smoky goodness. The smoke ring permeated the meat almost to the bone, and the ribs were meaty and delicious. It was barbecue heaven. The wet ribs were also fantastic, but I’m partial to the flavors and texture of the dry ribs with a little bit of sauce.

The pulled pork was phenomenal. It was pure gossamer, the most tender meat I’ve ever put in my mouth. The smoke flavor and spices all worked together to make my stomach forget that this was the second full meal in an hour. Like Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I couldn’t help myself. I had to have more. Luckily JP has a human-size stomach, so I was able to throw down a good portion of his share as well.

There are certain times in life where you find yourself in the presence of greatness. For some it may watching the Northern lights or standing on the beach at sunset. For others it might be seeing their newborn child for the first time. For me that day, it was eating the dry ribs and pulled pork at the Bar-B-Q Shop. Yes, I have a problem.

I bought two t-shirts and promised Eric that I would do my best to steer all of my friends his way. Now that I have seen the light, I can’t imagine ever making a trip to Memphis without visiting the Bar-B-Q shop.

I hope you find your way to this hidden jewel on the Memphis barbecue circuit. Since the tour I have been a second time, and it lived up to the ridiculously high bar that I set for it.

Tommy

2009-04-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of our meal, I was blessed with the opportunity to meet JP’s friend Tommy. They met several years ago while interning together, so when JP decided to come along to Memphis he called Tommy to see if we could crash with him.

I will be forever grateful that he did. If someone ever made this trip into a movie, Tommy would be the cameo character that steals the show. A late-twenties guy working for Federal Express, Tommy’s life is one big juxtaposition of wonderful curiosities.

A jovial and fun loving guy, Tommy lives by himself in the close suburbs of Memphis. His apartment should be listed in wikopedia under the definition of how not to impress a woman.

It’s not that his place is dirty or that it’s not nice. Far from it. Tommy has two cars parked out front. One is a 7 series BMW and the other is a 90’s Ford Taurus that he drives in town. He has a 60 inch TV that takes up an entire wall, but he doesn’t have cable. His fridge is baren but for some beer, condiments and frozen vegetables. On his walls are a map of the US, a couple of pictures of Fedex planes and a Memphis Grizzlies’ mascot growth poster. It’s the type of décor that necessitates a woman being near blackout drunk in order not to notice as she’s quickly being led up to the bedroom.

Of course at that point she would bump into the empty beer keg at the foot of the bed that currently serves as an armoir. That’s assuming she made it over the bunker of dirty clothes that would protect a sleeping Tommy from all but the most tenacious of intruders.

The crown jewel of the apartment is undoubtedly the ceiling of the shower. When Tommy said “there’s a little bit of paint peeling off the ceiling”, I knew I was in for a real treat. It did not disappoint. The ceiling looked like someone had thrown thousands of paint chips on a canvas of glue and then hung it upside down. JP took a video of the apartment for posterity sake. It will go down in the bachelor hall of fame. Bud Light should do a commercial in honor of Tommy. His story needs to be told.

Tommy served admirably in his role of host, and he couldn’t have been more accommodating for our little foray. If I’m ever back in Memphis, I hope he’ll join me again for barbecue.

Cozy Corner in Memphis, TN

2009-04-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

Cozy Corner is another of Memphis’ legendary barbecue haunts that lives in the shadow of Rendezvous and Corky’s. Unless you’re a local, you probably haven’t heard about it, and that’s fine with the folks who frequent this barbecue jewel.

I first read about Cozy Corner in Smokestack Lightning, a book that is a must read for any barbecue lover. I remembered it because the author raves about the smoked Cornish game hen, and at the time I thought that seemed little crazy. But Eric at the Bar-B-Q shop recommended Cozy Corner, and he agreed that the Cornish game hen was a must.

When you enter the Cozy Corner, the first thing you see is the pit. Rather than the closed cast iron pits that most places had, theirs has an open glass front, which if not for the stain from decades of smoke would allow you to see into it. It’s a surprisingly small pit for such a popular spot, with the ribs, sausage, chicken and pork proudly displayed for people waiting in line. Cozy Corner isn’t the type of place that welcomes you with open arms on your first visit. They’re not rude, but they definitely have an edge to them that says “locals spot”.

I ordered the Cornish game hen and bbq spaghetti, and JP ordered a smoked sausage sandwich and bbq corn on the cob. The Cornish game hen was awesome. Well smoked and quite hot with spice, I definitely had a little sweat going when I was done. Cornish game hens are tiny little things, and there’s a great photo of me with the tiny leg in my circus freak hand that looks absolutely ridiculous. The bbq spaghetti was better than Interstate’s, with a little more meat and less sauce. Eric recommended the smoked sausage sandwich and JP was glad he did. This sausage is different than the kind in Texas. It’s not homemade, but it comes packed with flavor and smoke taste. It’s like the Hillshire Farms version you find at the grocery but with about 4 hours of hickory smoke added to it.

A look around the place showed a cop on what seemed to be an awkward lunch date with a cougar, a table of businessmen that seemed quite familiar with the good ole boys system of Memphis politics, and a group in the back that probably didn’t leave very much. Most everybody else that came through got it to go, likely because there office wasn’t very close to this place.

At the end of lunch I befriended the guy at the counter and got him to open up the door to the pit. He told me that they had used this pit for years, and that they are still using the same techniques used by founder Raymond Robinson. That’s a good thing, as judged by the legions of Memphis folks who swear by the Cozy Corner.

Payne's in Memphis

2009-04-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

From Cozy Corner we headed to Payne’s. Having been to both of our lunch stops the previous day, we made much better time. Payne’s is under the barbecue radar even for a lot of Memphians, and as you pull up you’ll know why.

It’s a cinder block building in the middle of an industrial area of town. The building is painted white with Payne’s in red and a small red awning next to the entrance. When you walk inside, you see that they certainly didn’t blow the budget on decorating. There is a counter that you order from, and just to the left is the pit that is built into the wall. There are a few tables and mismatched chairs for dining in, but it’s unlikely that many people exercise that option. The Monet print on the wall is a nice touch.

I heard about Payne’s from a guy I met a guy in Colorado that was from Memphis, and during our 45 minute barbecue conversation he kept coming back to Payne’s over and over as a place I had to go. So under his direction we anxiously entered Payne’s.

The lady that greeted us had a smile that I wish I could have taken home for a rainy day. She had an infectious personality, happily talking about how they have been smoking their shoulders over hickory in this pit for years and how they chop your pork right when you order your sandwich.

I ordered one sandwich that the two of us were going to split. After waiting a couple of minutes, two sandwiches appeared on the counter, which JP and I took as a clear sign to take off our skirts and grow a pair.

Unfortunately the barbecue style at Payne’s just wasn’t my cup of tea. The pork was chopped with the skin, giving the meat a crunchy texture that I just couldn’t get into. The slaw that came on top was overpoweringly sweet and took away from the smoke flavor of the pork. After a couple of bites, we both decided to take our sandwiches to go, which was our nice way of not throwing away half of it in front of our kind host.

You win some and you lose some when you’re on a barbecue tour. While for many folks Payne’s is a W, for me and JP it fell in the L column.

Rendezvous in Memphis, TN

2009-04-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

The Rendezvous is one of the more famous barbecue restaurants in the country, on par with Arthur Bryant’s and Lexington #1 in their respective regions. A common question in Memphis is Corky’s or Rendezvous? For me, the answer has always been the Rendezvous.

My love affair with Rendezvous started as a senior in high school when I was on a visit to Rhodes college. I went with a family friend who had been going there for years, and we drank pitchers of Michelob (all they serve on draft) and threw down cheese plates and ribs. This is a good night anytime, but when you’re eighteen years old and drinking in a restaurant for the first time, it instantly shoots up to legendary status.

Rendezvous is set in an alley across from the Peabody Hotel. As you walk down Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous Alley, the smell of charcoal, pork and Rendezvous’ spice mix wafts through the air. It’s an unforgettable smell.

If you go on a Friday or Saturday, you’ll likely have at least an hour wait, which is amazing because the place is absolutely enormous. Luckily they have an upstairs level where you can grab a pitcher of Michelob and sometimes even a cheese plate. You could also walk over to the Peabody for a drink and sit next to the famous duck fountain, but make sure you’re back in time.

Once your name is called, you walk downstairs to the main dining room and are overwhelmed by the sights, smells and sounds. Make sure you look back over your right shoulder to see the charcoal pits filled with loin back ribs. The décor on the walls is an eclectic mix of random pictures and well, just random crap. It looks like someone went into a vintage junk store and bought one of everything to hang on the walls. Its pretty cool.

The waiters are a Memphis tradition. Legend has it that the jobs are handed down through family connections and that most make six figures. This seems ridiculous at first, but when you start doing the math, you start to think it might be possible. Most of the staff has been there forever and all but one has an initial gruff greeting that says “hurry up and order”. They seem to be testing you out a bit. If you roll with it and your group is out to have a good time, they soon drop the attitude and become quick with a joke…and even quicker with your next pitcher of Michelob.

Then there’s Percy. He just can’t help but smile all the time. You hope he comes to your table often because he’s the kind of guy that helps white people loosen up and tap into that inner soul that we all long to let loose. His infectious personality also leads to you ordering one more pitcher of Michelob than you need, but that’s a problem for in the morning.

While they have other things on the menu, the only thing I’ve tried is the cheese plate and the ribs. The cheese plate is simply long rectangles of cheddar cheese, smoked sausage and dill pickles covered with a dusting of Rendezvous rub. The recommended method is to put some cheese and sausage on a Saltine, pour a little bit of their sauce on it and try to cram it all in your mouth at once. It’s fantastic.

Rendezvous serves only dry ribs. They cook the ribs over charcoal for a couple of hours, baste them with a hot vinegar and water mixture, and then apply a generous amount of rub. I recommend adding sauce to them. The sauce and rub have a very distinctive flavor that can become addictive.

Ten years ago, I thought Rendezvous’ ribs were the best in the world, and many people still feel the same way. But as my barbecue horizons have been broadened, I’ve come to realize that Rendezvous doesn’t really serve barbecued ribs. They serve slow grilled ribs with a great rub and sauce. It still tastes very good, but it lacks the true smoke flavor that ribs like the Bar-B-Q Shop have.

On this visit, Tommy JP and I joined my friend John and we polished off several pitchers of beer, a couple of cheese plates and four full orders of ribs. John has been in Memphis for over 15 years, and he agreed with my sentiment that Rendezvous is a great experience, but nowhere near the best barbecue in town.

Rendezvous is a must if you’re going to Memphis. It had the best atmosphere of any place on the trip and I’ll likely go back every time I visit because it’s always a good time. I’ll just make sure I hit the Bar-B-Q shop for lunch.

Prince's Hot Chicken in Nashville, TN

2009-04-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

The next day JP and I reluctantly bid adieu to Tommy and his shrine to bachelordom. After thirteen meals of barbecue in six days, my body needed a break. What it needed was a salad and a treadmill, but what it got was Prince’s Hot Fried Chicken.

Prince’s is a Nashville institution. They fry their chicken in cast iron skillets, adding the requested level of spice to each order. The heat ranges from mild to extra hot and they cook each order from scratch, which often takes 30-45 minutes. They have vending machines for drinks and a few tables at which you can dine.

I will always remember my first trip for three reasons. First, its location is just off Dickerson Road, which at the time was notorious for hookers. We passed two on the way.

Second, as my friend Bill and I walked up to the line of people waiting, we asked innocently enough “is the chicken really that hot?” A grizzly looking man in camouflage scowled at us city boys for a minute before begrudgingly responding “you bet yer dick it’s hot”. To this day Bill and I still use that line.

The third reason I’ll remember Prince’s was that the chicken wasn’t just hot, it was incendiary. Bill ordered a full bird “as hot as you can make it”, which we would later realize was just plain dumb. When it arrived the lady at the counter looked at us and said “boy you gonna get the mud butt!”. Within minutes I had sweat pouring down my face and snot dripping from my nose. The heat became so overpowering that I actually thought my lips might be peeling away. I remember that the only relief came from Bill’s intermittent deep exhales, which would blow cool air on my face. When you are in desperate situations, it’s amazing how you take comfort in the most awkward of pleasures.

I called ahead as we drew close to Nashville, ordering two medium breast quarters to go. When we got home and unwrapped the almost crimson colored treat, it proudly sat on top of two pieces of white bread, which soak up the grease and spices. As I bit into the crispy chicken, my mouth was met with a mix of salty, spicy, pan fried goodness. Then the heat hit me. I explained to JP that the levels of heat were kind of on an “ish” scale, and that today’s medium was definitely trending towards hot. As sweat started beading up on my forehead, I knew we were in for the taste bud equivalent of an ass kicking, and we got a good one. The burn kept building with each bite, but with a lot of milk and water, we made it through, right down to the bright orange, grease soaked piece of white bread goodness.

After you eat Prince’s chicken, your body goes into a state of shock. Your stomach has turned into a volcano of fiery acid, you’re bloated from the ridiculous amount of water and milk you drank to cool the flames, and you have this crazy rush of endorphins from the peppers. In a sadistic kind of way, I really like the feeling.

If you’re ever in Nashville, I recommend making a jaunt to Prince’s, or better yet, come in the summer for the Hot Chicken Festival and sample all of the Nashville area’s best hot chicken.

Fat Matt's Rib Shack in Atlanta, GA

2009-04-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

After bidding adieu to JP and taking a four day break from the tour, I headed to Atlanta to visit some friends and try some Georgia barbecue. This wasn’t a planned stop on the barbecue tour, but I figured I might as well sample a few places while I was down there.

For being the largest city in the southeast, Atlanta is a relative disappointment on the barbecue scene. There are no legendary barbecue spots, so we made do with the best of what we could find.

Fat Matt’s is a really cool place near Buckhead. My friend Owen, his wife Amy and I headed there to drink some beer, catch up and throw down some ribs. Owen was the one who introduced me to Rendezvous back in high school, so our history of beer drinking goes back a ways. The décor at Fat Matt’s has that cool, bluesy feel to it, and on weekends they’re known to have some local musicians entertain the crowd.

Fat Matt’s serves up spare ribs as the specialty of the house. A lot of folks don’t like spare ribs because they have more fat and the top part has those weird ligaments that you awkwardly bite down on and then have to figure out what to do with. But like most things with a little extra fat, they have a great flavor. I ordered a half slab, which is more than enough for most people.

The star of the show at Fat Matt’s is the sauce. It’s the kind of sauce that makes you go looking for a piece of bread to sop everything up once you’re done and it works really well on the ribs. The ribs need the sauce because they’re slow grilled rather than smoked, thus not having a really good smoke flavor.

While Fat Matt’s isn’t going to win over any barbecue purists, its great for what we went for, which was drinking beer and catching up over some good food in a cool place.

Harold's in Atlanta, GA

2009-04-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Harold’s looks like a real hellhole on the outside, which made me optimistic that Owen found a real gem in the middle of Atlanta. We went there for lunch the next day, and I tried the ribs and pork, with a side of Brunswick stew.

I’m not a big Brunswick stew fan, but I figured there must be a reason that Georgians rave over the stuff. I will say that of the Brunswick stew I have had, this was the best. Granted, it’s a pretty low bar, but this stuff was good. But I just can’t for the life of me figure out why people think Brunswick stew goes well with barbecue.

The ribs at Harold’s were tough and fatty, but the pork had a very good smoked flavor. Harold’s has been around since 1947, and I imagine it’s not because their ribs are bad. I’ll chalk it up to a bad batch, and would certainly give it another shot if I lived in Atlanta.

All in all a good place for barbecue. Just not winning any awards on this trip.

North Carolina

2009-04-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris joined me in Atlanta for the final leg of the barbecue tour, which by that point I had narrowed down to Lexington, NC. When I first started planning, I figured that I might spend three or four days roaming North Carolina, making another 8-10 stops. But by the time I rolled through the state line, my body just didn’t have much gas left in the tank. Plenty in the colon, but not much anywhere else.

North Carolina barbecue is distinctively different from other barbecue styles. While some North Carolinians will argue vehemently over the difference between Eastern and Western North Carolina styles, most places offer chopped pork with a vinegar based sauce. In the “west”, which really means central, they usually smoke shoulders and put varying degrees of tomato paste/ketchup in their sauce, while in the east, which means pretty close to the coast, they smoke the whole hog and their sauce is mostly vinegar with some spices.

That much you can find out pretty easily. But you should also know that you can order it coarsely chopped instead of the finely chopped, nearly minced variety that comes when you order normally. This gives it a little more texture, which if you’ll appreciate if you grew up on pulled pork. More importantly, you can order the outside brown instead of the inside white. If you like the smoky flavor and are willing to give up a little bit of the juiciness for it, the outside, brown, or outside brown is the way to go. My personal preference is outside, coarsely chopped because I think you get more barbecue flavor and you’re better able to taste the meat. Some folks call the outside “Mr. Brown” and the inside “Ms. White”, but I think I’d kick my own ass if I ever used those terms.

Dillsboro Smokehouse

2009-04-12T10:41:00.000-07:00

We took a really scenic drive up towards Asheville from Atlanta, and after driving for a while we came to a sleepy little town called Dillsboro. It’s exactly how you would picture a quant little southern town in the mountains. The railroad runs through the heart of it, which is adorned with beautiful old buildings. It’s the kind of town where time slows down and people aren’t quite in such a hurry to do much of anything.

There was a sign touting the Dillsboro Smokehouse, so we took a detour to check the place out. It had everything you’d want in a North Carolina barbecue place, except good barbecue. The chopped pork sandwich was unpleasantly dry, which was a huge disappointment given how unique the surroundings were. The people were nice, the décor was authentic, but the food was regrettably bad. But I’m glad we went, because I always would have wondered about it if we’d kept driving.

So we headed on to spend a couple of days checking out breweries and mountain biking in Asheville, a town with surprisingly little to offer in the way of barbecue.

Gut Check

2009-04-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

As we made our way into Lexington, I was running on fumes. It had been nearly three weeks of barbecue, beer and catching up with friends. Late nights, little exercise and a diet that keeps cardiologists in business had left me lethargic and longing for a gym and some vegetables that weren’t deep fried.

The easy thing to do would have been to go through Lexington, stop at Lexington #1 for a chopped pork tray, call it a day and head to Richmond happy that I made it this far. But that’s like making it to the Final Four and being content not to win it all.

Yes, I was tired. Yes, I was near my breaking point and yes, I was oozing pork fat from my pores. The poor little button on my shorts could certainly vouch to that fact I could snap at any second, my body shutting down in a fat induced catatonic state.

Simply put, I was a crossroads and it was time to find out what I was made of. In the words of my high school basketball coach, this was “nut cutting time”. I had always wondered what that phrase actually meant, and I think I found out that day in Lexington.

I knew what had to be done, and I knew that if I were going to do it right, we couldn’t waste a second. When I originally mapped out the trip, I wanted to eat at four places in Lexington, and I was still determined to meet that goal.

Lexington, NC

2009-04-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

Lexington, NC is a town of 17,000 people that proudly boasts the title “Barbecue Capital of the World”. The reason they can get away with this claim is that they have 17 barbecue restaurants in Lexington proper, and at least four more within spitting distance of the city limits. Every October they hold a barbecue contest and festival that draws over 100,000 people, which puts it on par with the Memphis and Kansas City events.

When we walked into the chamber of commerce to get a map, we were met by some really nice folks. They handed us a map of all of the barbecue places in town, and generously told us about the town’s history. But when we asked them to name the best places, they froze up like a parent asked which is their favorite child.

While they wouldn’t answer which is the best, we were able to get enough info by asking “which place do you go to most often” and “if you had friends in town, where would you take them”. That seemed to be an easier way for them to give their personal opinion. I had known coming in that Lexington #1, the most famous restaurant in town, would be a definite stop, so we headed there first.

Lexington #1/Honey Monks/Lexington Barbecue in Lexington, NC

2009-04-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

Lexington #1, also called Honey Monks or Lexington Barbecue, is the most famous barbecue restaurant in Lexington. Wayne Monk opened Lexington #1 the day after Thanksgiving in 1962, and they’ve been smoking ever since.

I ordered a barbecue tray, which comes with slaw on one side and hickory smoked shoulder on the other. Another basket holds your hush puppies. That would become my order at all of the places.

I ordered brown, coarse chopped because the traditional minced is a little too fine for my Tennessee blood. The meat was well smoked, though a little tougher (there are trade offs for the smoke flavor) and the vinegar sauce added the distinctive flavor that the region in known for.

The barbecue was very good, but I wasn’t ready to hand over the crown for best in Lexington just yet. In fact, this was my second time to Lexington #1, and each time I found it good, but not necessarily great. Chris agreed with me, noting that he was pretty close to stuffed.

The friendly wait staff kept coming by routinely, and I’m guessing that’s probably because we were the only males under the age of 50 in the place. When our waitress dropped off the check, I explained to her about my trip, and I asked her recommendation on another place in town.

That’s when things got weird. She froze, looked at me like I was absolutely nucking futs, and said “well, I …I don’t know…I mean, I’ve never….I’ve never eaten anywhere else. It was as if she was part of some type of religious cult and I had just asked her to consider that some people believed in something different.

She awkwardly excused herself and went up to the counter, where she called several coworkers over to discuss the blasphemy that she had just heard at her table. Chris got a good picture of the group huddled at the counter, each person looking over to get a view of the pagans who had asked where they could find false idols to worship.

Finally, the man in charge of the restaurant gave a “I’ll take care of this” look and started walking our way to try and show us the light. He turned out to be Rick Monk, the son of founder Wayne. Rick was really a nice man, and our conversation took the tone of a father/son discussion where the father’s advice falls on deaf ears. After trying to steer us away from other places, Rick realized in the end that we had to learn our lesson the hard way, so he reluctantly suggested Speedy’s, the Barbecue Center or Smiley’s, which apparently used to be Southern Barbecue. He gave these recommendations with the caveat that he couldn’t guarantee they’d be good because he didn’t know anyone that had eaten there, but that they all still used the traditional pit method.

We made our way to the parking lot, and as we did I poked my head around to see if I could get a look at the pits. A nice young guy that was in charge of takeout orders asked if I’d like to get a tour, and he led me and Chris inside to one of the pitmasters who was busy chopping the pork that had just been pulled off the shoulder.

I stood in awe as he effortlessly separated out the meat to get it ready for the kitchen. He showed us the giant pits with what seemed like hundreds of shoulders smoking for the next day. There is a big firebox in the middle where they put the hickory logs, and once they burn down he shovels the hot coals underneath the pits to smoke the shoulders. These pits were similar to the old fashioned ones used in Texas. Huge pits with lids on a pulley system smoking enormous quantities of meat.

The smell in the pit room was amazing. Pork, hickory and smoke. Simple, but delicious.

Bar-B-Q Center in Lexington, NC

2009-04-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

The tour of the pits was awesome, but I knew that we needed to move quickly to our next stop. Time was of the essence, and I was on a race to eat as much as I could before my stomach realized it was full.

The Barbecue Center had more of a diner feel to it, and as we entered we were quickly greeted by a friendly old lady. I ordered another barbecue tray with brown, coarse chopped and Chris made the mistake of saying “I’ve already eaten”. Our waitress quickly asked where, and before he could think of a good lie, it was too late. He had uttered the words “Lexington #1”.

The only other time I’ve seen a reaction like that was when a friend of mine proudly announced he was an Auburn fan at an Alabama tailgate. Complete and total showstopper.

The waitress stomped off and told her coworkers, and there were a couple of minutes where I legitimately thought that we might be asked to leave the restaurant.

Luckily she came back with my food, and a healthy dose of a scowl towards Chris. She finally warmed up after a while as I told her about my trip and all of the places I’d been and I eventually decided that she was putting on more of an act than anything earlier. Kind of.

The barbecue itself was good, but in a nod to Rick Monk, I think #1’s barbecue had a better combination of flavor, texture and smoke. I did have one bite that was out of this world, which just goes to show why there is so much debate about barbecue.

I ate most of the tray, leaving some cole slaw and some of the hush puppies. We paid and quickly made our way to the next place. After spending nearly 45 minutes at our first stop, I was pleased that our total time inside of the Bar-B-Q Center was probably 15 minutes at the most.

Smiley's in Lexington, NC

2009-04-12T10:10:00.001-07:00

Smiley’s was the next on the list, and it was just down the street from Speedy’s, the place I’d heard the most about other than #1.

Smiley’s has kind of a dive/old country diner feel to it, and the sign out front proudly welcomed Senator Bob Dole. I’m not sure to where, but they were welcoming him nonetheless.

By this point it was getting near “supper” time, so Chris and I got a seat at the bar. A young teenager came and took my order, and within two minutes I had my third tray of barbecue in front of me. I was definitely still excited at this point, but my stomach was starting to turn against me, having already put down close to a pound of barbecue in an hour, not to mention the slaw and hush puppies.

The barbecue at Smiley’s was hands down the best I ate in North Carolina, and would end up being my third favorite of the trip, finishing just behind Louie Mueller. The meat had a great smoke flavor, was juicy throughout, and the sauce added a perfect contrast of sweet and tang. I went in thinking that I would only eat half of it, but it was so good that I couldn’t stop myself. I’ll admit that before Smiley’s, I wasn’t quite sure what all the buzz was about when it came to Lexington barbecue. Smiley’s did the city proud.

After finishing, the guy behind the counter took us in the back to show me the pits, and it was interesting to see the difference in size between this one and the one at #1. Just goes to show you that good barbecue can be cooked in any kind of pit

Speedy's Barbecue in Lexington, NC

2009-04-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

By the time we pulled into Speedy’s, my stomach had sent the message to my brain that it was over capacity, and I figured I had fifteen minutes until the fire marshall would shut the place down.

Undeterred, we walked in Speedy’s and got a corner booth. I noticed a sign out front touting “Best BBQ Anywhere” and remained hopeful that they would be right, though I couldn’t imagine it getting much better than Smiley’s.

When the “small” tray arrived, my stomach hid behind me like a frightened child. The portion of barbecue on my plate was easily larger than Smiley’s and the Bar-B-Que Center combined. There was at least a pound of coarse chopped, outside brown piled up on my tray and it looked fantastic.

Unfortunately, it would turn out to be pretty tough and not overly flavorful, which is a bad combination. I took a few bites, thinking that maybe I was just grabbing from the wrong section, but it didn’t fare any better.

At that point Chris got up to get in the line for the bathroom, and I thought I would probably throw in the towel. When he came back a few minutes later, the tray was almost empty. I had found a couple of pretty flavorful bites, and though my stomach was beyond full, I was determined to finish the rest. I never really found much to vault Speedy’s out of last place in Lexington, but I was determined to finish the tour strong.

Finale

2009-04-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

As I waddled out of Speedy’s, I couldn’t help but enjoy the sense of accomplishment I felt. Four meals of barbecue in 90 minutes to finish off three weeks of touring. Vince Lombardi said that there is nothing better than the euphoric feeling that comes when you’re lying exhausted on the field of play, victorious. I couldn’t agree more.

What Vince Lombardi doesn’t mention is the ridiculous toll said victory can have on your body. After all was said and done, I wanted to vomit, my chest hurt and I had a case of the meat sweats. Chris wanted to vomit just because he watched me eat everything.

But amid the pain, there was a sense of immense pride. The same kind of pride a redneck has when he pulls his truck up to a friend’s house covered in mud. The kind of pride that makes you stick your chest out a little farther, which incidentally I needed to do in order to offset the expansion of my gut over the past three weeks.

Regardless of the toll it took on my body, the barbecue tour was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Spending three weeks catching up with friends, trying local beers and sampling some of the best barbecue in the world was absolutely phenomenal. Having the opportunity to meet so many of the legends of barbecue was inspiring. Barbecue, similar to craft beer, wine and music, is a labor of love. The people I met truly have a passion for their craft, and while most make a decent living, their true reward comes from knowing they’ve given generations of families and friends a reason to get together and celebrate.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re either my parents or you really love barbecue. Either way, I hope you enjoyed the trip a fraction as much as I did. I’ll continue to post about new places I’ve found from time to time, and would love to get any recommendations on places that I haven’t mentioned. I’m always up for a good road trip.

Awards

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As I said at the very beginning, picking “the best” barbecue restaurant is impossible. Barbecue is kind of like music in that almost everyone loves it, but everyone has a different opinion on which kind they like.

With that said, I humbly submit what I believe were the best places on the trip. But don’t just take my word for it. Travel to each place and decide for yourself.

Best Atmosphere:

1. Rendezvous (Memphis)
2. Louis Mueller (Taylor, TX)
3. Salt Lick (Austin, I know, it wasn’t on the tour, but it really is an awesome experience)

Best Brisket:

Louie Mueller (Taylor, TX)

Best Smoked Sausage:

Kreutz Market- Jalapeno Cheese Sausage (Lockhart, TX)

Best Pork Sandwich:

Interstate Bar-B-Q (Memphis, TN)

Best Pulled Pork:

Bar-B-Q Shop (Memphis, TN)

Best Ribs:

Bar-B-Q Shop (Memphis, TN)

Overall Grand Champion:

1. Bar-B-Q Shop (Memphis)
2. Louis Mueller (Taylor, TX)
3. Smiley’s (Lexington, NC)