Quest Log No 58 – Biffle’s Slow Smoked Barbeque
Madison, Madison County
BBQ out of a trailer – that does not immediately garner my confidence that I will get something decent to eat. On the other hand, during the almost three years of my quest I had BBQ at some permanent locations that was also somewhat dubious, to say the least. So I guess the old saying, don’t judge a BBQ place by its cover really has some truth to it.
In Madison, on Sullivan Street just behind the train
tracks, opposite the Downtown area on Main
Street, stands a brand new red trailer that hosts
Biffle’s Slow Smoked Barbeque. The Biffle’s are a retired couple who were
looking for something to occupy their time with, so they decided on a food
truck operation of sorts - only that their trailer remains stationary and does
not move between locations.
There are two canopies in front of
the trailer, where you can sit on a few chairs around a table or at a
bench-table combination. The trailer itself is equipped with a smoker and a
full kitchen. Due to the limited size of the smoker and the storage space in
the kitchen, at times they sell out some items before their official closing
time. As I was there, they only had some fruit punch left to drink, which was
not a big deal, but don’t expect everything to be available at any given time.
As usual, I had the pork plate with
potato salad and slaw. The plate also comes with either a bun or two slices of
sandwich bread, and all together it cost me seven bucks.
Not a bad deal for a sizeable
amount of food.
Alas, the quality was not up to
par. The meat was rather oily and lacked the tenderness I would expect from
slow smoked BBQ. There was no real smoky flavor, and the sauce, while
apparently home made, was just a variety of the typical St.Louis-style supermarket
sauces. It had some spiciness to it, but was mostly sweet. The potato salad had
a mayonnaise dressing and was quite tasty, with a sour tang, but the slaw,
while certainly fresh and crispy, had no taste at all.
I certainly had much worse BBQ in
the last three years, but also distinctively better. So, I guess, it really is
not so much the building you do it in, but how you do it that determines your
BBQ. This is, of course, not really a brand new discovery, but rather a known
rule. And while this peculiar style of BBQ certainly will find its audience, I
do not see myself stopping by that trailer again anytime soon.
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