After a couple of morning meetings with accounts in Springfield, MO, I was getting ready to head up toward St. Louis for an evening meeting there. But I figured I'd better get something to eat since it would be later on before I'd be eating. I was in the mood for barbecue and I punched in barbecue restaurants in my GPS. One place that came up was a place that someone had told me about before - Whole Hog Cafe. There are two locations for Whole Hog Cafe in Springfield and I stopped in at the one on N. Glenstone near Interstate 44.
Well, unbeknownst to me, Whole Hog Cafe is a regional chain of company-owned and franchisee-owned barbecue places based out of Little Rock, AR. You've seen this story before if you've read about other barbecue places on Road Tips - a group of friends get together to barbecue some meat, they get pretty good at it, they enter some contests - and win, they set out for national barbecue competitions - and win those, too. Then they decided to open their own barbecue place that turns out to be a hit. That's what happened with Whole Hog Cafe founders Mike “Sarge” Davis, Ron Blasingame, and Steve Lucchi.
Ron Blasingame - whose daytime job was running an office furniture leasing company - was a former Marine who fell in love with all types of barbecue. In the 1990's, he became a certified barbecue judge for both the Kansas City Barbecue Society and for the prestigious "Memphis in May" barbecue contest held annually in Memphis, TN. During his judging of events, he learned a lot of different techniques for barbecuing meats and worked with a lot of different types of smokers and cookers. He once fashioned a galvanized trash can into a smoker for one of his cooking apparatus.
Pictured right - Ron Blasingame. Photo courtesy Arkansas Times.
Blasingame formed the "Southern Gentlemen's Culinary Society" with Davis, Lucchi, long-time friend Steve Bishop, and Blasingame's brother, Mike in the mid-90's. The team entered barbecue contests across the South and perfected their rubs, sauces and cooking techniques while winning a number of barbecue festival titles.
In 2000, the group entered the Memphis in May barbecue contest for the first time and ended up getting second place for their ribs. Two years later, the group garnered 1st place in the "Whole Hog" competition during Memphis in May, and got another 2nd place nod for their ribs.
After winning the Memphis in May in 2002, Blasingame started to sell his barbecue to the public out of a trailer that was parked at a gas station in the Cantrell Hill neighborhood of Little Rock. Lines formed and word of mouth got around the city that this little trailer had the best barbecue in town. Blasingame partnered with Lucchi and Davis to open the first Whole Hog Cafe later that year in a strip mall in Little Rock's Riverdale neighborhood.
Ron Blasingame bought out Steve Lucchi in 2004 and continued to be the majority shareholder in Whole Hog Cafe with Mark "Sarge" Davis as the managing partner. However, a liver ailment in 2009 put Blasingame in the hospital. His conditioned worsened and he died a week after being admitted. He was just 60 years old.
Suddenly, Blasingame's wife Kathy - who was never really involved in the restaurant - was the majority owner in Whole Hog Cafe and she called upon her brother, Chris Maynes, to come out from New Jersey to help her run the business. Maynes came to Little Rock for a crash-course in running a barbecue restaurant working with Sarge Davis. Maynes convinced Steve Lucchi to come back to help show him the ropes. Maynes stayed for five months and caught the barbecue bug, himself.
Up to the time of Ron Blasingame's passing, Whole Hog Cafe had been expanding with not only company-owned locations around Little Rock, but franchisee-owned locations in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and New Mexico. (Chris Maynes returned home to New Jersey and opened a Whole Hog Cafe franchise in Cherry Hill, NJ in 2013.) The Whole Hog Cafe franchise concept eventually caught the eye of Paul Sundy, a Springfield, MO restaurateur/night club owner.
Sundy owned a popular nightclub in downtown Springfield before opening up Big Whiskey's - an American-style restaurant - in 2006 with two partners. Big Whiskey's quickly became one of the more popular destinations in Springfield and Sundy looked at opening other locations around the city and beyond. It was during a trip to Little Rock in 2008 to scout out a possible Big Whiskey's franchise location there that he learned about franchise possibilities for Whole Hog Cafe.
Sundy was also a partner with Jay Hickman in a Springfield restaurant, while Hickman was a partner with Daniel Bryant in another Springfield restaurant. Bryant had also been looking at becoming a Whole Hog Cafe franchise owner, however he had been looking at putting in a location in Tulsa, OK. Sundy, Daniels and Hickman then set their sites at doing a Whole Hog Cafe in Springfield. They found a location that had been a former video rental store and opened their Whole Hog Cafe franchise in 2010 along W. Sunshine Street on the south side of Springfield. The group opened a second location on Springfield's far north side in 2014.
It was that second location that I stopped into on my way out of town that day. (see map) From the outside of the place - and my somewhat faulty long-term memory of what was there before - I thought it used to be a Big Boy or a Bob Evans restaurant at one time. Just inside the front door there were a number of large trophies from previous barbecue contests that Whole Hog's team had participated in over the years.
The dining area was a long room with a bar that looked like it was more designed for people waiting to pick-up "to-go" orders. Checkered table cloths topped the tables in the restaurant. Even though they were playing some Gov't Mule in the background, the atmosphere seemed sort of stodgy and staid.
The menu was on a black board near the front entrance. You place your order at the front counter and they bring it to your table. Whole Hog Cafe features ribs, pulled pork, brisket, smoked chicken, smoked pork loins, sausage and burnt ends on their menu. They did have beer, but not what I would call and extensive beer list.
And they did have a combo meat platter, which is what I like to get when I go to barbecue restaurants that I haven't been to before. Unfortunately, the combo meat platter didn't include any of the baby back ribs that I wanted to try, so I ended up getting the pulled pork and brisket. For my two sides, I got some cole slaw and some of their baked beans.
For sauces, they had about a half dozen to choose from. They didn't name their sauces, but numbered them. #1 was a sweet, sort of runny sauce. #2 was a tangy vinegar/tomato-based sauce. #3 was the spicy version of #2. #4 was a traditional Southern spicy/peppery vinegar sauce (which was actually pretty good!). #5 was a heavy sweet molasses sauce, and #6 was a mustard and vinegar sauce that I was not interested in, at all. They also had a "Volcano" sauce that would probably burn your face off. That was only available in small amounts at the front counter. I like to experiment with combining sauces and I thought that the sweetness of #1 and the spicy/vinegar taste of #3 was a great combination.
The brisket was thinly cut, moist and tender. There was a slight smoke ring around the perimeter of the beef and it had a very good flavor. It was easy to cut since the brisket was sliced so thin, but it was some very good brisket.
The pulled pork was sort of dry and stringy. Heaping some barbecue sauce on the pork helped tremendously, but on its own, I wasn't all that impressed with it.
The baked beans also needed a little help with the combination of the #1 and #3 sauces, but the cole slaw was actually very good. It had a sweet and tangy flavor to it, not too sweet and not too vinegary. It was one of the better styles of cole slaw I've had at a barbecue place.
Even though I found out after the fact that Whole Hog Cafe is a chain of barbecue places, I thought it was all right for what it was. The brisket was good, the pulled pork was so-so (as were the baked beans), but the cole slaw was the highlight of the meal. I wished that I could have tried some of their baby back ribs - most place that do combo platters will let you have ribs as part of the meat combination, but Whole Hog Cafe did not. While I thought the atmosphere was sort of drab, they did play some good music (blues, Southern rock) when I was in there. Other than that, I thought the place was clean, the food was serviceable, and it was a typical barbecue place that you'd find just about anywhere.
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