Messing with Texas

All right Texas, it’s time to reign back in your ridiculously large barbecue ego.  You’ve gotten too big for your oversized britches and your gargantuan muffin top has spilled over, leaving you with a pant-splitting FUPA.  While you still think you look good, the rest of us are left wondering how you use the restroom. 

We both agree Louie Mueller is a Top 5 spot

Texas Monthly just came out with the latest edition of the Top 50 BBQ joints in Texas.  Only this time they decided to mark out the word Texas and replace it with World.  Not because they traveled the world over and included other places from outside Texas.  No, they simply decided that brisket--and apparently only brisket made in Texas--is the Holy Grail of barbecue.

Having used the 2008 edition as my barbecue bible for navigating through the Long Horn state during my first tour, I have a certain level of fondness for Texas Monthly.  Interestingly enough, they hired Daniel Vaughan, whose blog was featured along with this one in a CNN piece back in 2009, to be their barbecue editor.   I’ll tip my cap to Daniel because he knows his Texas bbq, he’s funny and he’s a hell of a lot more dedicated to barbecue than I am mine. But I digress…

Here’s the truth: most brisket sucks.

I say that with full appreciation for the historical venom that regional bbq debates entail and also a strong affinity for the few places that offer great brisket.

Texas Monthly, we get that brisket is your baby.  But let’s be honest, most babies are ugly. 

Even in your own description of two legendary Texas establishments, you say Kreutz Market’s brisket “looked like shredded wheat, and the smoke was noticeably lacking” and historic City Market routinely serves “tough, tasteless brisket.”  Yet even after making those comments, you put them in your Top 50…in the WORLD… and turn to us saying, “aren’t these babies cute?” 

You justify your claim by saying that brisket is the most challenging piece of meat to cook well, and that because of it’s difficulty, it must be the best.  First off, try cooking a whole hog.  Second, nobody cares about the degree of difficulty if you don’t stick the landing.  

You claim that brisket is the Mount Everest of barbecue and that reaching the pinnacle requires great skill, practice and dedication.   Only the elite make it to the top.  If you’re going to make that argument and use that metaphor, great.  But stop celebrating the a-holes that don’t make it past base camp.

I will be the first to admit that a perfectly cooked piece of brisket is one of the best culinary treats on earth (right behind the glazed ribs at the Bar-B-Q Shop in Memphis).  It is right to give great brisket thanks and praise. 

Bar-B-Shop- My Number 1

But here’s the deal: if you insist on telling us that the baby with alien-red skin really IS cute, then keep it within the family and change the title back to the top 50 in Texas.  Y’all can lie to each other all you want about little Dougie.

If you want to keep using the word World, well…we’ll see you in Memphis. 

Gates Bar B.Q.

Immediately after leaving Bryant’s, we travelled the half-mile down Brooklyn Avenue to the strip mall that houses Gates Bar B.Q.

Whereas Bryant’s looks like it hasn’t been touched in 60 years, Gates is almost sparklingly clean. The menu boards and promotional material give the place a decidedly chain feel, something which I’m personally not a big fan of in a bbq place.

We ordered a half rack of ribs and a “beef and a half” sandwich (thanks to Tim Jankovich for this tip years ago). We arrived too late for burnt ends, so I decided to go with a sausage sandwich.

When I saw the sausage appear, I started to have flashbacks to HBO’s Real Sex 27 (Marr, you know what I’m talking about). The thing was frickin’ huge. Baby’s arm with an apple huge.

I’d never before seen a sausage that had to be butterflied to eat, but that’s exactly how Gates prepares their sausage sandwich. Unfortunately the behemoth’s flavor wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, as it came out a little bland and bologna-like in texture. JP, a Texas native, was equally unimpressed.

The ribs were spares and like everything in KC, they were served wet. They had a slight smoke ring under the rub and sauce. The rub had a nice mixture of sweet, salt and just a little bit of spice. I’m a big fan of Gates’ spice rub, having used it for years on ribs in the backyard. The sauce is sweet with a definite cumin flavor. Overall, the ribs didn’t really do much for either me or JP. They were a little on the tough side and didn’t have a whole lot of smoke flavor. They weren’t bad by any means, but we weren’t going to stuff ourselves trying to finish them either.

The beef and a half was a monster. Over a pound of thin sliced brisket was piled high between three little pieces of white bread. The meat had a nice smoke ring, but it was a little bland and on the dry side. While I was disappointed with the meat by itself, the addition of a little sauce made the sandwich quite good. Ridiculously large, but good. There’s a reason Gates has a loyal following, and it’s not because they serve bad food.

Our meal over, we noticed George Gates holding court in the corner. George is the son of Ollie Gates and bears the namesake of his grandfather, the restaurant’s founder. George was surrounded by a bevy of women drinking martinis and fighting for his attention. Needless to say, it’s good to be a Gates in Kansas City.

When we asked to take a little tour of the pits and take a picture, we were politely rebuffed for health code reasons and offered the option of the manager taking a picture with my camera for me. Very nice of the staff to try and accommodate, but certainly different from the reception we received at Bryant’s. Truth be told, it’s probably the response two jackwad bbq dorks like us deserved.

After dinner, JP and I walked outside, both craving a little bit of bourbon.

If you’ve watched the scene in Animal House when the boys walk into the Dexter Lake Club where Otis Day and the Knights are playing, you’ll understand what JP and I felt like when we walked into the “Lounge” next to Gates BBQ. The music didn’t actually stop, but everyone’s conversation did. We both had flashbacks to Mondo’s bar in Elgin, TX.

Fortunately the patrons of Gates lounge were much friendlier than Mondo’s. After ordering some bourbon on the rocks, the lady next to us asked the obvious question “what are you two doing here?” When we responded that we were on a barbecue tour of Kansas City, we quickly went from outsiders to welcome visitors.

BBQ has a funny way of doing that.

Over the next hour of conversation, we heard as many opinions on where the best bbq was as there were people in the bar. Before someone would name a place other than Gates, they would look around to make sure that George hadn’t walked in through his private entrance.

After finishing our last drinks, JP and I reluctantly said goodbye to our new friends.

Once in the car, we both agreed that in the battle of Bryant’s vs Gates, we were overwhelmingly on the side of Arthur Bryant’s. I like my barbecue places to have character and Bryant’s oozes it, along with a lot of lard. Gates feels more corporate, like the cross between a Sizzler and a Corky’s. In terms of food(and this is where I'll put the disclaimer that taste is subjective), there’s no contest for us between the two. Gates is okay to very good. Bryant’s is very good to awesome.

Roll Tide.

Kansas City

“When you get your head out of your ass, come up to Kansas City”

That was my favorite comment I received when I posted my first barbecue tour in 2009. I knew I was going to upset some people by leaving out K.C.. I just didn’t know the extent.

You’d have thought that I had told some of these people that their baby was ugly or that their mom’s mustache was a little thick.

While I could have nicely pointed out that at the beginning of my original posts I noted that I had already been to K.C. and that logistically I couldn’t fit it into my trip, I instead vowed to make my second pilgrimage to K.C., this time with pen in hand to take notes.

Joining me on the tour was my faithful bbq tour companion, John Purcell (J.P.).

The plan was aggressive. Six meals in two days. Arthur Bryant’s and Gates on Friday night. L.C.’s and Oklahoma Joe’s for lunch on Saturday. Fiorella’s Jack Stack and a sixth to be named later for Saturday dinner.

Before making the trip, I interviewed Kansas City Barbecue Society(KCBS) founder and Executive Director, Carolyn Wells. The KCBS is the largest barbecue competition organizing body in the country, putting on over 300 events a year.

I had read Carolyn’s book on Memphis barbecue ten years ago, so it was pretty cool to get to talk with someone I’d admired for a while (yes, I am a tremendous bbq dork). Carolyn gave me a brief history lesson on K.C. bbq and talked about the differences in their style. Kansas City is the Melting Pot of BBQ. They do all the major cuts well (beef, ribs, pork, sausage) and they also have delicacy called “burnt ends.” In addition, K.C. is known for having a thicker, sweeter red sauce than any other region.

A Brief Lesson in K.C. Barbecue History

Kansas City owes its bbq fame to a Memphis man. Now don’t get your panties in a wad K.C. fans…Kansas City’s bbq trail starts with a man named Henry Perry, who was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, just outside of Memphis.

Henry Perry is the Abraham of K.C. BBQ. After learning how to bbq on the riverboats of the Mississippi, Perry moved to Kansas City to start what would become the 4th main region/style of bbq in the U.S.(Texas, Memphis, Carolina being the first three). In1908 he started selling smoked meat out of a cart in the garment district of K.C. He eventually opened a restaurant, and two of his apprentices, Charlie Bryant and Arthur Pinkard, would go on to start two different K.C. barbecue empires each worthy of a religious-cult following.

Charlie Bryant was the first disciple of Henry Perry. He we would take over Henry Perry’s restaurant in 1941 before selling it to his brother Arthur Bryant in 1946. That restaurant, which Arthur named Arthur Bryant’s, is arguably the most famous barbecue restaurant in the world, thanks in large part to journalist Calvin Trillin’s 1974 declaration that “the best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant’s.”

The second disciple of Henry Perry was a man named Arthur Pinkard. Arthur became the first pit master for George Gates. Using the techniques learned from Perry, Pinkard and Gates would turn Gates Bar-B-Q into a K.C. institution.

In Alabama, the question is “Roll Tide or War Eagle?” In Kansas City, it’s “Bryant’s or Gates?”

JP and I set out to answer that question for ourselves on our first night in K.C.

Arthur Bryant's

Arthur Bryant’s

The neon red sign of Arthur Bryant’s beckons all who make the pilgrimage to barbecue’s Mecca. When you open the doors, your eyes are immediately drawn to the giant menu over the counter where the famed brisket, ribs and fries are being prepared.

The décor is church basement chic…red chairs, simple tables and a floor you can hose off. The walls are adorned with politicians from Sarah Palin to Jimmy Carter, proving once more that bbq is quite possibly the most unifying force in America.

The smell is absolutely intoxicating, making it almost impossible to decide what to order. Knowing that we had another meal to go, I went with a half-pound of beef, half-pound of ribs, half-pound of burnt ends, a full order of fries and a pitcher of Boulevard Pale Ale.

One great part about Bryant’s is that they prepare your order right in front of you. They take a giant slab of brisket and slice it thin with a deli slicer (something unique to K.C.). I’ll admit the first time I saw brisket sliced that way I was taken back…but then I tasted it on a sandwich and have had a craving for this K.C. delicacy ever since. Next they took a slab of spare ribs and chopped them to order for us before dishing out a ridiculous portion of well-sauced burnt ends. Finally, they piled on a huge mound of fresh cut fries cooked in lard. That’s right. Lard. Which, after tasting, we decided is just the way God intended fries to be.

I’m not sure what scale they use at Bryant’s, but I’m pretty sure it’s one we’d all like to weigh ourselves on. Our “half-pound” of brisket had to be more like a full pound, and lord knows how much our burnt-ends weighed.

With the food on the table, JP and I began to dig in.

First off was the brisket. A beautiful pink smoke ring lines the outside of every piece. The meat itself was lean and juicy. The rub was savory but not overwhelming, leaving plenty of room for the natural flavors of smoke, meat and just a little bit of fat to combine nicely.

The brisket itself is very good, but since we’re in K.C. and not Texas, we liberally applied Bryant’s famous sauce to a mound of brisket on white bread. The sauce is incredibly hard to describe. It’s unlike any other sauce I’ve ever tried, and certainly doesn’t share the typical K.C. attributes of being sweet and thick. It has a bit of a faint grittiness to it, and the color is more orange than red. Not overly sweet, hints of tomato and mustard, vinegar for sure.

I’ll be honest…Bryant’s sauce on its own is not my favorite. But when paired with their sliced brisket, it creates a very distinct flavor combination that is both memorable and delectable. You will likely either love it or hate it. I love it. Absolutely love it.

The ribs were well smoked and tender. The rub was perfectly proportioned to give the meat a nice flavor, but similar to the brisket, it didn’t steal the show. While the ribs weren’t quite in the Bar-B-Q Shop’s league, they were really good.

The final meat on our plate was the burnt ends. For anyone not familiar with the term, burnt ends are the end pieces of brisket. While not actually burned, they are incredibly flavorful because they hold more smoke than most center cuts. Think Mr. Brown or the bark of a pork shoulder. If you like smoke flavor, you will LOVE burnt ends.

The burnt ends at Bryant’s are covered in sauce. It’s not my preferred style, because the sauce overpowers the meat, but they are still good. Really damn good. As you can see from our finished plate, there wasn’t a bit of any meat left.

Boulevard Pale was a very good local beer to pair with our meal. Given my new beer endeavors, I pay a little more attention to local brews and have decided that on all future bbq trips, we’ll try to do a brewery tour. Couldn’t squeeze it in this time, but that’s ok.

Our meal complete, we asked the folks at Bryant’s if we could take a little tour of the pits. As we waited, we started talking to some of the regulars. Our favorite was Gary, who proudly informed us that he’d been coming to Bryant’s at least once a week for 59 years. Like many folks I’ve met in K.C., Gary worships at the altar of Jayhawk hoops and Arthur Bryant’s bbq.

After about twenty minutes, we started to wonder if they’d forgotten about our request to take a little tour. Much to our chagrin, Hal, the manager, had been personally sweeping the floors and had his crew busting their ass to make sure the kitchen was spotless before we went back there. When I tried to explain that we really didn’t mean for them to go to any trouble, Hal nicely said, “you’re guests in our house. We’ll just be a minute.”

It was clear Hal took a lot of pride in his “house.” Growing up in the South, I have begrudgingly grown an appreciation for this type of hospitality (begrudgingly because it’s usually my mess that needs attending). Even when good friends come over, there’s typically a mad scramble to make the house look hospitable. While JP and I weren’t good friends of Bryant’s by any means, we now understood why Hal was pulling out all the stops for our amateur-hour food review.

Once allowed entry, we marveled at the famous smoker. If you’ve ever used a cast iron skillet, you can appreciate what an 80+ year smoker does to a bbq aficionado. While not a whole lot to look at, you have to appreciate the millions of people who have been served from the smoker at Bryant’s.

The meat is smoked on the low level and then moved to the higher racks once it’s ready.Hal apologized that they didn’t have any meat on it, but he did pull out a giant tray with a full brisket, two racks of ribs and a whole shoulder. I get hungry every time I look at this picture.

As we walked out of Bryant’s, I couldn’t help but think how impressive it was that at the end of a long week, at the most famous bbq place in the world, the staff went out of their way to accommodate what had to be an annoying request. Not only that, they made us feel welcome while doing so.

That’s probably why folks like Gary have been coming there weekly for 59 years.

Kansas City- Booked

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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.