Fat Boys Bar-B-Q

Non-Quest BBQ No 7 – Fat Boys Bar-B-Q

Kissimmee, Florida

During my occasional travels, I try to sample BBQ at those near and far away places outside the Quest area. I just really, really like that stuff ... 

In the Orlando area, chain restaurants rule. Even most of the BBQ places there have at least two locations in the city – there are virtually no lone riders around.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Why not branch out if you have a good product, and make more profit? Streamlined logistics, rebates on expanded orders for your raw materials and dining room supplies, spill over of the customer base from one location to the other, and all kinds of other benefits can come from that.

Of course, there is always the lingering possibility that in the name of profit maximation you streamline everything too much and end up serving bland mainstream food after a while. Which, quite frankly, is what most of the BBQ places in the Orlando area reverted to. It seems to me that they predominantly cater to the Tourist who has “eating original southern BBQ” on their to-do-list, just after “see all four Disney World parks in one day” and “get a photo with an alligator on one of them farms”.

What a pleasant surprise is was then, when I found this little non-franchise authentic BBQ joint just half an hour south of Orlando in Kissimmee.

Fat Boys Bar-B-Q is there since 1971, it has no satellite station, is not part of any franchise, and it’s just your typical family-owned southern BBQ place.

The inside exudes this friendly family atmosphere that makes you feel welcome and at home. The walls are plastered with photographs of family, friends, and customers, and the medium sized dining room is divided in three rather cozy parts. In the background, you hear a local Country&Western radio station, and everything seems to be just laid back and casual.

The staff is also very friendly and the service is quick. The meals are served on resin plates with actual metal silverware, and the whole place is very clean.

So, I ordered my usual pork plate, with BBQ beans, slaw and potato salad as sides.

Of course, as customary in this region of the world, the pork comes sliced instead of pulled, but it had a very nice pink ring and a very pronounced smoky flavor. It was quite tender, but as is often the case with sliced pork, it was a bit on the dry side. Never mind that is also was less than hot … well, parts of it were actually rather cold. Must have been sitting there on the shelf for a bit before it got served.

As for the sides, I didn’t eat the slaw, which was just too sweet for my taste. The BBQ beans, on the other hand, were quite exquisite, with a very strong bacon taste and just a faint undercurrent of sweetness. The potato salad had a distinct dill flavor, and a tendency towards a mustardy taste, which I really liked.

The sauces were the usual concoctions for that area – one extremely sweet Sweet sauce, one not so sweet and actually a little tangy Mild sauce, and one rather spicy but otherwise tasteless Hot sauce, for which you had to ask separately.

And, as usual, the Mild and the Hot sauces mixed together would then result in an acceptable BBQ sauce.

The plate also came with two slices of toasted white bread, which was very dry and had a rubber-like texture.

For around thirteen bucks, including a drink, it is a fair deal, keeping in mind that prices in this region are a bit elevated anyway. Granted, they could heap a bit more meat on the plate, but that is just a minor detail. The big picture is that you get good BBQ there in an authentic atmosphere. One can only hope that this place stays there for another forty years, as a beacon of true BBQ tradition in a see of middle-of-the-road barbecue chains.

O'Boys Bar-B-Q

Non-Quest BBQ No 6 – O’Boys Bar-B-Q

Orlando, Florida

During my occasional travels, I try to sample BBQ at those near and far away places outside the Quest area. I just really, really like that stuff ... 

We all go through life, deeply troubled by questions of eternal and infinite significance, like “Who am I?”, or “What is my purpose in life?”, or “Is there life after death?”, or even “Is there intelligent life in the universe?”.

When you are in the Orlando area and get the itch for BBQ, an additional question will invariably pop up: Why the heck are they slicing their meat??!

Everybody here in North Alabama knows that only pulled meat can deliver the kind of sublime delight that ultimately and rightfully makes BBQ such a cultural icon in the South.

But in Orlando (and Mississippi – see my Vicksburg post …) they just ignore common wisdom and stubbornly do it the wrong way.

It’s got to be the tourists. No, seriously, could you imagine an Englishman sitting in front of a plate with pulled pork after a long hard day touristing at Disney World and not going: “Good Lord! That’s exploded …!!” ?

So, to make it more agreeable to the mainstream Alien from across the pond, they slice the meat. What a shame. No, it’s downright blasphemic for all us disciples of the North Alabama Smoked Church of All Ribs (NASCAR). And it really, really does not taste that good, either.

Why then, do I even go to these places? It is a service to humanity, really. To warn every self-respecting BBQ connoisseur of the perils that lay hidden in those lands where the dictatorship of mainstream culture let’s only the façade remain, but hollows out the true meaning and purpose behind it.

O’Boys Bar-B-Q (the “O’ ” stands for “Orlando”, and not for “Old”, as I suspected first …) can be found in two locations in Orlando. I was at the place on South Orange Avenue, which has the layout of your usual mainstream sports bar, with flat screen TV’s all over the place, a bar area, posters of local football teams on the walls, between two huge Auburn flags … hey, wait a minute! Isn’t that kind of weird? Can anybody imagine having a Gators flag hanging in, say, any of the BBQ places around Huntsville? Well, maybe it would stay up long enough to call the cops, because surely someone must have broken in at night and place this thing here … damn college students with their silly pranks!

Other than that oddity, the place is friendly and clean, and so is the staff … well, I didn’t really check the cleanliness … you know what I mean.

Since I was very hungry from the flight and hadn’t eaten much the whole day (don’t tell my wife …), I decided to go for the overkill – the 3 meat combo, with Ribs, Pork, and Beef. All sliced. Except for the Ribs, they came still on the bone. But you get the picture.

And, oh boy, for around seventeen bucks with a drink, they bring you a lot of food!

As sides I had fries, because in all of Orlando they don’t seem to know the concept of potato salad, baked beans, and slaw. On top of this, they packed two humongous slabs of Texas toast. A lot of food. Seriously. I am ashamed to concede my inability to eat all of it – I left the fries and some of the beef. Which was sliced. Both of it, the bread and the beef.

So, then I dug into all this, ribs first. Ahem, you know what I mean. First, I ate the ribs, which were not especially tender or in any kind of way of the “fall-off-the-bone” variety. Also, they were a bit too much on the fatty side, but actually very flavorful and I did not need to sauce them up at all.

The pork, however, was in desperate need of a little help from our red sticky liquid friends. It had the texture of card board, the tenderness of wet card board and the taste of … you guessed it, card board!

Alas, the sauces helped a little, but were certainly no revelation by themselves. The sweet sauce was just that – very, very stickingly sweet. The mild sauce was just the sweet sauce with less sweetness, and the hot sauce was just spicy, without any taste of its own. Blending together the mild and the hot sauces, I was able to come up with an almost agreeable mixture.

Which I didn’t really need for the third meat on the plate, the sliced beef. The taste was very savory and smoky, but the whole cut was more fat than meat, and while I like a little fat here and there, it was just too much to stomach. And remember, I already had the fatty ribs in my belly, so I just cut a few choice pieces out of the beef to get an idea of the taste.

By then, I already had no room for the sides anymore, but I tasted them anyways. Funny thing, the taste of the baked beans reminded me strongly of the Chef Boyardee my kids eat occasionally. The slaw was not really bad, not really good, just middle of the road.

The best thing of the whole meal was definitely the Texas toast, which should not be the case in a BBQ joint.

Well, a joint it isn’t per se. They serve the meals on real china plates, with actual metal silverware. It is more of a family restaurant kind of place, certainly geared more towards the Tourists than the local hometown folks.

Oh, wait, no – the best thing of the whole meal was actually the smell of smoked meat that drifted over the parking lot when I arrived. A promise they couldn’t really keep.

Granville's Gourmet Ribs & BBQ

Quest Log No19 – Granville’s Gourmet Ribs & BBQ

Oakwood Avenue, Huntsville, Madison County

The first thing you notice when you walk from the parking lot towards the entrance of Granville’s Gourmet Ribs & BBQ is the big black portable smoker in front of the building.

Evidently, that’s were they smoke their meats, which is kind of an odd thing for a BBQ restaurant. Most other places have a dedicated pit in the back of the building, or some oven inside. But from the looks of it, and from where it is located at the street-side of an old Strip Mall, you can certainly imagine that the building was never designed as a BBQ place - dry cleaner would be my guess. So they had to come up with a way to cook at least their meats, plus another part of their business is catering, hence the portable smoker on a trailer. It’s kind of the old two birds with one stone story here.

Also kinda odd is that in a place like this, with wallpaper that is ripped down in places, chairs that display the remnants of the whole menu on their seats, with three rather garish paintings on one wall, and some randomly distributed flat screen TVs on the other walls, the food is actually served on real china plates with real metal silverware. And it is also brought to your table, and the dirty plates are cleaned off afterwards by the staff, too. Nice touch, adds a bit of classy-sassy to the place.

Not so classy was that the credit card machine was broken, that the Coke machine was out of Sprite and Root Beer, and that they were also out of a few of the side dishes on the menu. That’s gotta be costing them major style points, regardless of the real nice and friendly staff. Well, I keep talking about the staff here, but actually there were only two people behind the counter, a cook and the waitress.

But that’s all right, because the place is not really big, it seats maybe thirty people comfortably, so I guess these two can handle it pretty well.

As usual, I had a large pork plate, with slaw and the fabled baked potato salad as sides. You also get a piece of griddle cake, and all together it is really a lot of food, and especially a lot of meat, for eleven bucks, with a drink.

And the meat is not only plentiful, but actually quite good. It has a phenomenally smoked flavor to it, one of the best I ever had. My portion came with a lot of bark, which added tremendously to the taste. Quite frankly, there is no sauced needed to enhance the sensory pleasure, the meat alone, which is very tender and very juicy, is delightful enough.

The few rather minor slabs of fat that I detected and removed from the meat did not dampen my pleasure.

That was reserved to the rest of the meal. The griddle cake was akin to a piece of cardboard, the slaw was absolutely tasteless, the potato salad, of which I had heard so many good things before, was actually a quite moldy tasting affair, and the BBQ sauce, which you can buy by the pint at the counter to take home with you, was just glorified ketchup with a faint hint of some additional spices in it.

Good thing that the meat was such a heap, or I would have stayed hungry, because after a taste of those things, I could not bring it over myself to touch them anymore. So, for the meat I would come here every time, but only for that. Obviously, the cook knows how to operate his smoker, but for the rest … let’s just weave a veil of silence to cover it, shall we?!

 

Moe's Original Bar B Que

Quest Log No18 – Moe’s Original Bar B Que
Cecil Ashburn Drive, Huntsville, Madison County

If the old theory is true that the pleasure of a meal is not only determined by the quality and tastiness of the food, but in equal part by the surroundings you eat it in, die-hard Auburn fans will certainly steer clear of Moe’s Original Bar B Que like Saban would avoid Holy Water.

One of the first things you might notice there is the signed photograph of Nick Satan … I’m sorry, Saban of course … next to the cash register. Then, there is this huge Crimson Tide flag that hangs on the ceiling, next to Old Glory and the Alabama State Flag. A painting of Bear Bryant and a panoramic photography of Bryant-Denny Stadium, and some other stuff with the Big A on it, can be found on the walls, too. In short, only Tiger fans with cast-iron stomachs would probably be able to keep their food down in this joint.

Which is a shame, because the BBQ you get there is rather good, actually. The proprietors, three Bama boys from Huntsville, Athens, and Tuscaloosa, learned their trade from a guy named Moses (Moe) Day when they were enrolled at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Aha, you might say, hence the conspicuous absence of everything Tigerish in this joint. Hmm, you might be up to something here …

After they finished college, all three met again in Vail, Colorado, and decided to bring the exotic taste of real Southern BBQ to the Rocky Mountains. That was ten years ago and since then they opened eighteen franchise restaurants, mostly in Colorado and Alabama. In 2010, they finally returned to their home towns, setting up shop in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville.

Moe apparently was an excellent master and the three Bama boys seemed to be his top students – the food they serve is really first-rate.

Other than the typical Southern pit master, who predominantly uses hickory wood, they use fruit wood to smoke the meats. The sides are made from old family recipes and are prepared fresh daily.

The restaurant itself is part sports bar, part rustic BBQ joint. We already established the theme for the wall decoration, and on top of that four large flat screen TVs hang there, too, which inevitably show various sports channels. The furniture is simple and quite rustic wooden chairs and tables, nothing fancy at all here. They serve the food in plastic baskets that are laid out with plaid butcher paper, the utensils are plastic, and the cups are Styrofoam.

The only sauce on the table is some regular hot sauce from the supermarket. Ketchup and the original house BBQ sauce are located next to the utensils, straws, sweet tea fountain, coke machine and bucket of lemonade slices at the back of the room.

Yes, there is only one BBQ sauce to choose from, but that is absolutely okay. It is a thick concoction that combines a delicately sweet basis with a spicy-peppery overtone, without being overly hot. If you like it spicier, be reminded of the supermarket hot sauce at your disposal, if you need it to be less spicy, well, I guess you could use the Ketchup to tone it down a notch. But in my book, this sauce is rather perfect and ranks with the best of them.

As usual, I had the pork plate, while my wife indulged in the Ribs. The pork had a nice smoky flavor, yet not as strong as in other places I’ve been to. Here, I guess, the fruit wood comes into play, which does not give the meat a very strong aroma. But nonetheless, it was very tasty and, although almost a bit too moist, also extremely tender. The ribs my wife had very lean, with a good amount of meat on them, but also without a distinctive smoke aroma, and more on the salty side. Both ribs and pork came with sauce applied on them, which is not the fine Southern style, I’m afraid. Let me choose my sauces, type and amount, for myself, Sir, and don’t patronize me!

With each plate you can choose two sides, and I had my trusty old potato salad and slaw, of course. While the potato salad was not bad at all, maybe a bit too far on the neutral side, the slaw was a revelation. The same sweetness as basis, like the sauce, and a very determined peppery overtone make this slaw a very distinctive member of the cole slaw hall of fame. They call this thing “marinated”, and that is a very good description. It has a very crunchy bite, and yet the cabbage strips are thoroughly soaked with the vinegar based marinade.

My wife had the usual baked beans as one side, which were too sweet for her taste – she likes it a bit more savory. For the other side, she had …. drum roll … banana pudding.

Yes, as unbelievable at it may sound, they let you have a dessert as a side item to your meat in this place. Where was this joint when I was a child?!

And if you don’t come here because you are a Bama fan, or because the pork is so good, or because of the fantastic sauce and the marvelous slaw, come because of the banana pudding. It is divine. Period. Divine. You understand? Heavenly, like Manna.

Oh, yes, and they also give you a piece of home made corn bread, which is also top notch, especially when you dip it in their original BBQ sauce.

So, the quality of the food is quite outstanding for some items, and very acceptable for the rest. And for about twenty-three bucks for both plates, including drinks, the amount of food you get is also a fair deal.

Soon, they will bring this deal to Auburn, as well. Their 19^th restaurant is scheduled to open there in the Winter of 2011.

In War Eagle land, they surely will drape their walls in tiger stripes instead of crimson red, as in Huntsville. But an underground cell of Tiger fans already seems to be at work at the Huntsville location right now – their original house BBQ sauce is not red, it is kind of … orange.

Stokin' the Fire BBQ Festival

Non-Quest BBQ No 5 – Stokin’ the Fire BBQ Festival
Birmingham, AL, Sloss Furnace

During my occasional travels, I try to sample BBQ at those near and far away places outside the Quest area. I just really, really like that stuff ... 

Competition BBqing is a world of its own. The teams have colorful names that nobody in their right mind would dare to slap on the street sign for a regular BBQ joint – “Two Fat Boys and a Grill”, "Motley Qüe", "Smell my Butts", "Chainsmokers", "Smart Ash Smokers", to name just a few of those that were at the Stokin’ the Fire BBQ Festival at the historical Sloss Furnace in Birmingham today.

Some teams wear rather outlandish costumes, some at least matching T-Shirts and some don’t care at all about fashion.

The BBQ rigs you see there range from the ubiquitous black drum to machines that require a Ph.D. to operate. All recipes are of course of the cosmic secret variety and espionage is punishable by banishment to New York, where they think that BBQ is just some meat you put on a grill.

For the seventh year now, the good folks at the Sloss Furnace have put together this Festival, and last year the grand prize winner actually came from Madison. Not that this is the least bit surprising – this here is, after all, the BBQ Nirvarna.

But some other folks, not from North Alabama, can cook real good BBQ, too. And at this festival, you can sample a lot of different styles.

The smell alone is worth the seventeen bucks they want from you at the entrance – after a few hours wandering around, sampling, chatting, and listening to the live music, your clothes will be soaked with the fragrance of smoked pork and burnt hickory.

As I write this, sitting here and still having the smell in my nose, although I showered and discarded my clothes hours ago, the results of the competition are not yet online. But I am sure that the winner is totally worthy of that honor – and it would be no surprise if they came from this neck of the woods, again.

Cracker Barrel

Non-Quest BBQ No 4 – Cracker Barrel
Madison, AL

During my occasional travels, I try to sample BBQ at those near and far away places outside the Quest area. I just really, really like that stuff ... 

I know, I know – Cracker Barrel ain’t a BBQ place. And that’s why I list them under the Non-Quest topic, to be fair. But they are serving a BBQ brisket plate there, so of course I needed to check that out, right?!

Everybody here in the South knows Cracker Barrel, of course. It is a big restaurant chain that serves you good southern cooking on a mainstream level, but nevertheless, while it may not be the original finger lickin’ home cooking of your great-aunt Bobbie Sue, it is still in a different league than those ubiquitous Burger joints and “Family Sports Bar Restaurant” thingies.

They also have a store in each restaurant, where you can purchase all kinds of neat stuff, like John Deere Christmas ornaments, College Football Team memorabilia (Roll Tide!), Quilts, Candy and Condiments.

So, there I was, having a Country Brisket Plate at Cracker Barrel – “…slow cooked hickory smoked beef brisket slices on Texas toast. Comes with a side of sweet BBQ sauce, thick cut steak fries … and a sampling of cole slaw …”.

Well, it wasn’t bad at all, and for a mainstream restaurant, it was downright exceptional. The brisket was very juicy and tender, and it had a real nice hickory taste, and just a small amount of fat. I would not rank this at the top of the crop, but it was clearly much better than I had expected.

And in combination with the very garlicky Texas toast, it actually soared to culinary heights never reached by such a mainstream joint before. You really do not need the BBQ sauce with it, which is a good thing, because the sauce is not as sweet as advertised, but rather on the sour side. And that does not complement the brisket on the toast too well for my taste. Don’t get me wrong – the sauce in itself is not bad, but for this particular brisket I would have chosen a more sweet and tangy concoction.

As for the sides – the slaw is a bit watery in all its mayonnaisy glory, but I certainly had worse and though it would not hold a candle to the top dogs in a stand-alone competition, it certainly complements the brisket real well.

And the fries are just that – fries.

So, was it worth the ten bucks with a drink (take the raspberry lemonade, if they have it …)? Although the portion itself was not very generous, the quality of the food was real good, so I guess that is a fair deal. Another bonus is, that in being a chain restaurant, certain sanitary standards apply – no flies on the window sills, for instance. On the other hand, the big dining room is not the least bit cozy or authentic. But the food is served on real china, with actual metal silverware – a far cry from the Styrofoam plates and plastic utensils in most real BBQ joints. But that, a real BBQ joint, Cracker Barrel ain’t – and the very decent brisket plate they serve ain’t gonna change that anytime soon, too.

Chuck Wagon BBQ

Quest Log No17 – Chuck Wagon BBQ
Madison Boulevard, Madison, Madison County

Chuck Wagon BBQ in Madison is a bit different, in many ways.

First of all, it is Texas style BBQ. Yes, they have pork, but their specialty is brisket and sausage. You order at a carving station, where the owner will carve the meat before your very eyes, measures the weight on a scale that has a very visible sticker “Made in the USA” on it, then puts it on a plate and gives it to the guy who puts the sides on it. In the meantime, the owner has discarded the excess juices from carving the meat into the bowl with the BBQ beans. Yeah! That’s how they freakin’ do it in Texas!

Needless to say that the BBQ beans are the very best I ever had – not only does the meat juice go in there, but there are also real big chunks of beef in it, too. Yeah! Or Yippieh, or Yeehaw, or whatever they do in Texas when something is really outstanding.

And that is true for the potato salad, which is, of course, home made, too. It is of the mayonnaisy variety, but has a nice sour note to it. Oh, and one more thing about the beans, which are the owner’s great-grandfather’s recipe and are cooked campfire-style over the wood fired grill – unlike many around here, these do not have this overwhelming cinnamon taste, but have a very strong meaty flavor instead. Yeah! Yippieh! Yeehaw!

But enough of the sides - although those alone would make it worthwhile to go there. But if you decide to pay a visit, arrive early. They open at 11 AM and usually by that time a line has already formed that wraps around the place two or three times.

The restaurant itself is rather small, it holds maybe half a doyen tables for four in the main room and maybe a few more tables in the adjacent expansion room. That room was apparently attached after the word about the beans got around and the place was overrun by the masses.

The interior decoration is very authentic for such a joint. Wooden tables and chairs, a few very small booth-style tables in the back, plastic table cloths, wooden walls and floor, a few Western-style decorative items – nothing fancy, nothing special, just homey and kind of snuggly.

Outside of the building there is a big trailer - it looks like one of them horse trailers – where the meat is smoked, Texas style. That means that the fire never touches the meat, so that only the smoke cooks the meat. Which is, kind of, the way we all do it here in Bama anyway … any other way would be just uncivilized and not real BBQ, am I right?! Thought so.

Usually, I would have pulled pork, but this time I decided to go with the brisket instead. It just looked so fantastic when the owner prepared it for the lady in front of me, and plus it is really their staple, so I decided to break with tradition.

Didn’t regret it for a second.

The meat was moist, very tender, extremely tasty, with a hint of mesquite wood, and with just a little fat on it. There is really no need to pour sauce on it at all. But if you must, they have two kinds – mild and hot, which are of the dark red, thick, tomato-fruity variety. The hot sauce is a bit more spicy than the mild sauce, but it is really not that hot at all, it just has a nice kick to it, that’s all.

You have to grab a small cup and fill it with sauce when you get your plate after it is loaded up with the sides, so no sauce drowning orgies at the table here. Which is okay, because - really, trust me - you don’t need the sauce. Well, maybe to dunk the toast that comes with the plate in it.

There is also the special Chuck Wagon Sandwich that is not on the menu – just ask for it. This comes with two meats of your choice, and whatever your second meat might be, let the first meat be the smoked sausage. I heard that there are people who came back several times to try out any possible combination with the sausage.

With a drink – you can buy a can of Soda, no glasses or cups here – the brisket plate cost me about thirteen bucks. Not really on the cheap side, but the quality of the food, the fantastic taste, the BBQ beans (Yeah! Yippieh! Yeehaw!), and the really nice atmosphere at the Chuck Wagon BBQ makes this a very fair deal.

Remark (23 April 2013): The now also have a killer white sauce, a killer vinegar-pepper sauce and a über-killer mustard based sauce. If this is not heaven ...

Floyd's Barbeque

Quest Log No16 – Floyd’s Barbeque
Pulaski Pike, Huntsville, Madison County

The food is dirt cheap at Floyd’s Barbeque on Pulaski Pike in Huntsville, my small pulled pork plate with two sides was a bit over five Dollars. And the folks there are friendly.

Right now, after mentioning all the good things there, I should probably stop. Because unfortunately from now on, it ain’t gonna be pretty anymore.

Floyd’s is a drive-through/walk-up joint only. There is a rather bumpy and worn out driveway from the main street, which wraps around the equally worn out blue building, leading to the window where you order, pay and get your goods.

The menu is typical southern BBQ stuff, pork and turkey, slaw and potato salad, baked beans and sandwiches, and all is real cheap, too.

So is the quality of the food. The meat was soggy and mushy, with lots of fat in it and although the taste was not even too bad, I only had a few bites before my stomach would raise the white flag.

Each plate comes with some yellowish concoction that rather mysteriously is called “cole slaw”: That; it definitely ain’t. It tastes like nothing else I ever tasted and not at all in a good way. I refuse to even try to describe the taste, because the memory of that small bite I took is still painful.

It was probably a good thing that they were out of potato salad, so I chose two helpings of baked beans as sides instead. Those were of the out-of-the-tin-can variety and thus the least revolting thing on that plate.

No, I stand corrected – the toast that came with the plate was actually not too bad, either. So, this can end now on a positive note after all.

Hickory Barn Bar-B-Que

Quest Log No15 – Hickory Barn Bar-B-Que
Highway 72, Between Athens and Rogersville, Limestone County

If you happen to drive on Highway 72 between Muscle Shoals and Huntsville, go there. Well, even if you are somewhere on I-65, near exit 351, go there. In fact, when you are on I-65 in Mobile, drive to that exit near Athens, and go there. Heck, if you are on the Jersey Turnpike, turn around and go there. Just go there, where ever you are.

Because “there” is, where Bill Davis cooks. No, he is not the caped superhero BBQ-Man, nor is he the fat bellied demi-god of serene BBQ, and he is also not the winner of the last installment of American BBQ Idol. He is just an ordinary guy who won the Jack Daniels “Shade-Tree cook-off” Grand Championship in 2006, and now owns a little BBQ joint at Highway 72, like there are so many in this neck of the woods.

He calls it Hickory Barn Bar-B-Que, I call it the Big Rock Candy Mountain BBQ.

It is not a big place, with sitting accommodations for maybe forty people or so – if those people don’t mind to share their personal space with other folks.

The furniture consists of a few of those combined wooden picnic table/bank units, with red and white plaid plastic tablecloths that have oversized ants printed on it. The sauces are stored in old soft drink six-pack containers, and the plastic tableware is in a small tin box on the table, where you will also find a roll of kitchen paper towels.

Sounds rustic? You bet.

This rustic atmosphere is even more amplified by the wall decoration, which consists mainly of old car license plates. My wife liked the one that says “SAMPLE” the best, I thought that the plates with “BBQ” in some form on it were the most interesting.

Other tings you might spot on the walls and on the ceiling are old Coke vending machines, a plush armadillo, campaign signs of local sheriffs, and all kinds of other stuff one might pick up at garage sale or two.

Nevertheless, the place is spotless clean – they got 97 points out of a possible 100 at their last health inspection. No dead flies on the window sills here, and yet the authenticity of this place and the wonderful atmosphere it exudes, intensified by the background music of classic Country and Western, Blues, Southern Rock, and the Englishsouthern redneck language that is spoken there is unmatched.

And then there is the food. Let me pause for a minute to pray to thank the good Lord for pork, fire and spices, and that he put people on this Earth who know what to do with it. 

The pulled pork I got there was nothing short of sublime – lean, but juicy and tender, with a fine hickory taste, some bark and a wonderfully defined pink smoke ring. The sheer quality of the meat just blew me away before my brain even started to process the firework of information the taste buds were sending out.

The ribs my wife had where equally fantastic. Although there was a little fat, this only contributed to the overall superb taste. You can buy the dry rub used on those ribs in a jar there for five bucks, which would be an investment with infinite dividends for every serious home BBQ event. The meat was extremely tender, it fell off the bone easily and it also had a crunchy bark that was saturated with the dry rub. And don’t you even think of pouring sauce over the ribs – this would be a sacrilege of the first magnitude.

On the other hand, not drenching everything on your plate with one of the four home made, original sauces on the table would probably be an even bigger sin.

There is the mild sauce, which is a thick red tomaty-fruity not-too-sour-not-too-sweet-but-way-better-than-ketchup concoction. The hot sauce is essentially the mild sauce plus dominantly pepper, which provides a certain spicy tang but does not make it real hot and gives it a very nice and balanced taste. Then there is the ubiquitous white sauce, which is on the vinegary side and also with a peppery undertone. And then – to the sound of a lonely harmonica - comes Cortez the Killer, disguised as a mustard based BBQ sauce.

There are not very many places that serve this variety and that is truly a shame. If it is done right, this kind of sauce is the perfect match with pulled pork – and done right it is at Hickory Barn. There are many layers to this sauce – first comes the mustardy basement, then the structure of pepper and other spices, and on top a certain, very light sweetness. You can buy this sauce in a very home made looking jar and take it home with you. Or you can just come back to the restaurant over and over again and enjoy it with the perfect meat they serve there.

Well, and they also have sides that are exceptional. The potato salad is made of a rather compact type of potato, with some yellowish mayonnaise and just a minimum of spices. At first I found it to be a bit bland by itself, but than I discovered that the salad is in total harmony with the meat and the sauces.

The slaw on the other hand kicks your behind. It is quite peppery with a hint of vinegar and sugar, and with some crunch to it, too. The BBQ beans my wife had with the rib plate had little pieces of ham in it and there was no trace of cinnamon, which usually spoils baked beans more than it does any good.

My pork plate came with a roll, which was very nice for scooping up the excess sauce, and a pickle spear, the rib plate had only the spear.

We paid twenty-five bucks with taxes and drinks, which is not actually cheap, but the portions we got for this were more than adequate, and the quality was … well, see above.

My only gripe with this place is that it is only open from Thursday through Saturday. And of course, those 25 miles I have to drive from where I live to get there is something I need to complain about - a satellite station across the street would be nothing short of my personal Nirvana.

David Gibson Bar-B-Q

Quest Log No14 – David Gibson Bar-B-Q
Bob Wallace Avenue, Huntsville, Madison County

There is one philosophical question I am pondering now for quite a while - do dead flies on window sills contribute to the authenticity of a BBQ place?

They certainly have a negative effect on overall cleanliness of a place, but is this merely disgusting or is it rather oozing a special southern charisma? Well, ultimately everyone has to decide for themselves where their threshold is when it comes to mummified insects in the general vicinity of their pulled pork.

So, another Friday, another Gibson – you can’t swing a dead cat over your head without hittin’ a Gibson’s BBQ around here. This is the fourth different BBQ place I went to in the last few months that carries this identifier in its name. However, the good people at David Gibson Bar-B-Q in Huntsville make it abundantly clear to you on their menu card that they are not in any kind affiliated to all those other Gibson’s businesses around here, and that they only have this one location to serve us.

But of course there is a family relationship to the aristocracy of North Alabamian BBQ.

In 1939, Mr. and Mrs. David S. Gibson began their business with David’s father – the famous Big Bob – in Decatur. In 1956, they moved to Huntsville and in 1960 they opened the restaurant at the corner of Bob Wallace Avenue and Jordan Lane. Today, it is owned by their son.

Not very much seems to have changed from those good ole times, judged by the dated furniture that shows clear signs of extensive use, by the sparse decoration of a few pictures on the wooden walls, and the worn out everything-else in this place.

Up until now, I always thought that Styrofoam plates are at the lowest end of the plate pecking order. Not anymore. Disposable Styrofoam school-lunch trays have just taken that spot. You know, those compartmentalized yellowish rectangles with the embossed work MILK in one of the compartments and embossed slogans like DON’T DO DRUGS, or EAT YOU VEGGIES on one of the inner walls. Unbelievable. They are probably dirt cheap and yes, they fulfill the intended purpose, and they are certainly unique, but classy they ain’t.

Any one part of all this alone would make the place just tacky and, figuring in the flies, also kind of yucky. All together however, this forms kind of an organic entity that oozes the genuine charm of unpretentious authenticity. So, to answer the question from above, I guess dead flies are a necessary part of the décor in those places.

And don’t fret, since they are already dead none of them will hop into your pulled pork. Although, if they did they might be resurrected at the spot, because the meat is just divine.

Very tender and succulent, with a very distinct hickory taste to it, it is to die for (sorry flies, for the disrespect). I had quite a bit of bark in my portion of pulled pork, too, which is of course the best part of the whole thing.

As for the sauce, they keep it very simple – a vinegar based pepper sauce that is only mildly hot, a wonderfully creamy sour white sauce and ketchup. Here, I mixed a bit of the ketchup with lots of the mild pepper sauce and out came a very agreeable BBQ sauce. The white sauce on the other hand is just the perfect match for their hushpuppies, which you can have instead of rolls. The puppies are not sweet but well seasoned, and they taste great although being a bit on the compact side and not of the more fluffy kind.

And then there is the potato salad, which has a mustardy sour and tangy taste to it – one of the best there is, really top notch. But this is all topped by the slaw. A hint of spiciness permeates the fresh cut pieces that are dipped in just enough vinegar to moisten the cabbage without drowning it in sourness. This is really the most outstanding slaw I had so far. Oh, they also give you baked beans with the meal. Those are okay. But the slaw … and the meat … utterly delightful.

Also very positive are the civil prices – for a large and a small pork plate, each with a drink, we paid under twenty-two Dollars.

The amount of food, though, is a bit disproportional. My large pork plate, which was three Dollars more, had distinctively more meat on it than the regular pork plate my wife had. But since she had the better view at the dead flies on the window sill, I guess we’re even.

Gibson's Bar-B-Q (Memorial Pkwy)

Quest Log No13 –Gibson’s Bar-B-Q
Memorial Parkway, Huntsville, Madison County

How often does it happen that you a greeted and seated by a hostess in a BBQ joint?

They also serve the meals on actual chinaware, with metal silverware. This has to be like the crown jewel standard of BBQ restaurants. No Styrofoam, no plastic (except for the drinking cups …), no butcher paper for a plate – I was impressed.

A few months back, I already went to the other restaurant of the Gibson’s Bar-B-Q mini-chain in Huntsville on Whitesburg Drive (there are only those two places), and found the atmosphere to be … well, underwhelming.

Not so in their Memorial Parkway location, which is their main base and it clearly shows.

The dining hall is spacious, bright and very clean. On the menu, they claim that they are here since 1956, and that is about the vintage of the current furniture, too.

It is all wooden, with noticeable bumps and bruises in its dark colored surfaces, but very well maintained and you won’t find quick fixes by duct tape anywhere. It has clearly aged in style and it contributes quite nicely to the overall homey and friendly atmosphere of the place.

The service is also very friendly and also quick and responsive. So, while the external conditions are quite favorable, what about the food then? At least I do not usually go to a BBQ place to delight myself on the view, but to have some good stuff to eat.

Well, do not fret, it’s all here. As usual, I had the large pork plate with slaw and potato salad. They also serve hushpuppies with the meal, and I got four of those. And they are not exactly skimpy with the meat, either, so the amount of food was thus very gratifying for the fifteen bucks I had to pay for it.

Same goes for the quality – excellent!

The pulled pork had a distinctive but not overpowering smoke flavor to it, with a nice pink ring and some seriously tasty bark on top. It was more on the dry side, not as moist and succulent as in other places, but it was also very tender and very lean and had no pockets of fat in it, as I had to experience at another joint, also with Gibson in its name, not so long ago.

I have to admit, I like it when the meat is a bit more on the dry side – gives me an excuse to pour lots and lots of sauce over it.

You have the choice between two original sauces, a run-of-the-mill bottled hot sauce and the ubiquitous ketchup. The first sauce is thick and red, and although there actually is some sweetness to it, it has also a good amount of spiciness, It is not too hot, though, and would not leave a tingling impression in your mouth. For that, they have the second sauce, which has bit more thrust in that direction. It looks like a vinegar/oil basis with some ground chili and other peppers in it.

Mixed together in the correct ratio, it comes quite near to what I would call the perfect BBQ sauce.

They also have a white sauce on the table that is kind of vinegary/sour/peppery, which goes perfectly with the somewhat sweet hushpuppies.

The potato salad is made from scratch, which I was able to observe since the potatoes for next day’s batch were peeled and cut at a neighboring table (as usual, I was there after the lunch rush had been run out, so the crew had time to take care of some scores). The taste is leaning towards the sour side, but with a deliciously sweet undercurrent. Not the best potato salad I ever had, but definitely in the top ten.

The only disappointment is the cole slaw, which is rather watery, with extremely small cut pieces, and without any discernable taste.

But other than that quite miniscule grief, Gibson’s Bar-B-Q on Memorial Parkway in Huntsville is one of the best places to get your BBQ fix in Northern Alabama. 

Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q

Quest Log No12 – Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q
Hwy 31, Decatur, Morgan County

Frequent guests at the Today Show, winner of the 2004 Jack Daniels World Champion Barbeque Contest, Grand Champion of the 2011 Memphis in May Festival World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, numerous first places in National BBQ Association competitions for their sauces … Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur is an Alabama institution since 1925, and we are all very proud of the big success with all the medals, championships, national recognition and so on.

But is it the best BBQ in the World, as they claim on their website? Well, let’s see first if they can hold their ground against other places here in the BBQ heartland of Northern Alabama, before we let them venture out to conquer this planet.

The main restaurant in Decatur – they also have a satellite restaurant in North Carolina and another one in Decatur – is situated smack in the middle of town on US Highway 31.

It is a big, full service restaurant, and no matter when you go there, the parking lot is always at least half full. The interior is dominated by all the plaques, certificates, and medals they won over the years, and the entrance area hosts three or four humongous metal trophies made out of grill parts. The atmosphere is like in those sports-bar/family chain joints, only that there is only one big room where everybody sits.

The meals are served on plastic plates with actual metal silverware, which is quite appropriate for a place like this. They even have crayons and coloring sheets for the little ones. Needless to say that the service is efficient and the cleanliness of the whole place is impeccable.

Contrary to my typical behavior, I combined the usual pulled pork with beef brisket this time, but, of course, had sides of slaw and potato salad. At about ten bucks with a drink, the amount of food was quite satisfactorily.

But then, a few questions arose …

The first question was – what is the brisket and what is the pork? It looked all the same but fortunately the taste was different, at least somewhat, so eventually, after some trial and error, I was able to tell it apart.

Then the second question arose - can meat be fatty and dry at the same time? Go there and find out for yourself. You will be astonished what all is possible.

Although the taste was not bad, my stomach did not agree with the rather low quality of the meat at all. It felt as if I had eaten millstones.

Next question – are the sides as important as the meat? Well, I really do not wish to discuss the sides here, the memory is too painful. The slaw tasted like raw cabbage without any spices or vinegar or anything on it, and the potato salad tasted like it was scraped off the bottom of a bowl that had been forgotten in the fridge for quite some time.

Final question – are the sauces really world championship caliber? Yes, they are surely top notch, but they also have ingredients lists as long as the Old Testament. Not quite your home made, organic, one-of-a-kind-taste stuff, but more like the industrial grade sauces you can order at Amazon or buy at the next Supermarket.

Their championship red sauce is tangy, not especially spicy, but kind of fruity and with just a hint of sweetness. The white sauce is very peppery and sour and also quite spicy, but without being really hot. Both sauces are very much agreeable to the mainstream audience, and in this area they are certainly at the top of the crop.

But can that be all – to win laurels for the sauces and rest on them, while neglecting all the other things that belong to a good BBQ?

I think not. While I certainly would pack some bottles of their sauces as gifts if I travelled to other parts of the Country, or even the World, there are numerous BBQ places here in Northern Alabama where you will get better food overall. They just don’t have the medals and trophies to prove that.

Ole Hickory Barbecue

Quest Log No11 –Ole Hickory Barbecue
County Hwy 69, New Market, Madison County

New Market is a small rural community in Northern Alabama. They grow cotton and corn there, you’ll find the occasional cattle on the meadows in the surrounding area, and the prevalent tranquility is only gently disturbed by County Highway 69, which runs through the town.

Since January 30, 1966, their claim to fame has been the lowest recorded temperature in Alabama ever, -27 F.

But for about six years now, there is a different reason to look up where to find New Market. In the middle of town, right on County Highway 69, under a big old tree, with a plaster pig on the lawn, there sits Ole Hickory Barbecue.

It is run by a former research chef for a major fast food chain, who was lured by the prospect of doing some real southern style cookin’ for folks who really appreciate good food from Boston to this rather obscure place near the Tennessee border.

The restaurant oozes the charm of a country store – you will find forks, sauce bottles, and napkins in an old wooden cupboard next to the soda machine. The decoration is predominantly figurines of chickens and roosters, some pictures with country scenes, a tiny TV in one corner of the room, and they have a small bouquet of plastic flowers on every table. Wooden furniture complements the plain country atmosphere, and the people there are very friendly and courteous, and they also keep the place spotless - which is always nice when you eat food somewhere.

The food is served on Styrofoam plates with plastic forks (I could not detect any knifes or spoons around there … ),, and with disposable plastic cups for your sweet tea or soda.

When you are finished with the meal, you are supposed to dump all that into a big trash can by the exit. Well, I guess it’s necessary to keep the overall costs down, but this is certainly not bringing them any additional style points.

As usual, I had the large pork plate. It comes with slaw, potato salad, baked beans, and a roll by default, and I did not see any reason to alter that.

The outstanding item here is clearly the slaw – vinegary but not sour, with a really nice aromatic flavor. Actually, vinegar is quite the dominant theme at Ole Hickory Barbecue.

The meat comes dowsed in their original vinegar sauce, which is not a bad sauce by any means, but I would prefer to decide myself which sauce and how much to pour on my pork, thank you very much. It is quite unusual for Northern Alabama to have your BBQ meat prepared this way, but I guess a bit leniency is in order here, because the cook comes from Boston, which is not quite the BBQ capital of the world.

The pulled pork is very tender and succulent, but I missed the typical smoky flavor – it tasted rather neutral to me. Well, at least the few un-drenched pieces I could pick out of sauce were that way.

But with the vinegar sauce on it, it is actually quite good. Of course, if you like it sweet rather than sour, you probably won’t go there very often. Even their so called sweet sauce is just a less sour variant of the vinegar sauce. I guess, some ketchup could balance it with a little sweetness, but since I really like sour stuff that was not an option to pursue.

I would have expected that also the potato salad would be more on the sour side, since everything else is, but actually it was quite bland and unspectacular. And the baked beans had a kind of very sweet, cinnamon like taste, which adds a much needed counterpart to all the vinegary sourness that prevails with the rest of the food.

All in all, the Ole Hickory Barbecue is a good example of the variety in BBQ you will find here in Northern Alabama. Their obsession with vinegar is a nice change of pace, and I really liked their food. But my next BBQ will probably be one where they have a really sweet sauce. If you like sour, by any means, go there. Or go to their satellite station in Huntsville, if you don’t want to drive to this out-of-the-way place just to get your vinegar fix. But you will miss a really nice place with style and charm that you usually don’t find in a big town. Not to mention the plaster pig on the lawn.

Thomas Pit Bar-B-Q

Quest Log No10 –Thomas Pit Bar-B-Q
Hwy 72 W, Madison, Madison County

It ain’t gonna get more authentic than this.

Thomas Pit Bar-B-Q on Highway 72 in Madison, Alabama, is the real deal. They are at the same place since 1932, when Madison was just a sparsely populated railroad stop, and not home to the largest population of engineers per square mile, as it is today.

The outside of the building certainly looks like from a distant era, and the inside is also not the most modern one could imagine. No flat screen TV’s on the walls, an old chewing gum machine at the counter, the occasional dead spider in a window corner, and the dust of eight decades on the wall decorations – very authentic and old school.

When I am there, and I go there often, sometimes a thought crosses my mind – was Wernher von Braun, the engineering genius behind the Saturn V Moon Rocket that was designed and tested in Huntsville in the 1960s, a BBQ fan? And if so, he surely must have come here. Often.

Because, besides the authentic atmosphere there, he would have gotten the best BBQ in Northern Alabama- as I do nowadays, every time I come here. And I come here often, and not only because it is right around the corner from where I live.

The pork plate at Thomas Pit Bar-B-Q is actually what first got me hooked on BBQ way back in the day. Since then, I’ve tried many different BBQ places, but although a few come close, the unique mixture of authentic atmosphere, authentic food and authentic history is hard to surpass.

This place just has charm – you cannot pay with plastic money there, only cash is accepted. On Saturday nights, the line at the drive through window runs into the next county, and when your order is ready they will shout out the number on your ticket, and you better hurry to fetch your food, or the next shout will be louder and a bit more harsh and impatient.

And really, there is absolutely no excuse to let that delicious food sit on the counter even a second longer than necessary. I always get the large pork plate, with slaw, potato salad and lemonade.

The meat is smoked in a dedicated building adjacent to the restaurant, and it provides half of Madison with this unbelievable aroma each day – except Sundays, when they are closed like every authentic BBQ place here in the Bible Belt.

The pulled pork is juicy and tender, wonderfully flavored and just perfect in every regard. Yes, perfect. I dare to proclaim that publicly, and I stand by it.

The potato salad is very unique, since the potatoes are not sliced, but diced real fine, so it resembles the slaw which is also diced in the same manner. The taste is a bit on the sour side, but not in an overwhelming manner. That is also true for the slaw, which is of the vinegary kind, as opposed to this strange variety you sometimes find that is drenched in mayonnaise. Again, this is just very authentic and old school.

As for the sauce, they have an original hot sauce that has a vinegar base, and which is very peppery and very spicy indeed, and an original white sauce – which you only get if you ask real nice at the counter. And there is the ubiquitous Ketchup bottle at every table.

Yes, I know. That certainly looses them some serious style points with us purists. But to be quite frank here, although I usually sneer at Ketchup in favor of the original sauces, in this case a mixture of the hot sauce with the Ketchup will work miracles. With those two ingredients, after some experimentation, one can achieve the perfect blend of spiciness, sweetness and tanginess.

The large pork plate also comes with two slices of toast and two cups of country crème, and that is truly a lot of food you get for exactly ten bucks.

The meal is served on those inevitable foam plates, with plastic silverware and a single-use plastic cup for the drink. Well, this is certainly not quite authentic and kind of on the cheap, but at least you can leave all the stuff on the table after your are finished – they have a dedicated cleaner who takes care of that.

But there is one major flaw I have to complain about - they don’t serve Hush Puppies. Given their track record with anything else, those puppies would probably be to die for, if they decided to put them on the menu. But maybe it’s a good thing that they don’t have them – it would be too much to ask of me not to go there every day. And so, I only go often.