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An American Barbecue Pilgrimage
http://slate.msn.com/id/2118542/
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." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----- 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." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----- 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----- 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. |
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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 |
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"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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