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Default An American Barbecue Pilgrimage

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An American Barbecue Pilgrimage
What 15 barbecue meals in a row did to my digestion.
By David Plotz

Monday, May 23, 2005
Barbecue Mania and How To Cure It

Five years ago, I visited an Estonian farm that had a contraption so
perverse and delightful it would probably be banned in the United
States: a "smoke sauna." In a normal sauna, the smoke vents out of a
chimney while the hot coals heat the room. But in a smoke sauna, there
is no chimney. You light a fire right in the middle of a stone chamber
that has a couple of windows. When the fire has burned down to coals,
the room temperature has dropped to 200 degrees, and much of the smoke
has been vented out of the windows, you can go in. My friends and I
would sit naked on the wooden benches, wreathed in smoke, drink
Estonian beer, and whip ourselves with willow branches (all part of the
tradition!) until it got unbearably hot-which usually took about 20
minutes. At that point, we'd race outside and wallow in a pool of cold
water till we cooled down. Then we'd go back in. We did this for three
days.

For two weeks afterward, I took to sniffing my arm, just to enjoy the
incredible, delicious smokiness of it. Once, after a particularly yummy
whiff, I actually licked my wrist.

What happened in Estonia? I had been barbecued.

I am obsessed with barbecue, America's greatest contribution to global
cuisine. Before I go any further, I should make a point that will be
obvious to many: What most Americans call barbecuing is not barbecuing.
When you throw some charcoal on the Weber and sear some T-bones and
burgers, you are "having a barbecue" but you are not "barbecuing." You
are "grilling." When you grill, you cook fast over high, direct heat.
But when you barbecue, you cook meat slowly, over low heat (as low as
170 degrees), and with smoke. Grilling is a transatlantic flight on the
Concorde. Barbecuing is a cruise on the QE2. Grilling is a quickie on
the kitchen table. Barbecue is tantric.

This is fast-food nation, but barbecue is America's own slow food. It
is impossible to barbecue well quickly. It is also difficult to
barbecue alone. And it is no fun to barbecue without alcohol-all of
which make barbecuing one of the most sociable hobbies imaginable.

I am a recent convert. Three years ago, I bought a Big Green Egg, a
large ceramic smoker based on a Japanese design. The Egg is our family
hearth. (When my 4-year-old drew a portrait of me as a birthday
present, she depicted me standing with the Egg.) I smoked our
Thanksgiving turkey on it last fall and our Passover brisket on it last
month. A few days before I began my barbecue tour, I smoked a pork
shoulder, Carolina-style, over hickory. It was good. In fact, it was
really good. But it wasn't good enough, which is why I headed out on
the road.

I had read all the books (Smokestack Lightning, The Barbecue! Bible,
Barbecue America etc.), seen the movie (Barbecue: A Texas Love Story),
and glutted on Food Network barbecue shows. Now I decided to set out on
a pilgrimage in search of the greatest barbecue joints in America, an
R=2EW. Apple-ian gut-stuffing to sample as much 'cue of as many different
varieties as I could in a week, to try to figure why barbecue was so
distinctly American and where you should go to eat the best meat in the
world.

(This latter question is impossible to answer without starting a brawl.
Barbecue is one of the last bastions of local prejudice in American
life: Every state in the South-and some in the Midwest-thinks its
barbecue is the first, most authentic, and best in the nation. If you
want to see hatred, just put a Texan and a North Carolinian in a room
and ask them who makes more righteous barbecue. A Democratic
presidential candidate could fracture the Republican South with a few
well-placed barbecue ads.)

On Wednesday morning, I skipped breakfast and flew to Kansas City-the
northern mecca of Barbecue America. I hopped in my rental car and drove
directly to the headquarters of the Kansas City Barbeque Society. KCBS
is a funny group-a lark that has turned into a major cultural force.
Founded more or less on a whim in 1986, the organization now oversees
177 annual barbecue competitions and certifies 6,000 official judges.
In the height of summer barbecue season, there are half a dozen
contests around the nation every weekend, some drawing hundreds of
teams that compete to make divine pork shoulder and brisket with a
perfect smoke ring (the pink outer layer that develops in a well-smoked
piece of beef). KCBS has vastly increased both the quantity and quality
of home barbecuers, which in turn has increased the quality of barbecue
everywhere.

KCBS does not take itself too seriously. Its slogan is "Barbecue-not
just for breakfast anymore." The office is crammed with pig
memorabilia, including a print of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" with a
pig in the starring role. It's called "The Squeal."

They do take meat very seriously, though. Stephanie Wilson, who edits
the KCBS newsletter, the Kansas City Bull Sheet, offered to take me to
a couple of barbecue lunches. Stephanie lit up when I asked her about
her own barbecuing. (She also lit up: She, like many barbecue masters,
is a cigarette smoker-appreciative of smoke in all its forms.)
Stephanie talks about barbecue the way Washingtonians talk about
politics. She can discourse learnedly on different kinds of 'cue and
recalls past meals with Proustian exactitude. Stephanie is a vivid
example of the recent explosion of barbecue culture . A decade ago, she
was someone who occasionally liked to eat barbecue. Today, she is half
of a championship barbecue team called "Tom and Josh's Orgasmic Slabs."
She and her partner enter 22 competitions a year, spending $500 and up
per competition and driving their Lang 84 mobile smoker hundreds or
thousands of miles every weekend to compete. She was leaving the next
day for a competition 400 miles away on the Missouri-Tennessee border.
In 2004 alone, she said proudly, Orgasmic Slabs won the Michigan State
Barbecue championship, the Colorado Triple Crown, and the Blue
Devil/Sunflower State Championship. Their pork took first at the Iowa
State BBQ Championship; their chicken was fifth at the Jack Daniels
World Championship; and their sauce took second place in the
mild-tomato category at the American Royal-the "World Series of
Barbecue"-in Kansas City. (Along the way, she has appeared on the
Food Network four or five times, she thought.)

Barbecue is Stephanie's business, her hobby, and her family. When she
was growing up, her mother smoked brisket. "She was smoking meat when
smoking meat wasn't cool." Her brother had started the Orgasmic Slabs,
and she joined the squad after his death. Her sister is on the team.
Stephanie's 13-year-old son is a junior member and cooks in "kids
barbecue" contests.

All the talk left us starving-plus I had been fasting in anticipation
of the trip-so we headed over to Oklahoma Joe's, the newest and by
many accounts finest of Kansas City's many barbecue institutions. The
original Oklahoma Joe's has been operating for nine years in a Kansas
City gas station. A few weeks before, a second branch had opened in an
upscale mall area. That's where we went.

While we waited on line to order, I pondered a great existential
question about modern barbecue. The Chowhound ethos, which has pervaded
barbecue as it has other cuisines, teaches that food should be grimy to
be great. Proper 'cue, therefore, can only be found in a
floors-slick-with-grease country shack, the meat cooked lovingly over
archaic equipment by an ancient, surly monster with an impenetrable
Southern accent.

But Oklahoma Joe's was the dead opposite. Oklahoma Joe's looked
unpromisingly like any other mall restaurant-T.G.I. Friday's-style
memorabilia on the walls, televisions playing ESPN mounted over the
bar. After we got our food, owner Jeff Stehney sat down with us. A
nerdy 44-year-old, Stehney only discovered his barbecue passion after
graduating from the University of Kansas and working in sales for
Kraft. In the late '80s, he joined a competition barbecue team,
Slaughterhouse Five, which won championship after championship. Stehney
decided to open his own place.

Stehney was all business. He walked me step-by-step through the tricky
economics of earning a profit at a barbecue place. He spoke
managementese, had no trace of a Southern accent, and wore a
button-down shirt. Yet he makes transcendentally great meat. The
brisket we ordered was moist and incredibly smoky. His ribs were even
better, crusty on the outside, with meat that pulled right away from
the bone, as a perfect rib should.

Stehney invited me and Stephanie back to the kitchen. He grabbed a
"burnt end" that had just exited the smoker and asked one of the cooks
to chop it up for us. The "burnt end" is, after jazz, Kansas City's
most important gift to civilization. Some great Kansas Citian of the
past realized that the ends of a barbecued brisket were the fattiest,
saltiest, smokiest chunks of meat on God's own Earth. Every barbecue
joint in KC-and practically nowhere else-sets aside its burnt ends,
chops them up, and serves them with a little sauce. It is a profound
experience to eat them. Stehney, Stephanie, and I stood around this
particular burnt end and snacked it into oblivion. Stehney talked
obsessively and eagerly about the precise way to cut a rib, and the
exact temperature at which a burnt end reaches perfection. Listening to
him, it was obvious that barbecue passion has nothing to do with
grittiness or ancient traditions, that you can be a barbecue genius in
a suburban strip mall as easily as on a dirt road.

The burnt ends stacked up in my belly and suffused my whole body with a
comforting warmth. Stehney, burnt end clasped between thumb and
forefinger, entered a kind of reverie.

"I grew up in Oklahoma, but I had no experience with barbecue until
college. One day, we went into Kansas City, and some friends took me to
Arthur Bryant's. I thought it was the worst crap I had ever tasted.
Some years later, I was at a friend's bachelor party and someone had
brought Arthur Bryant's, and I tried it again, and I realized ..." He
trails off, unable to put into words how important this life change
was.

He paused and continued. "So, you have to go to Arthur Bryant's. If
there is one place you have to go in Kansas City, go to Arthur
Bryant's. Go to Arthur Bryant's."

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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Go to Arthur Bryant's

KANSAS CITY-So, I go to Arthur Bryant's.

It couldn't be less like Oklahoma Joe's. Arthur Bryant's is on a scary
block of Kansas City. The streets are deserted; buildings all around
are boarded up. The restaurant has grim fluorescent lighting and
ancient plastic tables. We-me and two Kansas City friends, Drew and
Maureen-arrived just past 8:30 on Wednesday night, near closing time,
and it was almost empty.

There was one man in line in front of us. He ordered the beef. The
server behind the counter dropped a slice of Wonder Bread on the man's
plate, then he reached back into an ancient, blackened smoker, grabbed
a huge pile of sliced beef, and deposited it on the bread, where it
formed a tennis-ball-sized mound. The server hoisted a squeeze bottle
and squirted a pool of Day-Glo orange sauce onto the meat, then slapped
a second slice of bread on top. The man watched this preparation with
undisguised lust. He announced to me and the server that he had just
flown in from Virginia, and Arthur Bryant's and its beef sandwich were
his first stop.

I decided I should order the beef sandwich.

Arthur Bryant's may be America's most famous barbecue restaurant. In
1974, Calvin Trillin famously proclaimed Arthur Bryant's the "single
best restaurant in the world." It has gone through ups and downs since
then. Arthur Bryant himself died in 1982. (A Kansas City Star cartoon
on the restaurant wall shows St. Peter greeting Arthur Bryant at the
gates of heaven and asking, "Did you bring sauce?") The ownership
turned over. The food got erratic. But the place has stabilized, and
Kansas City gourmands agree that Bryant's has been restored to the
pantheon.

The beef brisket sandwich was as good as everyone promised. The glowing
sauce-a bizarre, grainy concoction of paprika and vinegar-took some
getting used to, but the whole combination of meat and sauce and pickle
slices and icy Bud Light pretty much couldn't be beat. The burnt ends
were great, too, though the beans were disappointing in the usual
Kansas City style-too sweet-and the ribs were a mite tough.
Considering that this was my third barbecue meal in seven hours,
Bryant's was pretty fine, if not the single best restaurant in the
world. (It would not, I would argue, qualify as even the second-best
barbecue restaurant in Kansas City.)

That night, as I was laboring to fall asleep with six ribs, five slices
of brisket, three plates of burnt ends, a slice of pork loin, a bite of
fish (big mistake-don't ask), Wonder Bread, pickles, three bowls of
coleslaw, and three bowls of beans sloshing around my stomach (and the
remains of same stuck between my teeth), I realized I had begun my
barbecue expedition woefully unprepared.

First thing Thursday morning, I hit the CVS and stocked up on a BBQ
survival kit:

1 box dental floss
1 package baby wipes (useful for saucy hands and cheeks)
1 jumbo box Rolaids

It was a beautiful day, so I walked off Wednesday's stuffing by
strolling through some of Kansas City's swanky neighborhoods up to
Country Club Plaza, a famous outdoor mall. The city is filled with
parks and greenways, and all were blooming and cheery. The houses were
handsome. There were lovely bits of statuary on practically every
block. Kansas City felt wonderfully comfortable. But it also felt way
too bourgeois to be a mecca for anything, let alone something as homey
as barbecue.

Yet it is. By common agreement, there are four barbecue regions of
America. In Region 1, the Carolinas, barbecue is always
pork-sometimes a shoulder and sometimes the whole hog-usually
cooked over hickory, then pulled or chopped and served with sauce. In
Region 2, Memphis, the signature meats are pork ribs and pork shoulder,
cooked over charcoal. In Region 3, Texas, barbecue is beef, pork ribs,
and sausage, cooked over mesquite and post oak, seasoned with little
except salt and pepper, and often served sauceless.

In Region 4, Kansas City, there is no distinct style. Befitting its
Middle American ethos and its geographic centrality, Kansas City is the
crossroads of barbecue. It is where beef and pork, "dry" and "wet,"
black and white, Southern and Western, oak and hickory and charcoal all
come together in a happy orgy of meat.

Kansas City owes its exalted barbecue to two bits of good fortune. The
first is geographic. Kansas City had the second-biggest stockyards in
America, after Chicago. It was also located near large forests of oak
and hickory, ideal fuel for barbecue. The second bit of good fortune
was cultural. The blacks who came to Kansas City in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries brought Southern barbecue traditions with them and
adapted them to the local meat. During the middle of the 20th century,
black-run barbecue joints, notably Arthur Bryant's and Gates, operated
near the old baseball park and thrived. White-owned barbecue joints
followed. In the late '70s, Kansas City doctor Rich Davis started
selling KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce, which established a national
following (despite its rather cloying flavor) and certified Kansas City
as a sauce capital. The Kansas City Barbeque Society formed, and the
city's small local barbecue competitions grew into giant national ones.


After my long walk, I took Carolyn Wells to lunch at another celebrated
Kansas City smokehouse, Fiorella's Jack Stack in the suburb of Martin
City. Wells-who founded the Kansas City Barbeque Society and still
runs it-is tall, energetic, and charming, with a brassy Southern
accent. For a while we batted back and forth theories about why
barbecue is so iconic in America-its cowboy roots, the intimate
connection of barbecue and drinking, the thrilling alchemy of turning a
cheap cut of meat into a delicacy, etc., etc.-until finally she said
the most romantic, and most true, thing I have ever heard about
barbecue.

"Once, I was judging a competition, and there was a box of shoulder,
and I opened it up. It was so beautiful! I just wanted to stick my face
in it. I just wanted to bury my face in it."

Thursday dinner was my last meal in Kansas City. It was at Gates
Bar-B-Q, another Kansas City shrine. It was my fifth barbecue meal in
30 hours, all of them miles better than any barbecue I've ever eaten on
the East Coast. The prize at Gates was a fabulous, crunchy, smoky
sausage, coated with Gates' tomatoey sauce (so good, I bought a
bottle).

After dinner, I hit the road, trying to make half of the 500-mile drive
to Memphis before bedtime. As I headed south through Missouri, I passed
a field of cows grazing in the twilight. Gates' brisket and sausage
were still heavy in my belly. I turned to the cows and said
reflexively, "Thank you."

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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
What's Wrong With Memphis?

MEMPHIS, Tenn.-Memphis was as far east as I got on this trip, which
is to say that I skipped the Carolinas. This neglect no doubt
excommunicates me from the royal and ancient club of barbecue. I
bypassed the Carolinas because I've already eaten a lot of barbecue
there-in South Carolina, especially, where they douse it with a weird
mustard sauce. It was impossible for me to hit Kansas City, Memphis,
Texas, and the Carolinas-at least if I wanted to stay married-so I
sacrificed the region I knew best.

Memphis styles itself the first city of barbecue. It's home to "Memphis
in May," the competition known as the Mardi Gras of Barbecue. According
to Amir Abdol, director of operations for Memphis barbecue giant
Corky's, the average Memphian has a craving for barbecue once every
seven days. (They polled the question. Really.)

The sanctum sanctorum of Memphis barbecue is Charlie Vergos'
Rendezvous, a subterranean restaurant located in a downtown alley. At
lunchtime on Friday, I met proprietor John Vergos (son of Charlie) and
our mutual friend Tennessee state Sen. Roy Herron there. The Rendezvous
is a great joint. It's decorated like a crazy person's house: Every
wall is covered with random old paintings, posters, maps, and street
signs. Glass cases are crammed with peculiar bric-a-brac and
thingamajigs like ancient bars of soap. The place is loud, busy, and
friendly. And it's staffed by waiters who've been there forever; one of
ours had worked there 45 years, the other 24 years.

Memphis is a rib town, and the great debate is wet or dry. Wet ribs,
the specialty of Rendezvous rival Corky's, are served with sauce on
them. Dry ribs, the Rendezvous' forte, are coated with a tangy
seasoning powder. Vergos ordered us some ribs and a shoulder sandwich,
then recounted the history of the Rendezvous.

His father, Charlie, the son of a Greek hot-dog vendor, opened the
Rendezvous in 1948 in a crummy basement. One day a meat salesman
brought Charlie some pork ribs, a very unpopular-and thus cheap-cut
of meat. At the time, barbecue was popular in black Memphis, but pork
shoulder, not ribs, was the main dish. Charlie Vergos tried cooking the
ribs in a Greek style, over charcoal with oregano and other spices. The
ribs were a sensation, imitators sprang up, and soon Memphis was famous
as the rib city. The Rendezvous has cooked for Al Gore, Bill Clinton,
and the Rolling Stones. The Rendezvous ribs and shoulder sandwiches
were excellent compared to what I am used to, but, I must admit, a
little bland after all that great KC barbecue.

Figuring four men could eat barbecue better than one, I had invited my
college roommates to meet me for a bacchanalian weekend in Memphis. On
Friday night, we headed over to Corky's in East Memphis. Corky's may be
the most popular barbecue restaurant in the world. It is also a symbol
of all that is wrong with Memphis barbecue. The luckiest thing that
happened to Memphis meat is Federal Express. The overnight carrier's
headquarters and hub are in the city, which has made it easy for
Memphis barbecue restaurants to express their meat around the country.
Corky's is by far the most successful at it. It ships ribs all over and
sells to Costco, Sam's Club, and national supermarket chains. As a
result, Memphis ribs-in particular Corky's ribs-have somehow become
the national gold standard of great barbecue.

Once you have eaten at Corky's, you may find this popularity baffling
and infuriating. Corky's is a factory business, and it shows at the
restaurant. Corky's founder was a furniture-store owner before he went
into barbecue, and our dinner had a somewhat wooden quality. The dry
ribs were too dry; so were the wet ones. Only the pork shoulder gave us
real pleasure. At the end of the meal, my roommate from California said
bitterly, "I didn't fly 2,000 miles to eat barbecue like this."

On Saturday, we visited Graceland, which, I was surprised to learn, has
its own small barbecue theme. Elvis himself liked barbecue-he used to
order in from The Rendezvous, says John Vergos-though he was more
partial to grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. But that's not
the Graceland connection. Elvis' father, Vernon Presley, smoked meats
in a small room next to the garage for a while. Eventually, Elvis
turned the smokehouse into a shooting range.

Which might be the right thing to do with Corky's and some other
Memphis barbecues. We ate another mediocre meal on Saturday, a dinner
at Jim Neely's Interstate Barbecue, another restaurant that ships its
ribs. The sausage was delicious. Everything else was forgettable,
except for barbecued spaghetti, which was memorable for being totally
queer: pasta topped with barbecue sauce and bits of smoked pork.

We did find one joint in Memphis that hit the spot, perhaps because it
was only trying to serve a little good barbecue, not to launch a
national brand. Cozy Corner, located in a decrepit, partially
boarded-up shopping strip north of downtown, has fluorescent lights and
no atmosphere. But the proprietors-three generations of family
overseen by Desiree Robinson-are very hospitable, and they served us
a mean barbecued Cornish hen and fantastic beef and coleslaw and pork
and coleslaw sandwiches. Their most sublime concoction, though my
roommates might dispute this, is the barbecued bologna sandwich-a
thick slice of bologna cooked in the smoker just long enough to brown
on the outside. Once you ignore the odd, mushy texture, it's pretty
great.

I left Memphis on Sunday morning not at all sure why it counts as a
world-class barbecue town. Perhaps it's Memphis' deft boosterism. This
city has genius marketers. Memphis is very grungy, yet the marketers
have managed to enshrine Graceland as a national monument and to
convince tourists that Beale Street-a rowdy boozefest-is a major
cultural landmark. Perhaps they have done the same with Memphis
barbecue, an illusionist's trick to make it seem more appealing than it
is.

Off to Texas to cleanse the palate.

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Thursday, May 26, 2005
The Greatest Barbecue Restaurant in the World

MEMPHIS, Tenn. to LOCKHART, Texas-Sunday is a sabbath day for many
barbecue restaurants, so that's when I made my monster 600-mile drive
from Memphis to Houston. It took me past Hope, Ark., right around
lunchtime, so I pit-stopped in Bill Clinton's hometown to hunt for
sustenance. Clinton's birthplace, sandwiched between the railroad
tracks and a grim strip of cash-advance and fast-food places, was
closed, but just outside of town I found Uncle Henry's Smokehouse open
for lunch. Arkansas styles itself very pure about its 'cue, and owner
Bobby Redman made me a totally unadorned sandwich: a pile of fresh
chopped pork on a bun, with no slaw and no sauce. It was good, if a
little dry and shy on smoke for my taste. Fleetwood Mac was singing
"Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" on the Uncle Henry's radio, which
seemed only fitting. That was Clinton's 1992 theme song and my theme
song for Sunday, because Monday was when I would make my hajj to
barbecue's most holy city: Lockhart, Texas.

I had persuaded my carnivorous father to join me for the Texas leg. He
met me in Houston on Sunday night, and on Monday morning we raced west,
first on highways, then on farm roads, toward Lockhart, which is 150
miles from Houston and 30 miles south of Austin. It's in the heart of
the Texas Barbecue Belt. Start in Austin and drive 15 or 30 or 70 miles
in practically any direction, and you are liable to find yourself at a
world-class barbecue shop. (It will probably be advertising "hot guts."
Do not be alarmed. This is Texan for sausage.) When I was 19 years old,
I drove through this part of Texas with a friend. Knowing nothing about
the Barbecue Belt, we stopped at a roadside stand and ordered a few
slices of brisket. That meal burned in my memory as the Platonic ideal
of barbecue. It is my barbecue Rosebud. It is why I came back.

Texas barbecue is like Texas itself: brash, arrogant, and beefy. In the
Barbecue Belt, meat is seasoned with only salt, pepper, and a little
cayenne, then smoked quickly over mesquite or post oak. It is cut in
huge slabs in front of you and served on butcher paper with a pile of
saltines or white bread. The best places serve no sauce. Some don't
even have forks. It's pure longhorn showmanship: They are so sure of
their meat, they don't think you should eat anything else.

The Texas idealism produces extraordinary barbecue fealty. Barbecue: A
Texas Love Story, a charming new documentary, captures the cultlike
nature of it, cruising with the University of Texas student barbecue
club and worshipping at the New Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in
Huntsville, whose barbecue side business is so beloved it has earned
the nickname "Church of the Holy BBQ." Every few years, Texas Monthly
magazine rates the best barbecue restaurants in the state, an
announcement that is to Austin almost what the Academy Awards are to
Los Angeles.

When the latest Monthly rankings came out, two of its five "best of the
best" were in Lockhart. A town of 11,000, Lockhart became Texas'
barbecue capital for three reasons. First, Germans and Czechs settled
in this part of Texas starting in the mid-19th century, bringing the
central European butchering and smoking techniques that made Texas
barbecue. Second, Lockhart is where the Schmidt family settled. And
third, the Schmidt family can't get along.

In 1948, Edgar Schmidt bought a German meat store in Lockhart from the
Kreuz family. Over the next half-century, Schmidt's Kreuz Market became
the most beloved barbecue restaurant in the state. In 1999, nine years
after Edgar's death, his children squabbled. Son Rick Schmidt was
running Kreuz Market, while daughter Nina Schmidt Sells owned the
building. Nina wouldn't renew the lease, so Rick took the coals out of
the pits and hauled them five blocks down the road to the massive new
Kreuz Market-a "barbefeud" that made the newspapers and even got a
segment on 48 Hours. Nina and her son kept the old Kreuz and renamed it
Smitty's Market-thus turning the greatest barbecue restaurant in the
world into the two greatest barbecue restaurants in the world.

My father and I stopped at Smitty's first. Entering feels like walking
into an ancient shrine. You cross the threshold from the bright parking
lot into a smoky darkness. The air smells indescribably delicious,
smoke that you want to eat. As your eyes adjust, you can make out the
men in white butcher coats hacking off huge slices of brisket on wooden
blocks. Two walls are lined with the pits, long, waist-high brick
boxes. Metal grates inside hold briskets, shoulders, sausages. At one
end of the pit is an opening, and a fire of post oak logs burns on the
floor next to it. It's a simple but effective method. The smoke and
heat of the fire are drawn through the opening into the pit.

I tracked down Nina Sells' son, who runs Smitty's. His name is John
Fullilove; a more perfectly named pitmaster could not be found. John is
31 years old, and wide, with a red face that is both fierce and
incredibly sweet. He was a joy to be with, funny, friendly, hospitable,
and passionate about his work. We asked him about the cuts of meat he
uses, and John-who's a butcher, too-demonstrated on his own body
which parts of the cow we would eat.

He piled up butcher papers with sausage, brisket, and shoulder-about
20 bucks' worth, an enormous amount-and directed us out to the cheery
dining room. (On Saturdays, this dining room and the overflow room
would be jammed, with lines way out the door.) He grabbed himself a
slice of prime rib, an avocado, and some Doritos, and joined us for
lunch. There are no forks and no sauce at Smitty's. You hack your meat
up with a plastic knife and eat it off the knife or with your hands.
(The beans and slaw you can eat with a spoon.) In the old days of Kreuz
Market, before plastic cutlery and health inspectors, customers ate
with communal knives that were chained to the wall. You can still sit
at the old wood benches and see the chains.

Smitty's barbecue was unbelievably good, divinely good. The brisket,
black and almost crunchy outside, was moist inside-a perfect mix of
fat and salt and meat. The sausage-made with nothing more than beef,
pork, salt, pepper, cayenne, and smoke, was incredible-so good that
my father and I jury-rigged an improvised ice chest in order to buy a
dozen links to bring home. Smitty's meat didn't need sauce or sides or
even bread. It was perfect.

I felt honored to be eating there with John, a man who loves his job
and does it better than anyone, in a place that bears the burden of
tradition so magnificently. I couldn't imagine a better meal.

We headed down the street-past Lockhart's charming downtown, with a
gorgeous library and confectionery courthouse-to the new Kreuz
Market. We chatted for a minute with Keith Schmidt, who's the general
manager and the son of owner Rick. He was doleful and unwelcoming, a
stark contrast to his cousin John at Smitty's. We ordered a second
lunch. The new Kreuz is cavernous-it can seat several times as many
people as Smitty's-and it has a USDA-approved kitchen so it can ship
its meats nationwide.

Unlike Smitty's, it's modern and sterile, and I don't mean that as a
compliment. The menu is essentially identical to Smitty's, except Kreuz
has sauerkraut and potato salad and costs a little more. The food was
wonderful-fantastic brisket and ribs, a great sausage. Technically,
it was probably just as good as the meal I had eaten 15 minutes earlier
up the street, but the atmosphere-antiseptic and
unfriendly-suppressed my enthusiasm. I would much rather have eaten
twice at Smitty's.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----

Friday, May 27, 2005
What 15 Barbecue Meals in a Row Did to My Digestion

AUSTIN and LLANO, Texas-Here's the amazing thing about Texas
barbecue. Even a run-of-the-mill place around here is better than the
best barbecue anywhere else. On Monday night in Austin, my father and I
ate our third barbecue meal of the day at the Iron Works, a downtown
joint with a modest reputation. It was great!

There was a bit too much forced funkiness in Austin for my taste. We
spent the night in the funky Austin Motel ("So Close Yet So Far Out,"
read the sign), ate dessert at the funky ice cream shop across the
street, read the paper the next morning in the funky coffee shop next
door (but we didn't get a funky tattoo at the funky tattoo parlor).
After a tour of the fantastic Museum of Texas-where there was a lot
of talk of longhorns, but none of barbecue-we headed west through the
Hill Country to hunt for lunch. The barbecue in the Hill Country west
of Austin is slightly different than in towns east of Austin such as
Lockhart. Some Texans claim that West Texas-and thus the whole
American West-starts in the Hill Country. The barbecue west of Austin
has a slightly more cowboy feel. (It's cooked over mesquite rather than
post oak, for example.)

In the Hill Country, the bluebonnets and other wildflowers were in
bloom, and the sun finally decided to come out. It was a perfect day
for driving. We cruised 100 miles through ranches and scrub land to the
small town of Llano. We pulled up at Cooper's Old Time Pit Bar-B-Q, a
place recommended by several of my barbecue rabbis. I realized, as we
stepped out of the car, that Cooper's was where I first tasted Texas
barbecue on my road trip 16 years ago. I was so glad to return.

At Cooper's, you step right up to the outdoor pit and point at the meat
you want. The pitmaster grabs it; slices off as much as you ask for;
slaps it on a tray; pours a tiny bit of thin, vinegary sauce on it; and
hands it to you. Then you take it inside and hand it to a cashier, who
weighs it and dumps it on butcher paper-your plate. We ordered ribs,
brisket, and two kinds of sausage, then returned for seconds of brisket
and prime rib. Customers sit family-style inside, helping themselves
from the buckets of jalape=F1os and loaves of Butterkrust bread on the
tables. The place is less charming than Smitty's-the walls are
cinderblock and ceilings are low-but it's friendly. The barbecue was
superb. The brisket was stellar, and the ribs may be the best I've
tasted. (It's criminal that Memphis is recognized as the city of great
ribs, because every rib I ate in Texas was vastly superior.) We also
ate a mesmerizingly delicious blackberry cobbler. It was the first
dessert I ate at a barbecue restaurant on the whole trip, and it made
me wonder what I missed elsewhere.

On our way out, we discovered that my father and President Bush, who
don't agree about very much, agree about Cooper's ribs. A testimonial
letter from Bush to the ribs hangs on the wall. He ate here when he was
governor, and during the vote-counting after the 2000 election,
Cooper's catered a picnic at Bush's Crawford ranch.

We made our way back to Austin, sated. I had driven 1,800 miles in
seven days, eaten 15 barbecue meals in a row, and finally found bliss
in Texas. The four Texas barbecue meals I ate in 24 hours were better
than any other barbecue I ever had in my life (save my one meal at
Cooper's in 1989). I had found my barbecue bliss, and I was done. My
lower intestine had ground to a complete stop, and I had a slight pain
in my chest. It was time to go home.

At the Austin airport, I was singled out for a special security
screening. The TSA agent fingering through my bag pulled out a jar of
barbecue sauce I had bought at Gates in Kansas City. "What's this?" she
asked.

"It's barbecue sauce," I said.

"I know it's barbecue sauce. I mean, what kind of sauce is it? I've
never seen this kind before."

"It's from Kansas City."

She grimaced at this. Holding the jar like it contained C-4 explosive,
she showed it to another screener. "Look, this guy has some kind of
barbecue sauce from New York City or something," she told the other
screener derisively.

"Kansas City," I weakly interrupted.

She waved me off, then said in an ominous voice. "Now, why would you
have that?"

"I was on a barbecue tour," I answered. "I started in Kansas City, and
finished here."

"Did you go to Rudy's?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"You came to Texas for barbecue, and you didn't go to Rudy's?" She
turned to her partner. "He came to Texas, and he didn't go to Rudy's!"
The partner shook his head.

"What about the Salt Lick?" she asked. I shook my head no again. She
made a face.

The partner continued the interrogation. "How about the County Line?"

I shook my head.

"Well, where did you go?" the screener asked in an exasperated voice.

"I went to Cooper's in Llano. And I went to Smitty's and Kreuz Market
in Lockhart."

She lit up. "Well, why didn't you say that to begin with?" She nudged
her partner. "He went to Lockhart." The partner nodded. The agent
turned back to me, and handed me the bag and the sauce. "You can go
ahead now."

-------------------------------------------------
David Plotz is Slate's deputy editor. He is the author of The Genius
Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank.

  #2 (permalink)   Report Post  
Michael Odom
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On 29 May 2005 06:35:22 -0700, "MrPepper11" > wrote:

>http://slate.msn.com/id/2118542/
>
>An American Barbecue Pilgrimage


>We made our way back to Austin, sated. I had driven 1,800 miles in
>seven days, eaten 15 barbecue meals in a row, and finally found bliss
>in Texas. The four Texas barbecue meals I ate in 24 hours were better
>than any other barbecue I ever had in my life (save my one meal at
>Cooper's in 1989). I had found my barbecue bliss, and I was done. My
>lower intestine had ground to a complete stop, and I had a slight pain
>in my chest. It was time to go home.
>

Yup. Thanks for posting this. It was a good read.


modom

Only superficial people don't judge by appearances.
-- Oscar Wilde
  #3 (permalink)   Report Post  
MareCat
 
Posts: n/a
Default

"MrPepper11" > wrote in message
ups.com...
http://slate.msn.com/id/2118542/

An American Barbecue Pilgrimage
What 15 barbecue meals in a row did to my digestion.
By David Plotz

<snip>

> The Texas idealism produces extraordinary barbecue fealty. Barbecue: A
> Texas Love Story, a charming new documentary, captures the cultlike
> nature of it, cruising with the University of Texas student barbecue
> club and worshipping at the New Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church
> in
> Huntsville, whose barbecue side business is so beloved it has earned
> the nickname "Church of the Holy BBQ."



Many regulars in houston.eats have, for years, raved about the Mount
Zion BBQ place in Huntsville. Never been there, but have always wanted
to make the trip to try their legendary ribs.

Have also always wanted to trek out west to try the BBQ in Lockhart,
Llano, and other places, as I've heard it's the best you can find
anywhere.


> Here's the amazing thing about Texas
> barbecue. Even a run-of-the-mill place around here is better than the
> best barbecue anywhere else.


Yep. That about sums it up.

Great article. Thanks for posting it!

Mary--Houstonian for 15 years


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