We've been there a few times now, and I think it must be the best bbq in the 'burgh (caveat - I haven't tried House of Sauce yet). They have the usual carnivorous fair: pork spare ribs, beef back ribs, beef brisket, pork shoulder, chicken, plus steaks and sandwiches. Best of all are the side dishes: about a dozen, all homemade and excellent. Good prices too: dinners (include 2 sides) are $7 to $9, for a lot of food. The desserts sound intriguing, but we've always been too full. This place is always empty at dinner time (the first time we thought they were closed). Apparently they do good lunch business (they have a buffet for lunch, and also on Sunday). They close early (8pm). It's on Washington Blvd, between Penn Ave. and the poilce barracks (in the old Eat'n Park building). Definitely worth the trip! P.S. I think vegetarians will be disappointed - the greens, black eyed peas, and baked beans are all cooked with some form of meat. The macaroni and cheese is quite good, though (if you don't mind your friends gnawing on bones next to you...). From [email removed] Sun Oct 27 17:36 EST 1996 X-Sender: [email removed] Mime-Version: 1.0 To: [email removed] Subject: Re: I-20 Barbecue Joints Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1357 At 10:19 AM 10/21/96 -0600, you wrote: >I'm planning a trip back to the southeast around Christmas, and would like to >get some suggestions from list members about good BBQ joints on I-20 between >Dallas, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia. In other words, I-20 from Dallas to the >Louisiana line, I-20 through all of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and >I-20 from the western Georgia line to Atlanta. > >Thanks in advance for your suggestions. > >Richard Easley >Department of Marketing >Baylor University >Waco, Texas > > >I don't know what your time constraints are, but the best ribs I have ever had at a Q place is in south Ms. in a town called Columbia. In order to get to this place you will probably get lost and just happen to find it. The Jackson, MS paper, The Clarion Ledger, has a food critic that travels the state. He has given 5 stars on a 4 star scale once. To a little rib place called Leetha's. This will be a ways south of I-20, but if you have the time it is well worth it. She is only open from Thurs-Sat night, the place is two old shotgun houses put together, and the ribs are started on Wed and cooked for a loooong time. The only menu items are beef and pork ribs or chicken. The atmosphere is very unique. I don't have any directions or number, but if you call the paper and ask for Epicurious, they should be able to help you. From [email removed] Wed Oct 30 10:29 EST 1996 To: [email removed] Subject: Holy BBQ. . . long Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4336 I found this interesting and thought others might also. It is a bit LONG, but interesting... MikeR. Nuts ------------------------------------------- Texas church helps serve up `holy' ribs By John Yemma, Globe Staff, 10/28/96 HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Some churches have bingo. Some have carnivals. The New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in this woodsy east Texas town has barbecue. ``We joke about it being holy barbecue,'' said Rev. Clinton Edison, New Zion's pastor. ``It is good. I eat there at least twice a week.'' Tuesday through Saturday, three big, creosote-encrusted drum cookers sizzle and smoke under a ramshackle awning next door to the red-brick church. Sausage links, ribs and brisquet are cooking at what loyal customers say is the best barbecue establishment in a state that takes its barbecue very, very seriously. The food here is more than just dinner, however. It is the product of an alliance made in gustatory heaven. New Zion Missionary Baptist Church once helped out Annie Mae Ward and now she and her barbecue help out the church. ``A very large portion of the church's wealth has come from the restaurant,'' Edison said. ``Sister Ward gives funds to the church on a weekly basis. Why, the whole church has been renovated with that money.'' It was a $50 gift from the church that got Ward into the barbecue business in the first place. That was 17 years ago when her husband and several other church members were fixing up a structure in need of repair. ``My husband was helping paint the church,'' Ward said as she tallied a recent Saturday's earnings. ``I came up to cook some meat for him, and people smelled the smoke and thought I was selling barbecue. Then I asked for permission to sell here outside the church. That's how it happened.'' Her seasoning is simple. She has no secret sauce or exotically spiced rub. Her fire is not stoked with hickory, mesquite or any other special wood. ``We use anything but pine,'' said a helper. But somehow the barbecue and the beat-up cafe combine to make a celestial meal. Deep in the pine forests of east Texas, Huntsville is home to timber companies, a state university and the sprawling Texas prison system. A small museum in the town square unapologetically exhibits prison artifacts, including Bonnie and Clyde's guns and ``Old Sparky,'' the electric chair made obsolete by lethal injections. Huntsville sits alongside Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston. From the highway, you can almost smell the smoke from Ward's restaurant. ``Everybody loves it, especially the ribs,'' Ward said. ``People keep coming back. They come all the way from Houston,'' which is 60 miles to the south. Karla Thomson, who works at Champion International in Huntsville, often takes visitors from Champion's Stamford, Conn., headquarters to New Zion. ``We always tell them when we drive up not to pay attention to how the building looks,'' Thomson said. ``Just pay attention to the food. And they always love the food.'' Thomson considers the food ``right up there'' with the best barbecue she has ever had. That's saying a lot in a state with an estimated 1,300 barbecue joints, most of them grouped in what is known as the ``barbecue belt,'' a wide crescent running from the hill country of central Texas to the Louisiana border in a region where German immigrants contributed sausage, ranchers contributed ribs and pit cooking is a way of life. ``There is a lot of secrecy about what goes into good barbecue and a lot of snobbery, too,'' said Paris Permenter, co-author of ``Texas Barbeque: A Guide to the Best Pits'' (Tulane Press). ``A lot of places have been in business for generations, so they are pretty protective.'' At New Zion, six women keep the lines orderly and serve up potato salad, baked beans, pickles, onions and iced tea so sweet it could pass for dessert. Servings are large, but no one gets a doggie bag. Regulars look downhearted when, just before closing, the kitchen runs out of ribs and side dishes. But it is Saturday night. There will be no work tomorrow. Ward may be dedicated to her enterprise, but she keeps her priorities straight. She rises before dawn, she says, ``to spend time with the Lord.'' On Sunday the kitchen is closed so she can attend church. This story ran on page a3 of the Boston Globe on 10/28/96. From [email removed] Sat Nov 2 09:38 EST 1996 To: [email removed] Subject: Q in Cinn, OH Content-Type: text Content-Length: 259 About the best place in Cinn is Montegommery Inn Boat house.... Pretty off baby backs..... The absolute best is in N Ky. about 10 miles from Cinn.. Walts Hitchin Post off I275 on exit past Taylor Mill exit..... Great Q.. Worth the trip... Wes Hobgood From [email removed] Sun Nov 3 06:41 EST 1996 X-Sender: [email removed] Mime-Version: 1.0 To: [email removed] Subject: Re: Q in Cinn, OH Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 365 <snip> >the best place in Cinn is Montegommery Inn Boat house. <snip> Only if you like a pretty good view of the river while dining. The use a very ordinary ketchup like sauce. A poor imitations of KC style. IMHO, Burbanks is the place to be. You get to listen to the Blues, watch sporting events, eat Q, and have an excellent selection of Q sauces to pick from. From [email removed] Sun Nov 3 18:39 EST 1996 To: "BBQ" Subject: 'Q Fast Food X-Msmail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 6115 From today's Boston Globe business section. He's betting on barbecue: Downtown take-home concept relies on price, taste and convenience By Ronald Rosenberg Globe Staff, 11/02/96 Steven Uliss is betting that pushing his slow-cooked, smoked barbecue ribs and beef brisket from a storefront take-out in the middle of swanky downtown Boston could become the next best thing to Boston Chicken Inc. Hoping to emulate the success of Boston Chicken's take-out Boston Market stores, now undergoing nationwide expansion, Uliss has created a take-home barbecue food concept - known as Tennessee's - that relies heavily on people's need for the quick and tasty. Located at 47 Huntington Ave. in the Copley Square Hotel, Tennessee's enables city workers to phone-in orders for dry-rubbed ribs, smoked Dixie chicken and pulled pork, drive up to a designated yellow-striped parking space for curbside delivery, and drive off. ``I'm hoping to open as many as five more in the suburbs in the next 12 months,'' says Uliss, 33, whose award-winning barbecue first became popular at the nearby Original Sports Saloon, which he developed nearly seven years ago with barbecue ``pitmaster'' John Willingham of Memphis. The curb-side delivery concept is innovative in a city known for its impossible parking and heavy traffic, and during an era when dual-income households are pressed for time and convenience is paramount. Tennessee's - located in the back yard of some of the city's best, most diverse restaurants - and the Original Sports Saloon share the same kitchen, located behind Tennessee's in the hotel. It is not unusual to see waiters cross the hotel lobby to deliver plates of ribs and brisket dinners to Saloon patrons. So far, business at Tennessee's has been brisk, with sales running $1,200 a day, a healthy figure for a restaurant's first two weeks of operation and with no advertising. (Uliss describes the restaurant's barbecue as ``Memphis-style,'' which is hand-rubbed with spices and slow-cooked over hickory, ash, cherry and apple woods, and comes with sauce on the side.) The Billerica native, who spent less than $100,000 to open Tennessee's (whose slogan is ``Real BBQ - real fast''), hopes to reach sales of $700,000 by next October and $1 million in 1998. ``Like Boston Chicken, there are good profits to be made,'' says Uliss, who anticipates after-tax profits of about 20 percent compared to 10 to 12 percent for full-service restaurants. Despite Uliss' optimism, some critics question Boston's appetite for a cuisine whose health benefits are questionable. And slow-cooked barbecue brisket and ribs - not back yard gas grilled meats - are largely a regional taste, one that is not as widely known in New England. ``I have serious doubts that he [Uliss] can become as big as Boston Chicken because slow-cooked smoked barbecue is not as universally known or as bland as, say, a Boston Chicken, where people can eat three or four times a week,'' says Chris Janowski, part owner of the popular, year-old Blue Ribbon Bar-B-Q in West Newton. ``I don't think it [Tennessee's] has to be as big as Boston Chicken to be successful.'' Barbecue has enjoyed immense popularity in the Southeast and the Southwest, particularly Texas, but has not garnered the national attention that other regional or ethnic foods have enjoyed. In Greater Boston, there are about a dozen such eateries, the vast majority of which are take-out places owned by families. ``It's pretty cheap to build and pretty cost effective to operate a barbecue place. There are no major secrets to it once you understand how to run the smoker,'' laments Janowski, adding that barbecue food appeals primarily to men. Only 35 percent of his customers are women. Even some of Uliss' competitors anticipate his chances of having a good run in the business are good. ``Uliss is a sharp guy, a good competitor who is doing his best to keep up the standards to produce quality barbecue,'' says Robert Gregory, owner of Redbones, a nine-year-old, 150-seat Somerville barbecue restaurant. Uliss worked his way up from cook to kitchen manager to general manager at various restaurants. Tennessee is one of several eateries he co-owns and operates as food and beverage director for the Saunders Hotel Group, which owns the Copley Square and Lenox hotels. He is also part owner of these hotel restaurants. At Saunders, Uliss' job is to create new restaurant concepts, like Tennessee's, and expand on existing ones, such as microbreweries, coffee and sports bars. His success prompted Restaurant Hospitality, a trade paper, to select him as one of eight hotel restaurant innovators of 1996. After several microbrewery restaurants opened in the city, Uliss approached Boston Beer Co. to create Samuel Adam Brew Pub on Boylston Street. Having a well-known microbrewery behind the brew pub has proven worthwhile, and revenues have tripled to $1.2 million from nearly $400,000 three years ago, said Uliss. ``Nowadays people want casual dining,'' said Uliss. ``They don't want to spend $60 for a dinner for two every time they go out, so they're looking for places with good food where the tab is around $30 for two, and they want a relaxed atmosphere.'' Uliss' barbecue dinners cost anywhere from $8.95 to $17.95 per person. Basic sandwiches start at $4.95, and ``Pigskin Tailgate,'' which feeds six to eight with salad, cornbread, watermelon and two ty pes of barbecue sauce, is $46.95. The push for moderately priced eateries has led some of Boston's best known restaura teurs to downscale. Later this month, Stan Frankenthaler, best known for his Cambridge-based Salamander restaurant, plans to open a 40-seat wine and tapas bar in the Statler Office Building in Boston's Park Square. This story ran on page c4 of the Boston Globe on 11/02/96. Garry Howard, Cambridge, MA [email removed] Garry's Home Cookin' Website http://members.aol.com/garhow/cooking Eat first, ask questions later! From [email removed] Sat Nov 9 15:36 EST 1996 To: [email removed] Subject: Re: Cleveland BBQ Content-Type: text Content-Length: 930 This is an update to my previously-posted suggestions about Cleveland Q. I had occasion to get Q from Whitmore's last night --- figuring I'd clog up these arteries before they get replaced next month --- and spoke with the chief cook. Although there are 3 "Whitmore's" in Cleveland, not all Whitmore's are created equal. Each belongs to a different part of the family and ONLY THE WHITMORE'S AT CEDAR AND LEE SMOKE THEIR RIBS! That's a key fact of life and explains WHY their ribs are so darn much better than the other Whitmore's. Sauce seeems the same at all, but oh boy, those ribs! He uses hickory, sometimes maple, and smokes them for 4 to 4 1/2 hours. So, if it's ribs in Cleveland, head for Cedar and Lee in Cleveland Heights. (There is a Cedar Road exit off I-271. Head west about 5 miles. First intersection past Cleveland Heights High School, right on the corner.) Cheers, Rob Lake [email removed]
Barbecue