Road Tips

BB's Lawnside BBQ - Kansas City, MO

Kansas City has so many great barbecue places and even though I've been going to the city for years and years, it's been difficult to try all of them.  While I was down in Kansas City earlier this year, I had the hankering for some barbecue and decided to go to one of the places I had tried to get into a couple times before, but it turned out the place - which is also a destination for live blues music in Kansas City - was packed both times.  I finally got a chance to have some barbecue at BB's Lawnside BBQ.  

Lindsay Shannon grew up in Kansas City and used to go to ball games at the old Muehlebach Field (later called Municipal Stadium) that was the home of the Kansas City Blues minor league baseball team, the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Baseball League, and eventually the Kansas City Athletics from Major League Baseball.  Municipal Stadium was located near the heart of the famous barbecue neighborhood surrounding 18th and Vine.  Shannon developed his love for barbecue at some of the more famous barbecue joints in the area including Arthur Bryant's, Harris' Barbecue and Gates Barbecue.  

When Shannon got into his teens, he found joy in listening to jazz music from a local Kansas City station during his lunch hour at home from high school.  At night, he could listen to blues music from stations such as KAAY in Little Rock, AR and XERF located across the border from Del Rio, TX.  He soon fell in love with some of the blues music of the day and began to immerse himself in the history of the blues.  But his first love was barbecue and while he was in college, he acquired his first barbecue smoker.

After college, Lindsay Shannon was living in Des Moines, IA for a time.  It was there that he met a young lady who was living downstairs from him in a duplex.  Jo Davis had moved from Pittsburgh after graduating from high school in 1968 to be closer to family in Des Moines and the two hit it off.  Jo and Lindsay were married in 1971.  

Jo and Lindsay Shannon moved to Kansas City soon thereafter as Lindsay started on a sales career and Jo started working for an advertising company.  By 1977, Lindsay was hosting a weekly show playing blues music on the local public radio station.  He was the founder of the Kansas City Blues Society in 1980 and was the booking agent for the blues stage at the Kansas City Spirit Festival for a number of years.  

In 1986, a local classic rock radio station - KCFX 101.1 The Fox - contacted Lindsay to see if he would move his popular weekly blues program over to their station.  KCFX had a much larger audience than the local public radio station and Shannon thought that anything he could do to help promote blues music would be a plus.  In 1987, Shannon began his career at KCFX and his Sunday night blues show from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ran for over 25 years.  

But Lindsay really wanted to run his own barbecue restaurant.  He found a place in south Kansas City that had been built in 1950 as a roadhouse that was able to sell beer and liquor as it was just across the street from the Kansas City city limits.  It eventually became a barbecue joint in the 60's as Kansas City filled in around the restaurant.

Pictured right - Jo and Lindsay Shannon.  Photo courtesy KCFX - 101. The Fox

Lindsay had a guy who used to work at Harris' Barbecue who came down to the building to inspect the barbecue pit that was in place.  It was an old-style pit which burned wood and not pellets and it met with the approval of the veteran pit master.  The Shannons signed the lease on the building in the summer of 1990 as Lindsay quit his solid sales job.  BB's Lawnside BBQ opened in October of that year - the "BB" in the barbecue joint's name came naturally from blues great B.B. King.

In 1992, Jo quit her job with the advertising company to join Lindsay full time.  Jo ran the kitchen and books, and BB's Lawnside started to serve some of her Louisiana-inspired dishes such as jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gumbo.  

Lindsay had always wanted to combine his barbecue with blues music.  In 1991, Lindsay hosted his first music event - BB's Lawnside Blues & BBQ Festival - showcasing blues artists over a couple days in early September.  The event expanded over the years and in 1999 the Shannons added an outside deck for the festival.  The Blues & BBQ Festival now runs for nearly a week as blues artists and blues fans from all over the nation come to BB's for the annual event.  

For years, Lindsay and Jo's son Michael worked side-by-side with his parents in the business.  However, in 2012 Michael passed away unexpectedly dealing a personal and professional blow to the Shannons.  And earlier this month, I'm sad to report that Jo Shannon also passed away after 50 years of marriage to Lindsay.  

BB's is located just east of Troost Ave. on E. 85th Street.  (see map)  There is no cross street at Troost and E. 85th and Troost is on a viaduct over 85th.  To get to BB's, you have to turn onto a frontage road at E. 84th Street and head back to 85th.  BB's is located about 250 feet east of Troost on the south side of 85th.  

There was a moderate late lunch crowd in BB's when I went inside.  The rectangular dining space featured a bar on one end with some high-top tables nearby.  The inside stage area was on the far side of the bar in front of a wall of windows that let in a lot of natural light.  Vinyl red and white checkerboard table cloths covered the tables in the joint.  

There was posters from previous shows at BB's Lawnside as well as a number of posters of local blues festivals from over the years.  Photos of performers as well as other memorabilia covered nearly every inch of the walls.  I found myself lingering after finishing my lunch to check out some of the things they had on display.  I especially liked the sign that simply said, "BBQ, Beers, Blues!"  Music from blues artists such as Son Seals, Carey Bell, Pinetop Perkins (who I saw years ago at the old Blues Etc. in Chicago) and, of course, B.B. King played in the background during my visit.  

I sat down at one of the high-top tables near the bar area and was greeted by a young lady who asked what I wanted to drink.  They had Boulevard American Pale Ale in bottles available and I asked for one of those.  

The menu at BB's Lawnside consists of a number of smoked meats - turkey, beef brisket, ham, chicken, pulled pork and ribs.  Appetizers such as double beer-battered Spanish onion rings, beer-battered shrimp, pulled pork nachos, and chicken tenders were available.  Sandwiches such as a battered chicken breast, smoked Italian sausage, and a mixed meat sandwich featuring a little bit of everything were on the menu.  Dinners such as a barbecue meat loaf, smoked catfish, and half or quarter chicken plates were part of the offerings.  

I usually get a combo platter when I first go to a barbecue joint that I hadn't been to before.  They had a three meat platter with a choice of brisket, ham, turkey or pulled pork with two sides on the menu.  They also had a combo plate with ribs, Italian sausage and a choice of meat available.  But I was sort of in the mood for burnt ends.  

I ended up getting the getting the burnt ends dinner - a pile of brisket tips with battered fries and pit beans.  The burnt ends were served on a piece of white bread and dill pickle slices came on the side.  

Now, when I first started to go to Kansas City years and years ago, I tried burnt ends.  I found them to be dried out and somewhat tasteless.  I really resisted burnt ends for the next few years before I finally tried some as part of a combo platter at a rib joint.  I found those to be succulent, tender, and delicious.  I've warmed up to burnt ends over the years and found that the first time I had them was an anomaly.  The burnt ends at BB's Lawnside were outstanding. They were tender and juicy with a nice hickory smoke flavor throughout.  And at BB's Lawnside BBQ, they give you a pile of burnt ends for $14.50.  

The battered fries were interesting.  They were basically potato wedges, or more like potato spears.  When the platter was placed in front of me, I thought the battered fries were actually fried pickle spears.  The outer side of the battered fries were crisp and the inside of the wedges were light and flaky.  They were actually very good and they were made even better by squeezing some of the barbecue sauce on to them.  

Speaking of barbecue sauces, BB's Lawnside had 3 different sauces to choose from.  They had their version of a mild Kansas City sweet-and-smoky sauce, a hot sauce that was basically the same as the mild only kicked up a bit with some cayenne pepper, and a sweet peach habanero sauce.  Now, I usually stay away from anything habanero, but for some reason I squeezed a little out onto the battered fries and gave it a try.  It was cool, sweet and tangy on the front end.  But moments later this taste explosion erupted on the back of my tongue.  It was spicy, but not burn-your-face-off spicy.  It was probably too spicy for sensitive tastes, but I thought it was just outstanding.  In fact, that's all I used for the rest of my meal.  The pit beans mixed with some of the sweet peach habanero sauce had such a wonderful flavor.  

But I screwed up.  I should have asked to see if I could have purchased a quart of the stuff.  I've done that a couple three times with some sauces that I've really enjoyed in the past that I knew weren't available for retail purchase.  But I didn't.  And that sort of sucked.  Oh well...

I finally got the chance to experience BB's Lawnside BBQ after getting shut out on a couple of previous visits when the place was packed because of live music playing in the joint.  I have to say that I liked nearly everything about the place.  It was the quintessential dive barbecue joint.  The blues memorabilia, alone, is worth a visit to BB's Lawnside. The burnt end platter was outstanding and the battered potato fries were surprisingly good.  And everything was made even better from the deliciously sweet and spicy sweet peach habanero sauce that they make in house at BB's Lawnside.  It's not a fancy place compared to some other barbecue places in Kansas City, but don't let that fool you.  BB's Lawnside is a top-notch barbecue joint in a city famous for their barbecue.  

Central BBQ - Memphis, TN

During the COVID-19 pandemic, with travel curtailed and restaurants shut down except for carry-out, I haven't been able to visit any places to write about on Road Tips.  Hopefully, in the coming weeks that will be rectified.  However, for now, I've decided to dig back into the nearly 15 years of Road Tips posts and bring up some of the more memorable places we've been over the years. 

Today, we go back to Memphis, TN and one of the more popular barbecue places in the city.  It seems like locals in Memphis have their own favorite places for barbecue and can be adamant about their reasons why.  On a trip to Memphis about six years ago, we started to ask the locals their favorite place and the vast majority of them mentioned Central BBQ which first opened nearly 18 years ago.  Here is a look back at a memorable barbecue experience in Memphis, one of the meccas for barbecue in the U.S.

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We took a late summer trip down along the Mississippi River to Memphis.  We hadn't been to Memphis for about 14 years and we decided on this trip that we'd stay away from the tourist-trap places in the downtown area and branch out to see the rest of the city away from the lights and glitz of Beale Street.  Of course, Memphis barbecue is part of the Mid-South/Midwest BBQ triangle of St. Louis and Kansas City - at least to me.  We wanted to try a couple three places while we were in town, and after talking amongst some locals when we were there I was particularly interested in giving Central BBQ a try.  

Memphis-style barbecue features dry-rubbed ribs and other meats.  The Rendezvous is the most famous place, but we didn't think it was all that great when we first went there years ago.  We checked on other places and found that Neely's Bar-b-cue had closed (I ate at the location in Nashville - click here to read that entry), we were told their uncle Jim Neely's Interstate Barbecue wasn't as good as it used to be, and that some of the really good places for barbecue aren't places you'd necessarily go to at night.  But the consensus with people that we talked to was that Central BBQ was quite possibly the best in town.  (Some people will dispute that, I'm sure.  We found that almost everyone in Memphis has an opinion on their favorite local barbecue joints.)   

As I've found with a number of barbecue joints I've visited over the years, Central BBQ came about from the barbecue competition circuit.  Back in the mid-80's, Roger Sapp and Craig Blondis met on the competition trail.  The two began to compete in the annual Memphis in May World Barbecue Championships and got the bug for competition-style barbecue where you have to do everything - smoked meats, sauces, sides - very well.  

In 2001, Sapp and Blondis formed a company - Central BBQ LLC - and began to look for buildings for their first barbecue restaurant.  They found a small place on Central Ave. about a mile from the University of Memphis and opened on April 1, 2002.  The inside of the place only sat 45 people, but they built an outdoor patio area for additional seating in warm weather.  

A little over four years after opening their first location, the partners found a building that housed a former Red Lobster restaurant on Summer Ave. on Memphis' east side and opened their second location in the fall of 2006.  The kitchen area was appreciably larger than their original location allowing for two large smokers to be installed.  Plus, a lot of the kitchen equipment was still in place from the old Red Lobster so the move in was a snap.  The second location also seated about 220 people more than tripling the seating capacity of the original location on nice days.  

A couple years ago, Sapp and Blondis opened a third location in an old warehouse location in the South Main Arts District near downtown Memphis.  The downtown location is the biggest of the three Central BBQ locations seating over 250 patrons.  The two also continue to do barbecue competitions as the time allows.  

Even though we said we didn't want to visit Beale Street during our visit, we decided to head down and walk up and down the street to see if anything had changed since our last visit well over a dozen years before.  Some things had changed - most had not.  It was bike night on Beale Street that evening and a number of large motorcycles - many of them were tricked out - were parked up and down the block.  We grabbed a beer from one of the many street vendors and sauntered up and down the street looking at the bikes.  

After about a half hour of doing that, we decided to go get some barbecue from Central BBQ's original address on Central Ave. (See map)   (Actually, we didn't know the downtown location wasn't far from where we were.  See map)  We got out to the Central BBQ location around 8:30 p.m.  It turns out that they quit serving on weeknights at 9 p.m.  

As you come into the Central BBQ location there's a large outdoor patio area.  On warm weekend nights, I understand Central BBQ has live music on the patio.  We thought about eating outside but it was rather buggy, especially with the hanging lights above the tables.

The main dining room inside is small, but well lit.  There are a handful of booths and tables in the room.  It's cozy and has a little bit of a good ol' funky vibe to the place.  Classic soul music from the likes of James Brown and Sam & Dave were playing on the sound system in the dining room.  A mixed crowd of urban hipsters and middle-aged people were in there that evening.  


Entering the building, the ordering area up front has the menu on a board above the counter and a small bar area off to the right.  The focus meat at Central BBQ is pork, but they also feature beef brisket, chicken, turkey, bologna and sausage from their smoker.  Central BBQ is also somewhat locally famous for their smoked chicken wings and their barbecue nachos that feature pulled pork, cheese, jalapenos and barbecue sauce on tortilla chips.  (You can also get beef, chicken or turkey for a meat topping on the barbecue nachos.)  We noticed a lot of the younger people in the dining area noshing on the barbecue nachos.  They actually looked pretty good.

We decided to get a combo plate - a half-rack of ribs with one side wet (with barbecue sauce) and one side the traditional Memphis-style dry rub along with sliced brisket and pulled pork.  For sides we had our choice of items such as fries, green beans, potato salad, pork rinds, onion rings, collard greens and mac & cheese.  They also had baked beans - a must for me - and cole slaw, which is what my wife wanted.  

We also got a couple beers with the dinner.  They had Yazoo Brewing Company products on hand, a small brewery located in Nashville that I've had a couple times before.  They had a limited release beer - the 10 Year IPA - that signified their 10-year anniversary of being a brewery that I got.  My wife wanted to try the Summer Seasonal beer they had on tap.  After we placed our order and paid at the front counter, we were given a number and found a booth in the small dining room.

A young lady brought out our food about five minutes (or even less) after we ordered.  We should have just ordered the ribs completely dry because Central BBQ has a couple of barbecue sauces that turned out to be very good.  The mild sauce was sweet, but it had a little bit of a spicy bite on the backside of the taste buds.  The spicy sauce, well, it certainly got my attention.  You immediately got the spicy taste on the front of the tongue.  Both were very good.  (We ended up buying a bottle of the mild sauce before we left as my wife doesn't go for the spicy sauces like I do.)  

The ribs pulled apart easily and were moist and meaty with a hint of a smoky taste on top of the dry rub that they used.  It wasn't loaded with the dry rub like you find with other Memphis-style barbecue places.   The pulled pork was moist and almost melted in your mouth.  The brisket was a tad more dry, but still good enough with some sauce added.  Out of the three I would say the pulled pork was the best, the ribs a close second and the brisket was an even closer third.  

The baked beans featured chunks of pulled pork.  I added some of the hot barbecue sauce to the beans to give them a little kick.  I had a bite of the creamy cole slaw and while it was good, the beans were much better.  My wife - who is somewhat of a cole slaw connoisseur - thought the cole slaw at Central BBQ to be just "all right". 

Much has been written about Central BBQ since they opened over 11 years ago, so I really don't have much more to say than other people who have been there.  I have to say that we were both very impressed with Central BBQ.  I loved the fun and funky vibe to the place, the barbecue was very good to outstanding, and the overall experience was excellent.  I knew there had to be better barbecue places in Memphis than the old stand-bys the tourists go to.  Central BBQ showed us why they continually receive honors for some of the best barbecue in Memphis.  

Tired Texan BBQ - Omaha, NE

I was out in Omaha a few weeks ago for a private function at one of my accounts.  I had some time to kill before the event started and I was thinking it may be a good idea to go get something to eat as I didn't know how long I'd be tied up with the function.  I did a quick look for restaurants not too far away and a barbecue place turned up in my search.  It was just down the road a bit from my account and I took off for a quick dinner at Tired Texan BBQ.

The couple who owns Tired Texan - Chip and Christine Holland - aren't even from Texas.  Chip Holland grew up in Birmingham, AL and Christine grew up in the Omaha suburb of Ralston.  But it was in Birmingham where Chip Holland learned all about true Texas barbecue when he was a teenager working for Ira "Tex" Ellison who owned the original Tired Texan Barbecue. 

Tex Ellison grew up in Texas and joined the United States Navy just after World War II ended in 1945, weeks before his 17th birthday.  In 1948, he was told that he could learn electronics if he transferred to the U.S. Marine Corps.  After transferring to the Marines, Ellison learned about new technologies of the day - primarily radar and televisions.  After finishing his electronics training, Ellison was stationed at the Marine Corps air station near El Toro, CA where he became the first African-American air traffic radar technician in the armed forces. 

While he was stationed at El Toro, Ellison missed the authentic Texas barbecue that he loved to eat growing up and he decided to do something about it.  Along with his wife, Madeline, Ellison fashioned a small barbecue joint at the air base that he ran part-time until he was transferred in 1959 to Merritt Field, a Marine Corps air base just outside of Beaufort, SC.  

Ellison wanted to do barbecue at his new posting, but noted that there weren't any buildings suitable at Merritt Field for a barbecue shack.  Ellison had a group of Marine privates under his command and he commissioned them to build a small place that would house his barbecue joint.  In the early 60's, Tex and Madeline Ellison opened the Tired Texan Country Club that sold barbecue at Merritt Field.  As a second side job from his duties with the Marine Corps, Tex Ellison also repaired television sets for the Marines and their families stationed at Merritt Field.  

After Ellison was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1967, he "retired" to Birmingham, AL where Madeline was from.  Knowing that barbecue would be big in Alabama, he found a small concrete block hut on the north side of Birmingham and opened up Tired Texan BBQ.  It was open only three or four days a week - Tex was still fixing televisions on the side - and while open hours would be sporadic, they would sometimes stretch deep into the night.  But everyone from cops, lawyers, prostitutes, doctors and late-night revelers knew when Tex's barbecue joint was open from the smell of smoked meats emanating from the smoker.  

Tex eventually moved Tired Texan BBQ to a building not far from Legion Field on the west end of downtown Birmingham.  It was at this location where 16-year-old Chad Holland first came to work for Ellison and to learn the art of Texas barbecue. Ellison's specialties were ribs, brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken, and sausage.  But he didn't let a lot of other parts of the meats go to waste, either.  Tex Ellison was famous for a sandwich that used parts of unused pulled pork, sausage, chicken necks, gizzards, livers - anything that he could grind up and throw in the smoker.  He topped the ground meats with an ultra hot sauce whose recipe he traded his delectable pig ears for with a local Mexican restaurant owner.  Tex and Madeline would watch as customers who bought the sandwich would go through cups and cups of sweet tea to get the burn out of their mouth.  

By the mid-90's, however, Ellison was truly a "tired Texan".  He was in his late 60's and his wife was in her mid-60's.  Headaches of running a restaurant mounted over the years, and a beauty shop had moved in next door to him and complained that there was no parking in their shared lot when Tired Texan was open.  Tex thought that he'd had enough, but there was one last event that he felt he needed to stay open for.  

In 1996, the Summer Olympics were held in Atlanta, but a number of college football stadiums in the southeast were used for preliminary round soccer games.  Birmingham hosted seven of those matches at Legion Field, walking distance from Ellison's barbecue joint.  Many of the fans from other countries didn't come to Tired Texan BBQ, but for some reason the Mexican fans did.  And they spent a lot of money on his barbecue.  Once the Mexican national team was eliminated by eventual Olympic gold medal winner Nigeria in Birmingham, it wasn't long that Tex closed his doors to the Tired Texan BBQ.  

Tex couldn't shake the barbecue jones, however, and he was invited to open a small barbecue joint inside the local VFW hall in Birmingham.  He did that for a short while before he suddenly and mysteriously disappeared one evening in late 2001.  A few weeks later, Ellison's car - with him in it - was found in a river about 35 miles east of Birmingham.  A Honda automobile assembly plant had opened in Lincoln, AL, about 45 miles to the east of Birmingham, and Ellison had talked about putting up a trailer with a smoker to sell barbecue to workers at the plant there.  It was said that Ellison - who was diabetic - suffered a seizure or became disoriented during the drive between Birmingham and Lincoln when he went to check on things at the Honda plant and drove off the road and into the Coosa River.  Ellison was 72 at the time of his death.  

After learning from a mentor such as Tex Ellison, Chad Holland used his in-depth training at making Texas-style barbecue at various restaurants in the Birmingham area for a number of years.  When he would travel back to Omaha to visit Christine's family, he would try some of the barbecue joints in the city.  While he thought many of the places were good, he thought he could do something a little bit better.

Pictured at right - Christine and Chad Holland

A business opportunity opened in late 2016 when a Perkins location on Omaha's southwest side had closed and became available.  The Hollands felt that it was time to make their move back to Omaha and open their own place.  After renovations and the installation of barbecue smokers, the Hollands opened Tired Texan BBQ - the name was a homage to Tex Ellison and blessed by Ellison's widow for the Hollands to use.

Like any new restaurant, there are going to be growing pains and Tired Texan had their share.  Staying true to the methods Tex Ellison taught him as a teenager, Chip Holland cooked his meats low-and-slow.  Briskets and pork butts would take 15 to 18 hours to cook.  Ribs would take about 5 hours.  And his smoker capacity was limited at first.  On many days, Tired Texan would run out of meat before they were scheduled to close.  And after a favorable review came out in a local publication, more people would come to try his smoked meats.  And sometimes that meat would run out sometime after the lunch rush.  It angered many first time visitors who were greeted with "Sorry, Out of Food" signs hung on the door.  But barbecue purists knew that the best places usually do run out of meat early on.  However, once the Hollands were able to expand their smokers, continually running out of ribs, brisket or pork during the course of a day became a thing of the past.  

It was a little past 6 p.m. when I pulled into the parking lot of the Best Western Plus/Kelly Inn Hotel near the corner of S. 108th and L Streets.  (see map)  Tired Texan BBQ is attached to the hotel - a place I used to stay at from time to time when I would come out to Omaha for business a long number of years ago.  

As you enter, there's a bar area with corrugated metal facings on the bar.  9 or 10 chairs were positioned at the bar with Edison lighting hanging from the ceiling over the bar itself.  I thought a moment of just sitting at the bar, but the place wasn't all that busy so I waited for a hostess so I could get a seat in the dining area.

A young lady came out from the kitchen area behind the bar and greeted me at the hostess stand.  She took me to a booth further back in the restaurant.  The walls were paneled with faux barn boards, but tastefully done.  The booths were spacious and comfortable.  Behind two rolling barn stall doors was another room that could be used for overflow or private gatherings.  

Another young lady by the name of Lisa came by to tell me that she'd be with me in a moment.  She came back a couple minutes later to take my drink order.  I got an IPA from the Pint Nine Brewing Company that is located a couple three miles just south of Tired Texan BBQ.  

The menu wasn't that deep in terms of barbecue offerings.  Tired Texan featured brisket, pulled pork and pork spare ribs for their barbecued meat offerings.  I was sort of surprised to not see smoked chicken or the Texas barbecue staple of sausage on the menu.  They did have barbecue sandwiches, a burger and a breaded chicken breast sandwich on the menu.  For appetizers, they had a couple interesting items that included the Texas Tumbleweeds - small deep-fried balls consisting of shredded potatoes, bacon and cheddar cheese; and their Texas Loaded Fries that were fresh-cut French fries topped with a choice of either chopped brisket or pork and their house-made baked beans, then finished with smoked cheddar cheese and barbecue sauce.  That sounded great as a meal just by itself.

Lisa came back with my beer and to tell me about the special they had that evening - burnt ends with a choice of side and a corn muffin.  I was thinking of getting the two meat combo of pulled pork and brisket, but when she told me they had burnt ends I was sort of torn.  I asked her if there was a way I could get all three.  She said that they sell meat by themselves by the quarter pound.  "You can get the burnt end special and get a quarter pound each of the brisket and pulled pork," she explained to me.  

And that's exactly what I did.  For my side, I took the baked beans out of the choices of potato salad, fries, mac & cheese, creamed corn, cole slaw - your way: a choice of poppyseed, creamy, vinegar or peppercorn ranch mixed in.  The baked beans came with fried onions on top.  The meal was served on a small cookie sheet on a sheet of wax paper.  

The burnt ends were plump, juicy and had a great smoky flavor.  They were basted in Tired Texan's house barbecue sauce that had a sort of sweet and vinegary taste to it.  I thought the regular sauce was just OK.  Their "hot" sauce was similar in taste only more sassy with a bit more of a zippy flavor on the tongue.  It wasn't spicy, per se, but it definitely woke up my taste buds.  I liked it better than the regular sauce.

The pulled pork was moist and juicy, and it also had a great smoked flavor.  But the brisket was just outstanding.  The beef was tender and delicious.  It had a deep dark red smoke ring along the top near the bark.  With a bit of the hot barbecue sauce on all the meats, it was a wonderful taste explosion.  

The baked beans were very good, as well.  It turned out that the fried onions - the same kind you put on green bean casseroles at Thanksgiving time - were a nice touch that I had never seen before or even thought of as a companion with baked beans.  Adding some of the hot barbecue sauce zipped up the taste of the beans even more.  

Now, this was a LOT of food.  There was no way that I was going to be able to finish this meal in one sitting.  I didn't even touch the cornbread muffin - I don't care for cornbread all that much - and there was still a slice of brisket and similar sized piles of pulled pork and burnt ends left on the platter.  I had also finished just about four bites of the beans.  I thought I'd take the rest to go and have it for lunch the next day before I left Omaha.  

The only problem is that from the time that I got there just after 6 p.m. to the time I was finished eating, the place had filled up and filled up quickly.  The three young ladies - including Lisa - were running around in different directions, and quite frankly they forgot about me.  I was done, my dealer's event was starting in about 15 minutes and I wanted a to-go box and my check so I could get going.  It was finally about five to ten minutes after I really needed to be going that Lisa finally appeared with my check and I asked her for a to-go box.  It took her another five minutes for her to come back with my check and a box, then another five minutes for her to come back with my credit card once it had been run.  Suffice it to say that I was late getting back to my dealer's event.  But it didn't matter as it wasn't that well attended as we were just on the cusp of the "social distancing" phenomenon that is so very real in our world today.  

Other than them getting busy and forgetting about me, I have to say that my experience at Tired Texan BBQ was more than favorable.  The smoked meats I had - burnt ends, pulled pork and brisket - were all wonderfully delicious.  I especially liked the fried onion-topped baked beans for my side.  And it was a lot of food, as well.  I was able to have almost the same sized meal - my only one of the day - for lunch the next day.   I've had barbecue at a few places in Omaha over the years - some have since gone out of business - and I'd have to say that I may prefer Tired Texan BBQ to the other ones I've tried.  It would definitely be worth a try if you're in Omaha and looking for good barbecue.  

Virgil's Real BBQ - Las Vegas

I hadn't been out to Las Vegas in over three years before I had to go out earlier this year for a meeting/training session for my company a little over a month before the city was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  I had gotten in during the afternoon, and after I got settled at my hotel - The Mirage - I decided to look for places to eat in the immediate area.  Vegas changes so quickly that three or four restaurants that I had enjoyed a few years back were out of business or had been changed into something else.  I found a barbecue place across the Las Vegas Strip from The Mirage in the LINQ Promenade called Virgil's Real BBQ.  In all the years that I have been coming to Las Vegas for trade shows and meetings since the mid-1980's, I don't think I had ever eaten barbecue in Las Vegas.  One doesn't think of barbecue when they're in Vegas, so it sort of intrigued me.  I thought I'd walk over to Virgil's Real BBQ and give the place a try.

It turns out that Virgil's Real BBQ is under the same corporate umbrella as Carmine's of Las Vegas, a place that I also ate at during my recent trip to Vegas and had written about here.   Virgil's got its start in New York City - also not really all that renown for their barbecue - after founder Artie Cutler was looking for other food concepts to explore after the success of his two New York City Carmine's restaurants.  With the help of a Chinese friend, he started Ollie's Noodle Shop and Grille, an Asian-American restaurant.  Artie had vision that a Southern-style barbecue restaurant would make it in the heart of New York City.  He discussed the idea with his two investment partners in Carmine's and his partner in Ollie's.  They all agreed that in order to have an authentic Southern barbecue restaurant, they needed to learn about those places.  And what better way than to have a weeks-long road trip along backroads in the South.

A few weeks later, the four men took off in a car for barbecue places in the south.  They traveled from the Carolinas across Tennessee to Memphis, then south to Texas, and then up to Missouri sampling barbecue along the way.   (Man, I think that would be a fun trip!)  You can almost imagine the looks of suspicion a Jewish guy, two Italian guys, and a Chinese guy would get when they would walk into a barbecue joint in the south.   After weeks of checking out and trying all different types of barbecue - as well as learning the tricks of the trade from some of the more friendly barbecue joint owners - the group felt they had a consensus in what meat to offer at their restaurant.  And, more importantly, how to make it.  

Artie and his partners came back to New York City and found a spot in Times Square just a block away from their Carmine's location.  With everything in place, Virgil's Real BBQ opened in 1994.  Cutler said that he named it after the starter at his golf club, hoping that it would get him premium tee times in the future.  (No word if that worked out for Culter, but I'm guessing it did.)  

Unfortunately, Artie Cutler passed away unexpectedly in 1997.  His wife, Alice, took over the Alicart Restaurant Group that Artie had formed to oversee his restaurants.  However, it wasn't long before Alice realized that she needed to have someone younger and with more ambition come in to run the restaurant group.  In 2008, Jeffrey Bank came on to become the CEO for the Alicart Restaurant Group and one of the first things he did was close or jettison some restaurants that were underperforming - including Ollie's.  However, he saw big things for expansion of the Carmine's and Virgil's restaurants, but not in New York City due to some stifling rules and regulations restaurants faced in the city.

Seeing that there was a need for restaurants in gambling and entertainment hot spots, Bank opened Carmine's locations in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and at the Atlantis casino/resort in the Bahamas.  He opened a second Virgil's Real BBQ in Atlantis in November of 2012, and the Las Vegas location opened in late 2016.  

The Las Vegas Virgil's is one of many restaurants and bars up and down the LINQ Promenade, a walkway that connects the Las Vegas strip with the High Roller, the world's largest observation wheel.  The High Roller stands 550 feet tall and it takes 30 minutes for it to make one complete revolution.  The LINQ Promenade also has a zipline that goes from one end to the other - the FlyLINQ.  It was sort of a cool evening in Las Vegas that night - it was windy and unseasonably cool when I flew in earlier in the day - and I didn't see many, if any, people using the FlyLINQ that evening.  But the LINQ Promenade was buzzing enough with people wandering around between bars, restaurants and casinos when I was walking through seeking out Virgil's.

I found Virgil's toward the east end of the Promenade (see map - the Google map here shows that its closer to Las Vegas Boulevard, but it's a lot closer to the High Roller than to the Strip).  To the left as you walk into the place, there's a main dining area with a stage at one end.  Some instruments were set up and it appeared that a live band was going to be playing there later on.  The acoustics of that room had to be atrocious as the dining room was loud to begin with with all the talking going on.  There was outdoor seating in front of the place and there was an upstairs area with a balcony patio for outside dining.  It was too cold for people to be eating outside that night.  

The bar area was off to the right of the front door.  The place seemed to have that corporate rustic look - like when a designer from New York envisions what a barbecue place in the south looks like.  I took a seat at the bar where a younger couple - who had evidently been there for a LONG time - had just gotten up to leave.  I had to dance out of my way of the staggering couple as I made my way toward the bar.  After getting seated at the bar, a young lady by the name of Kelsee came over to greet me.  She gave me a food menu and asked what I would like to drink.  They had the Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA on tap and I signed up for one of those.  

When Artie Cutler and his partners took their little barbecue trip through the south, they adopted many of the items they had tried and put them on the menu at Virgil's.  There was Carolina-style pulled pork, Memphis-style baby-back ribs, Texas-style brisket, and Southern-style smoked pulled chicken on the menu for the main barbecue items.  They also had sandwiches made from the barbecued meats, burgers, and Louisiana-style Po' Boy sandwiches.  Virgil's also offered entrees such as crispy Kansas City-style fried chicken (they probably got their inspiration from Stroud's), Maryland-style crab cakes, Georgia-style chicken fried steak, and grilled Gulf Coast shrimp.  And if you didn't care for food from south of the Mason-Dixon line, then there was a 20 ounce T-Bone steak available on the menu, as well.  

As I usually do at a barbecue joint that I'm not all that familiar with, I go with the combination platter.  But this time, I decided to just go with the brisket platter.  (They had a combo platter called the "Pig Out" that featured brisket, ribs, smoked chicken, and pulled pork.  That would have been a little too much for me.) For my sides, I had a choice of a number of items - fries, collard greens with ham hock, mashed potatoes with gravy, cheddar cheese grits, and rice with sliced pecans were some of the choices.  I ended up ordering the baked beans and the pickled beets for my two sides.  

The brisket came sliced and placed on slice of white bread.  A bit of barbecue sauce was ladled on top of the meat.  I asked Kelsee if there was any other kind of barbecue sauce and she came over with three different styles - the regular sauce that was already on the brisket was sort of sweet with a hint of a smoky taste.  They had a hot sauce that was similar to the regular only with a bit of a kick.  But they had a habanero mango sauce that I was a little apprehensive about at first.  Some habanero-infused sauces I've had in the past are almost too spicy and they really mask the taste of the meats.  But this was a nice balance between the hot spicy kick and the cooling of the mango that was added.  Actually, I thought the habanero mango sauce was - by far - the best of the three.  

The brisket was just all right.  It was a little chewy and didn't seem to have that much of a smoky taste to the meat.  There wasn't much of a smoke ring around the outer part of the brisket and the bark on the outside was pretty pedestrian.  It certainly wasn't the best brisket I've had.  

The pickled beets were very good, however.  I never really liked pickled beets much while I was growing up, but my wife turned me onto her grandmother's canned pickled beets about 25 years ago.  While she was still alive, she would give us jar upon jar of pickled beets in the fall months.  Her grandmother's pickled beets are my gold standard when it comes to pickled beets.  Now, I don't think that a little old lady is back in the kitchen at Virgil's canning pickled beets, but wherever they get theirs from, they're damned good.  

The baked beans were sort of "meh!"  I poured copious amounts of the habanero mango sauce in with the beans to give them a little bit more flavor.  It helped, but not by much.  

Now, take a good look at the platter in the picture above.  There were - maybe - 10 or 11 thick cut slices of smoked brisket.  It was probably a half-pound of meat or maybe a little more.  This platter cost $29.95.  $29.95!!!  When I got the bill, I about gasped!  This platter of barbecued brisket with two sides was nowhere worth the price of what I got compared to other barbecue places I've enjoyed in my years of traveling.  I almost had to laugh when I got the bill - with 2 pints of the Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA at $9.75 each, the total on the bill before tax and tip was $49.45!  I was completely incredulous.  I remember a time in Las Vegas where you could get a steak with a baked potato and a salad for $7.99 at one of any casino up and down the strip.  The price of my meal at Virgil's was basically six of those old time Las Vegas meals.  

Well, there's a part two to this story.  The next evening, we all had to go out to an EDM (electronic dance music) recording studio on the southwest side of Las Vegas that our company has turned into a showcase for our pro studio monitors.  We had food that was going to be catered in and when the truck showed up, I about crapped - it was from Virgil's Real BBQ!   I just started to laugh and shake my head.  One of my colleagues looked at me and asked what was so funny.  "I had barbecue from this place last night," I said.  He asked me if it was good and I said, "Well, it was OK, but it was REALLY expensive."

They had brisket (naturally) and pulled chicken to choose from.  I had the brisket - again.  But this time, it was actually better than the brisket I had the previous evening.  It was actually more moist and had a good smoky taste to it.  The studio was not set up very well for a large group of people - maybe 40 of us in total - to be eating barbecue.  It was just a somewhat surreal experience for me that I was having Virgil's Real BBQ two nights in a row.  

The Las Vegas edition of Virgil's Real BBQ was just average, at best, in my book.  At least, compared to some of the great barbecue places I've eaten at in the Midwest and down in Memphis.  And it was expensive - almost obscenely expensive - for what I got.  The brisket I had on my visit was just OK (although the catered brisket I had from Virgil's the subsequent evening was much better), but the pickled beets I had for my side were the highlight of the meal.  They rivaled in taste my wife's late-grandmother's pickled beets that I enjoyed over 20 years ago.  There's not a lot of barbecue to choose from in Vegas and Virgil's will do if you need a BBQ fix while you're in Sin City.  Just don't forget to bring your wallet.  

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Smoke Shack - Wauwatosa, WI

I was up in Milwaukee last fall and I was staying at a new-ish hotel on the west side of the city.  It turned out that it was part of the Mayfair Collection, a mixed-use development that featured residential, retail shops, and restaurants.  There was a barbecue joint just across the parking lot from the hotel and I decided to give the place a try.  This is my experience at Smoke Shack.  

Smoke Shack is one of the restaurants under the umbrella of the Hospitality Democracy company originally founded by Joe and Angie Sorge.  In addition to Smoke Shack, other Milwaukee area restaurants they oversee include Onesto, Holey Moley doughnut and coffee shop, Blue Bat Kitchen and the popular burger joint A.J. Bombers.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on A.J. Bombers.)  Joe Sorge is a New York native whose family had deep ties to the restaurant business.  Sorge went to Cornell University to study hospitality management before working at a handful of restaurants, then moving to Milwaukee with his wife in 2000.  Sorge started Hospitality Democracy with help from Marcus Investments, a Milwaukee-based capital investment firm with roots in movie theaters, hotels and restaurants.  

The original Smoke Shack opened in 2010 in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward as a collaborative effort between Sorge, Street-za Pizza owner Scott Baitinger, and developer Robert Joseph.  Smoke Shack's downtown Milwaukee location wasn't large - it could only hold less than 50 patrons - but business exceeded Sorge's wildest dreams after it opened.  

A little over 6 years ago, ground was broke in suburban Wauwatosa for a multi-use shopping, entertainment, and residential district called The Mayfair Connection.   Sorge was approached about putting some of his restaurants in the complex and in late 2016, Smoke Shack, A.J. Bombers, and the coffee/donut shop Holey Moley opened in a shared building.  

In the summer of 2018, it was announced that Joe and Angie Sorge were leaving the Hospitality Democracy group after being bought out by Marcus Investments.  The Sorge's founded their own restaurant consulting firm - SideWork Hospitality Consulting - later that year and continue to work with restaurants in the greater Milwaukee area.    

The Wauwatosa location of Smoke Shack is just north of Burleigh St. next to Interstate 41.  (see map)  There's a parking garage very near the restaurant with lot parking across a four-lane road that feeds cars in and out of The Mayfair Collection.  I walked across the parking lot in front of the hotel and passed by the outdoor seating area at Smoke Shack.  It featured a fire pit and a bar area under a canopy that was fronted by corrugated metal sheets.  It looked like it would be a nice area to hang if the weather was warm - which it really wasn't that fall evening.  

Inside Smoke Shack, the decor was sort of a contemporary rustic theme.  There appeared to be a lot of reclaimed barn board used in the bar and along the walls of the place with corrugated metal panels mixed in.  Opposite the bar was a number of tables in a small narrow nook-type area.  On a wall above a couple tables in an alcove were a number of bicycle handlebars - ram-horn, butterfly, and regular handlebars - that were on wood mounts to sort of parody big-game horns or racks.  I got a chuckle out of it.  

I sat at the bar and was greeted by Erika who was working behind the bar that evening.  She gave me a menu to look over and I took a look at the beer selection they had to offer in the glass-doored refrigerator behind the bar.  I saw that they had Surly Furious IPA in 16 oz. cans and I ordered up one of those.  

It's pretty basic barbecue offerings at Smoke Shack - baby back ribs, pulled pork, brisket, smoked chicken and smoked sausage.  Sides included sweet and spicy baked beans, cole slaw, sweet potato fries, and chipotle creamed corn.  Sandwiches included a brisket Sloppy Joe, a pulled pork sandwich topped with pimento mac & cheese (which was also a side choice), and a sandwich called the "Shack Daddy" that featured ham, brisket and sausage.  They had appetizers on the menu including burnt ends (of which they were out of that evening), smoked chicken wings, and something they called "Kansas City Eggrolls" which featured Iowa pulled pork and Monterey jack cheese with honey mustard and served with Smoke Shack's Kansas City-style sweet and smokey sauce.  

For my dinner that evening, I got the pulled pork and brisket combination.  For my side, I got the baked beans.   They had four different types of sauces to choose from - the aforementioned sweet and smokey Kansas City-style sauce, a Carolina-style mustard and vinegar sauce (of which I don't care for), a Texas-style sauce that was basically the Kansas City-style sauce with a bit of a kick, a house barbecue sauce that - well, I'll get into that later, and a habanero sauce that I figured I'd give a try.

Now, do you ever look at something that is served to you and it doesn't take much to tell you that this may not be very good?  That's sort of how I felt when the barbecue plate was set down in front of me.  I could tell that this would not be a very good meal from the first glance at the meat.  

And my eyes certainly didn't lie - it was pretty bad.  The pulled pork was lifeless and bland.  The brisket was dry and tasted like it had been left in a crock pot a little too long.  Neither had any smoke flavor to them.  And the baked beans seemed like they had opened a can of Van Camp's pork and beans, poured them in a bowl and heated them up.  They were neither sweet or spicy.  

Even the sauces couldn't help this meal.  The Kansas City-style sweet sauce was not very good.  And since the Texas-style sauce was based off the Kansas City-style sauce, even with a bit of a spicy kick on the back side, it couldn't have been saved.  The house sauce - which is supposed to be a little bit of everything - was completely blah in taste.  And I had to try the habanero sauce just to see how spicy it was.  It wasn't spicy at all and it was very flat in flavor.   The meal was highly disappointing.  

I understand that Smoke Shack has won numerous "people's choice" awards for having the best barbecue in Milwaukee since they opened in 2010, but I have to say the meal I had at the Wauwatosa location was some of the most disappointing barbecue I've encountered in my years of travel.  The meat was lifeless and bland with nary a hint of a smokey barbecue taste, the baked beans were akin to the canned variety, and I found their sauces to be pretty flat and underwhelming in their flavor.  While Smoke Shack is a nice place with their rustic decor, their barbecue was pretty mediocre - if that.   And that's too bad as I had high hopes for the place.  

Bourbons Bar & Grill - Coal Valley, IL

For awhile now, my wife and I have been on a quest to find a place that has a good burger along with a good selection of craft beers in the Quad Cities.  She had mentioned a place clear over in Coal Valley, a small community on the far southeast side of the Quad City area.  I read up on it and on a Sunday afternoon we headed over to Bourbons Bar & Grill.  

Troy and Shelly Shehorn lived in the Coal Valley area and loved to go to a neighborhood bar there called Headquarters.   Shelly was an accountant by trade and Troy was self-employed.  A few years ago, Headquarters went up for sale and the Shehorn's thought it would be fun to own the bar.  However, after weeks of negotiations, the deal fell through.  

But the Shehorn's always kept an eye on the property and when it became available for sale in the fall of October 2016, they didn't hesitate this time.  They knew they could do something with the little neighborhood bar in terms of food and drink, focusing on Troy's love for barbecue and bourbon.  But first they had to do some renovations.

The building, itself, dates back to the 1890's with the original tin ceiling still intact.  The Shehorn's brought in over 10 tons of stone for walls and accents, and they installed cedar panels for walls and trim around the stone walls.  They renovated the kitchen and bar area, a meat smoker was installed in the back, and they put up about a half-dozen large screen flat panel televisions around the place.  By March of 2018, Bourbons Bar & Grill was ready to open to the public.  

It was around 2 p.m. when we pulled up to Bourbons which is located near the corner of 1st Street and E. 22nd Ave. A in Coal Valley.  (see map)  We parked in front of the building, but there's ample parking off to the side.   From the outside, the building is pretty nondescript with a couple beer signs in the window.  But upon entering Bourbons, we found a cozy and inviting space that featured a number of tables in the center of the bar with a nice three-sided bar off to the side.  The combination of the lights from beer signs and the glow of the televisions with some accent lighting along the walls gave the bar a colorful glow.

We took a seat at a table toward the back of the dining area of the bar.  Our server that day - a pleasant and helpful lady by the name of Jane - came over to greet us and to drop off a couple menus.  They had a pretty good craft beer list and I saw that they had Kona Big Wave.  I asked Jane if their bloody mary's were good and she said, "Oh, yeah.  We load 'em up."  I ordered a Big Wave and a bloody mary.  The "packed" bloody mary featured a thick and zesty mix served in a salt-rimmed glass.  A skewer of green olives, pickles, salami and cubed cheese came on top of the bloody mary glass.  And it was a very good bloody mary.  My wife got her usual cranberry juice and Tito's vodka - light on the cranberry juice.  

The menu at Bourbons wasn't all that large, but most of the items they had sounded pretty interesting.  Appetizers included jalapeño poppers, fried portobello mushrooms, and fried avocado wedges which caught the eye of my wife.  They had sandwiches such as grilled or breaded pork tenderloins, and a grilled chicken sandwich topped with bacon and a house-made bourbon barbecue sauce.  They had four different burgers on the menu, along with fish and chips, chicken strips, and a four-piece broasted chicken dinner.  Pizzas (I understand they're Quad City-style, which we don't care for) and calzones are also available.  On Thursday night, they have barbecued rib dinners as a special.  

My wife wanted to try their pulled pork sandwich.  They smoke the pork shoulders at Bourbons with hickory and it's slow-cooked and shredded.   The barbecue pork is placed on a toasted brioche bun and topped with their house-made bourbon barbecue sauce, cole slaw and an onion ring.  She had a choice of sides that came with the sandwich which included French fries, seasoned waffle fries, bourbon baked beans, or cottage cheese.  She ended up getting the macaroni salad.  She thought the barbecue pulled pork sandwich was very good.  

Of course, I was looking to try one of their burgers and I ended up getting their mushroom burger.  For some reason, I thought that I would be getting sautéed mushrooms, but the menu said the burger was topped with fried mushrooms.  They were portobello mushroom strips, similar to the ones they serve as appetizers.  The burger patty was topped with provolone cheese and an aioli sauce.  I asked Jane if I could get some bacon on my burger and she said that it was no problem.  I also got a side of onion rings for a $1 dollar upcharge.  

I ended up taking the mushroom strips off the burger and just having it with the bacon and cheese. The burger was very good.  It was juicy and flavorful, and the bun held together well for what turned out to be a multiple-napkin burger.  The onion rings were pretty good as well.  They had an abundance of beer-batter on them - almost too much, even if you like beer-battered onion rings - and I found them to be a little too salty for my taste.  

A few weeks after our first trip to Bourbons, my wife's son came to visit us on a Sunday.  He had just come back from Cincinnati for a factory training session he took part in, and he was telling us that the factory guys took the group out to a couple bourbon bars in Newport, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati.  We were telling him about Bourbons in Coal Valley and he is much more into bourbons than my wife and I are.  But he was intrigued enough that we took him over there for lunch.  

On this visit, he got to look at the over 120 different bourbons that they offer at Bourbons Bar & Grill.  In fact, we had a nice conversation with Shelly Shehorn about her husband's love for bourbon, the trips they have taken that have centered on bourbon-centric bars and restaurants, and she compared notes with my step-son on the more expensive bourbons that are out there.  Once again, I'm not well-versed on bourbons at all, but my step-son was telling her about a Pappy Van Winkle bourbon that one of the places across the river from Cincinnati he went to had for $500 a shot.  Shelly Shehorn said that she was familiar with that bourbon, but they didn't have that particular liquor at their bar.  "We're working up to it, though," she told us.  "We're slowly getting the reputation for good bourbons and we're starting to become a destination for some bourbon lovers."  She said that the highest priced bourbon they have is about $80 bucks a shot.

We've found some pretty good places over in the Illinois Quad Cities over the past few months that have good burgers, a good craft beer list, and good bloody mary's.  I'd have to put Bourbons Bar & Grill toward the top of that list.  The only problem is that it's about a 20 minute drive for us, and with the I-74 bridge work going on, it's even longer to cross the river to go back home.   But to us, it's worth the drive.  The atmosphere is cozy and comfortable, the service that we've experienced on our visits has alway been friendly and folksy, and the food is interesting and a step or two above your typical bar food in taste and quality.  I wish Bourbons was a lot closer to our house because it would be the kind of place where I'd like to hang out.   

Lost Signal Brewing Company - Springfield, MO

Down in Springfield, MO this past fall, I was looking on-line for a brew pub to have dinner one evening.  There was one in the downtown area that I wasn't familiar with, a combination brew pub/barbecue joint by the name of Lost Signal Brewing Company.  I found out where it was and took off to give the place a try.   

When I first started to go to Springfield over 30 years ago, the downtown area was sort of a jumbled potpourri of businesses with not a lot of places to eat.  Over the years - especially within the past 10 years - there's been a renaissance of specialty shopping and eateries in the heart of Springfield.  Tyler Hoke recognized the revitalization of downtown Springfield and decided to look for a building to put his combination brewery/barbecue joint.  

Like many people who open craft breweries, Tyler Hoke was brewing beer at home for his friends and family.  But his father, Jack, was known for making good barbecue for friends and family, as well.  Jack Hoke headed up a competition barbecue team - Smooth Smoke BBQ - and like many people who have competition teams they end up opening restaurants.  With Tyler's beers and Jack's barbecue, the two joined forces to have something that you don't see very often - a combination brew pub/barbecue place.  

Pictured right - Tyler Hoke. Photo courtesy Feast Magazine.

A local radio station in Springfield - KICK-AM - was bought by a large corporation and they moved out of their longtime home in downtown Springfield to a building with other local radio stations.  The old radio station building was empty for two years before Tyler Hoke discovered it would be perfect for his brew pub/barbecue joint.  The Hoke's acquired the building and set about setting up a brewery on one side and a kitchen on the other with a smoker just outside.  Working throughout most of 2016, Lost Signal Brewing Company opened in February of 2017.  Hoke brainstormed for names for the business, writing down dozens of names for the place.  But he thought the Lost Signal name was the best which paid homage to the former radio station.  

I put in the address for Lost Signal into my GPS, and as I got closer I began to recognize a building just a block away as the former location of an account I had called on a number of years ago.  Finding Lost Signal was actually pretty easy once you figured it out - the original transmitting tower still stands on the roof.  (see map)  I came up to the front of Lost Signal, but realized that I had missed the parking lot off to the side.  I came around to the back alley and parked in the lot.  The smoking area was working on the side of the building near the back entrance.   

Coming in the side entrance, I found the bar off to the left.  It was a small - it sat, if I remember right, six or seven people.  Listings of the beers they had that evening were on the wall behind and to the side of the bar.  

The dining room was L-shaped with a big area between the bar and the kitchen, then there was a long stretch that was between the brew room and the outdoor patio area.  There was a private function going on in the patio area that night and I was getting dirty looks when I went out there to take a snap shot of the area.

I took a seat at the bar and one of the bartenders on duty, Zachary, came over to greet me.  He gave me a food menu and I ordered up an American pale ale that they had on tap.  Later on, I tried one of their India pale ales.  Both were very good beers - hoppy, yet smooth on the finish.  

They didn't have that big of a selection of barbecue at Lost Signal, but they had the basics - ribs, smoked chicken, pulled pork and brisket.  You had your choice of having the meat on its own or as a sandwich.  They had three or four appetizers including a brisket and gravy poutine, street tacos with a choice of meat or black bean salsa, and loaded barbecue nachos.  Sides included mac & cheese, bacon jalapeño cornbread, and a spicy cole slaw made with a chili/barbecue sauce.

As I normally like to do when I try out a barbecue place for the first time, I went with the combo - sliced brisket and pulled pork.  I got the baked beans for my side.  It was served on a small cookie sheet with wax paper.  They had a couple three different types of barbecue sauces to choose from including a sweet and smoky sauce and a somewhat spicy sauce.  

The brisket was very good.  It was tender and had a great smoked beef flavor.  It was very easy to cut and it really didn't need a lot of sauce to help enhance the flavor.

The pulled pork, however, needed help.  It was dry and somewhat lifeless in taste.  A mixture of the sweet and smoky and the spicy sauces helped give it some moisture, but it was still pretty suspect in flavor.  As good as the brisket was, the pulled pork was disappointing.  

The baked beans were fine, but nothing special.  I did mix some of the spicy barbecue sauce in with the beans to give them a little more zip in taste.  Overall, it was an OK meal with the brisket really standing out above the pulled pork and beans.  

Lost Signal Brewing Company was a pretty unique place.  In all my travels, I'm not certain if I've ever come across at combination brew pub/barbecue joint - at least I don't remember if I have.  The beer I had - an American pale ale and an IPA - were both very good, as was the brisket slices I was served.  The pulled pork, however, was rather disappointing and the baked beans were just so-so.  But the space in which the brew pub/barbecue joint occupied had that kind of a comfortable and welcoming atmosphere.  I thought Lost Signal was OK, the beers were fine, but the barbecue was sort of up and down.  But I'd still say it's worth a visit if you make it to Springfield.

County Road Ice House - Kansas City

During a stay in the downtown area of Kansas City earlier this summer, I ventured up to the Power & Light District to find a place to eat.  After eating at an Irish pub across from the Sprint Center and walking back to my hotel, I passed a place that had a sign on a pillar out front which said "Award Winning BBQ by Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Cue".   But the sign above the door said "County Road Ice House".  I went in to take a quick look around the place it turns out that it was a beer bar that just happened to have barbecue from Joe's Kansas City in the place.  After a few moments of lingering looking around the place decided that I'd come back the next night for dinner.

Joe's Kansas City Barbecue - which was formerly known as Oklahoma Joe's BBQ - is a Kansas City institution in a city that has a number of world class barbecue joints.  I first went to Oklahoma Joe's in Kansas City, KS over 9 years ago (click here to see that Road Tips entry, as well as this entry for their Olathe, KS location) and at the time I thought it may have been the best barbecue I've ever had.  I don't know if I can call it the best I've had now, but it would definitely make my Top 5 along with Q39 in Kansas City, Central BBQ in Memphis, and Bogart's and Pappy's, both in St. Louis.  The original Oklahoma Joe's was named after the brand of smokers designed and owned by Roger Davidson, a resident of Stillwater, OK.  Davidson was a regular on the barbecue contest circuit along with his brother Joe Don Davidson, and the brothers struck up a friendship with Jeff Stehney whose Slaughterhouse Five competition team won many awards for their smoked meats at contests around the Midwest and beyond.  

Stehney and the Davidson's opened the first Oklahoma Joe's BBQ in Stillwater in January of 1996.  Stehney, who lived in the Kansas City area, wanted to open second location in Kansas City.   Stehney found an old gas station at 47th and Mission on the Kansas side of the state line and converted it into a barbecue joint.  The K.C. location for Oklahoma Joe's opened in August of 1996 with Stehney and his wife, Joy, as managing partners.  

Roger Davidson sold his interest in Oklahoma Joe's smokers the following year and moved to Texas and his brother soon followed.  With no one overseeing the management of the Oklahoma Joe's in Stillwater, it closed up in 1998.  However, the Stehney's forged ahead with their barbecue joint in Kansas City.  They bought out the Davidson's interest in the Kansas City Oklahoma Joe's and it quickly became one of the top places for barbecue in the area. 

The name Oklahoma Joe was confusing to a number of people who would travel to Kansas City to try barbecue.  The Stehney's had been thinking about changing the name for a number of years before slowly incorporating the Joe's Kansas City Barbecue name into the business.  They came out with a barbecue sauce in 2011 replacing Oklahoma Joe's with Joe's Kansas City in the brand name, and the next year they introduced a French fry/fried potato seasoning with the Joe's Kansas City Barbecue name.  In the summer of 2014, the Stehney's officially changed the name to the present day moniker, but most of the locals refer to it as just "Joe's" or "Joe's KC".  

The Power & Light District in downtown Kansas City has had its ups and downs over the years since the initial residential and entertainment concept was hatched just after the turn of the millennium.  After the Sprint Center was opened in 2007, the first restaurants and bars began to open the following year.  But the recession of 2008 slowed the building and development of apartments and condos in the downtown area adjacent to the Power & Light District.  Restaurants and bars came and went, many of them forced into bankruptcy protection due to high rents and spotty business.  Because the housing downtown wasn't coming up as quickly as planned, about the only time most of the bars were doing well was when there was an event at the Sprint Center.  And those events were sometimes few and far between.

One of the national chains that came into the Power & Light District was Gordon Biersch, the California-based brew pub that had over 30 locations in high traffic areas in larger cities around the U.S.   The Gordon Biersch in the Power & Light District was one of the original tenants of the Kansas City Live block area, opening in March of 2008.   But in a cost saving move by their parent company, a number of Gordon Biersch locations started to close in 2017 and continued into early this year.  The Kansas City Gordon Biersch closed in August of 2017.  However, a back-up plan was already in place for a new restaurant to come into the spot they were giving up.

Zach Marten and Bret Springs were friends who were living in Dallas in the late-00's.  They loved to go to a little pizza place called Coal Vines and they both talked about eventually getting back to Kansas City at some point.  Marten grew up near Kansas City and went to school at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, while Springs grew up in the KC suburb of Leawood.  The two became friendly with the owner of Coal Vines and talked him into letting them open a location in the Plaza area of Kansas City.  Marten and Springs moved back to Kansas City in 2009 and opened their version of Coal Vines in 2010.  

From there, the two came up with the Westport Ale House sports bar concept, as well as The Rockhill Grille, an upscale American bistro located on the south end of downtown Kansas City, MO.  The two eventually closed Coal Vines and rebranded the restaurant as Parkway Social Kitchen.  In 2016, Marten and Springs formed Back Napkin Restaurant Group to oversee their growing concept brands.

Stehney, Marten and Springs - along with Stehney's wife and Ryan Barrows, who was Joe's KC Barbecue's director of operations for their three locations - all collaborated in coming up with the concept for the barbecue/beer joint, similar to the old ice houses that were central meeting points for people in Texas long before there was widespread electricity or freezers.  Less than a week after Gordon Biersch closed their doors, the group announced that a place called County Line Ice House would open in its place.  

It took six months of reconstruction - over $1.3 million worth of renovations - before the new concept was ready to go.   Brew tanks were removed and outside patio dining was constructed.  Smokers had to be craned and lowered into the building.  But by the time the place was ready to open in early March of last year, the group had already changed the name to County Road Ice House.   

It was about a five minute walk from my hotel to County Road Ice House at the corner of 14th and Walnut on the southeast side of the Power & Light District.  (see map)  It was around 6 p.m. that evening and the place had a few people inside.  It was a big open space with the bar area in the middle.  A number of flat screen televisions hung around the bar area and along the walls in the dining area.  An open kitchen was located just behind the bar. 

I decided to sit at the bar and I pulled up a chair.  I was greeted by a young lady who was one of the bartenders.  She gave me a food menu and a beer list to look over.   They didn't have a lot of beers to choose from - at least compared to other places in the area - and they were pretty proud of the prices of the beers they had.  Bud Light drafts were $5.00 and Deschute Fresh Squeezed IPA was $6.00.  Also on the menu were cans of Kona Big Wave Golden Ale - but they were $6.00 each, also. I swallowed hard and ordered a can of the Big Wave.  

The food menu at County Road Ice House is similar to what you'll find at a Joe's KC - but, then again, it's not.  While they did have regular Joe's items such as ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket and smoked chicken, they also had appetizers such as smoked chicken wings and smoked brisket nachos.  Burgers were also on the menu along with tacos that featured barbecue pork or beef.  Salads such as a smoked chicken Caesar and a Southwest pork carnitas salad were available, as well.  

Burnt ends are available when they have them and I asked the bartender/server if they had burnt ends that evening.  She said she did, so  I ended up getting the two meat combo of brisket and burnt ends.  Basically the same thing, I know, but I really like the brisket and burnt ends that I've had in my earlier visits to other Joe's locations around Kansas City.  But it is a $2.50 upcharge for the burnt ends in the combo.

And these didn't disappoint, either.  The burnt ends were large chunks of point cut brisket that were tender and delicious.  The slices of flat brisket were equally tender and flavorful.  The brisket and burnt ends were served with toasted bread and they had both Joe's regular sweet sauce and one of my all-time favorite Kansas City area barbecue sauces - Night of the Living Cow, a sweet and spicy sauce that just pops in your mouth.  

Speaking of popping in your mouth, for my side I got the spicy cole slaw.  I took that option over Joe's classic barbecue beans and Joe's spicy mac & cheese - both of which are very good.  I've grown found of Joe's spicy cole slaw over the years and this was as good as what I've had at the other Joe's locations.  

Now, I have to say that the bartender who was waiting on me was completely inattentive nearly the whole time I was there.  It did take awhile for her to acknowledge I was seated at the bar.  And she didn't get the universal cue that when a person seated at the bar needs another beer or drink that they place the empty in the crease closest to the bartender.  I had to literally hail her on three different occasions to either order food or order beer.  It was pretty bad service if you ask me.  

I'm mixed on my visit to County Road Ice House.  It was nice that they had Joe's Kansas City Barbecue available in the place, but their beer selection was pretty slim.  And everything was pretty expensive.  My bill with a nominal tip for the bartender who didn't want to wait on me while I was there came to over $40 bucks.  Three Kona Big Wave Golden Ales at $6 each ended up more than my food tally.  I suppose someone has to pay for the expensive renovation and the high rents found in the Power & Light District.  But I was happy with the brisket and burnt ends that I had and it's tough to beat the spicy cole slaw that Joe's KC has.  My wallet took a beating for what I got at County Road Ice House.  It was a nice place with good food, but be prepared to pay premium prices when you're there.    

Double B's BBQ - West Allis, WI

About a year ago, I was staying at a new Hampton Inn across the street from the Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis on the west side of Milwaukee.  I was driving down National that evening to go find something to eat and I passed what appeared to be a barbecue joint.   Driving back after dinner, I went slowly by the place and it turned out that it was a barbecue place, but they were closed because it was Monday.  I made a mental note to head back to West Allis at some point to try Double B's BBQ.  On a non-Monday evening recently, I had the chance to do just that.  

You could say that the restaurant business is in Mark Timber's blood.  He started out as a youngster working in his father's pizza place, Dino's Pizza, just north of General Mitchell International Airport on Milwaukee's south side.  From there, Timber moved on to manage the Telstar Drive-in just down the road from Dino's.  When his father sold Dino's, he moved to Taos, New Mexico to retire.  Mark followed his father and he started working in a fine dining establishment, La Doña Luz (which is now a bed-and-breakfast in Taos).  It turns out that the elder Timber couldn't handle retirement and he ended up buying a restaurant in Taos.  But Mark Timber found that he missed Milwaukee and he moved back after five years in Taos. 

Now married to his wife, Judy, the Timber's bought a custard stand in south suburban Oak Creek in the early 80's, selling it in 1987.  From there, Mark Timber went to work for the new Potawatomi Bingo (now the Potawatomi Hotel and Casino) helping design their kitchen and coming up with the menus for the burgeoning gambling establishment.  After his time at Potawatomi, he moved on to help run Butch's Old Casino Steak House for 12 years before the place closed in 2015.  

A few years ago between jobs at restaurants, Timber was working part-time at a cabinet shop in the Milwaukee area.  He was talking with one of his co-workers about his restaurant experience and his co-worker suggested that Timber to go out and invest in a smoker.  What started out as a casual home hobby for Timber turned into something of an obsession.  After his time at Butch's came to an end, he saw an on-line ad looking for someone to take over the kitchen at Double B's, a small bar on West Greenfield.  He decided to jump in with both feet and start up his barbecue operation.  

Pictured at right - Mark and Judy Timber.  Photo courtesy Timber's Catering Facebook Page.    

At first, the regular clientele who were used to a non-barbecue menu at Double B's were a little weary of the change.  However, it wasn't long before the Timber's Memphis-style barbecue offerings won many of them over and created their own following that includes people from Chicago coming up to have their barbecue.  The family also runs a catering company and a food truck with their son, Phil.  Their daughter, Christina, runs the bar now at Double B's, and not long ago the family bought a spot a couple doors to the east of Double B's that they're going to use as a banquet/celebration hall for their catering company.  

I pulled up in front of Double B's around 6:30 that particular evening.  I was able to find a parking spot just down the way from the place on Greenfield Ave.  (see map)  Actually, I could have walked from the hotel to Double B's as it was less than a half mile away.  But it was a cool evening - spring was having trouble making a normal appearance in the Upper Midwest this year - and I thought I'd just drive to the barbecue joint.  

I was greeted by Stephen, who turned out to be my server for the evening, as well.  The place was filling up fast and the bar was packed.  He took me to a table that had a banquette seat across the west wall of the place.  As much as I detest sitting at tables with banquette seats, I decided I could work with it on this visit.  

Stephen dropped off a menu for me to look through.  They had a number of good craft beers available at the bar and I ordered up a Karben4 Fantasy Factory IPA, it's quickly becoming one of my favorite beers.   

They have the usual barbecue offerings at Double B's - brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken, sausage, as well as both baby back and spare ribs.  They also feature a number of smoked meat sandwiches as well as burgers, and some pretty interesting appetizers including smoked chicken wings, burnt ends and bacon-wrapped meatballs.  I damned near ordered up some of those just to try.  Next time.  

For dinner that evening I got the brisket platter.  It featured thick cuts of tender brisket with a combination rub consisting of a bit of ground chile and black pepper with a bit of sugar.  The meat is smoked with hickory wood - low and slow.  I had a choice of sides with the brisket.  I got the baked beans and the cole slaw.  (Cornbread, French fries, sweet potato fries, and a house-made mac & cheese were also available as sides.)  Some bread and butter pickles came with the platter.

The brisket was very good.  It pulled apart very easily when I cut it with my fork.  I really didn't need a knife with it.  The rub combined with the smokiness of the hickory wood flavor in the meat was a great taste sensation.  

I know I shouldn't have even dallied with the barbecue sauce, but Double B's had three that I tried.  They had a XXX Picante barbecue sauce that I didn't really think was all that hot.  It did sneak up on me after a few moments, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle.  But they had a Kansas City-style sauce that was thick and sweet.  But the one I liked the best of the three was the Texas bold sauce which was basically the Kansas City-style sauce with some ground hot pepper mixed in.  It had great sweet and somewhat spicy taste quality.  

The cole slaw was a creamy/vinegar blend that I thought was very good, as well.  The beans, I thought, were good, but they got extremely better when I added some of the Texas bold sauce to them.  Overall, I thought the barbecue was very solid.  

Before I took off, I went to the restroom and then ventured out back to their patio area.  The patio was empty that evening, but I'm sure that it fills up when the weather warms up.  Filament heaters and Edison lights were hanging from the rafters, but the focus of the patio was large hickory wood smoker - one of two that Timber uses.  Timber employs 3 pit masters and his two smokers are running 24 hours a day to keep up with the demand for his meats for both the restaurant, the food truck and the catering business.  Timber's catering company provides food for over 100 events annually, the vast majority of them are weddings.  Many of the customers that come into Double B's probably had their first taste of Timber's barbecue at a wedding held out west of Milwaukee at some point.  

I've tried some barbecue places around Milwaukee over the years and I have to say that I really wasn't impressed with any of them - until now.  Mark and Judy Timber's Double B BBQ is solid Memphis-style barbecue with a simple rub and a wonderful smoky flavor to their meats.  Their baked beans were good - even better with the addition of their Texas Bold barbecue sauce - and I thought their cole slaw was good, as well.  They had a wonderful selection of local and regional craft beers, and had a full bar, as well.  Double B's is closed on Sunday and Monday, but you can enjoy their barbecue the other days of the week.  I know I'll be going back at some point to try the bacon-wrapped meatballs appetizer.

Big's BBQ Brew Pub - Mount Vernon, IA

My wife and I were visiting her father who was having an extended stay in a Cedar Rapids area hospital one Sunday.  After being with him for awhile, we decided to take off and head east toward the small town of Lowden where her son lives to visit him.  We took Mount Vernon Road out of Cedar Rapids - basically the old Highway 30 that was in use as the main east-west road through the city until the bypass around the southern part of Cedar Rapids opened nearly 40 years ago - over toward Mount Vernon.  We were getting sort of hungry when we got to Mount Vernon and I seemed to remember a place that was a barbecue joint there, but it didn't show up on my GPS.  We did a quick search on my wife's phone and it came up - Big's BBQ & Brew Pub.  Oh!  A brewpub, as well?  I said, "Jackpot!"  We found Big's BBQ & Brew Pub and went in to check it out.

Phil Smith grew up in the heart of Texas barbecue country.  After eating barbecue for years, he ended up in culinary school to learn every nuance of cooking, including making good barbecue.  Eventually moving to Iowa, Smith worked at a number of restaurants in Eastern Iowa.  He became friendly with a local brewer by the name of Aaron Gerbo and the two connected on a common culinary/craft brewing level.  Smith always wanted to have his own barbecue place and Gerbo was a seasoned craft brewer.  The two decided to join forces for a combination barbecue/brewpub.  

Searching for places in and around Cedar Rapids, the two found an old house in Mount Vernon just north of the downtown main drag to and from Cornell College.  They found a house that was originally built in 1890 and was used as a dental practice by the man who built it.  Years later, the main floor of the house was the home of a deli.  Two brothers whose father ran the deli now owned the house and they were approached by Smith and Gerbo about an opportunity to put a restaurant back on the main floor.  The brothers liked the idea of a brewpub/barbecue joint as it reminded them of their father's deli.  They gave Smith and Gerbo the go-ahead and the two set about turning the main floor into a restaurant.  By May of 2017, Smith was offering barbecue to go as the building was in the midst of renovations.  Within three months, the brewery was up and going, and they were offering sit-down barbecue to patrons.  

It was just after 1 p.m. when we pulled up to the front of Big's BBQ & Brew Pub at the corner of 2nd Ave. NW and 2nd St. NW.  (see map)  The stately old residence was pretty hard to miss, especially with a large "Big's" banner out front.  Upon entering the building, we found a small dining area that sat - maybe - 20 people.  The room was bright with the outdoor natural light shining in the windows.  A small kitchen area was in the back of the main floor of the house.  

The cozy little dining area had a small television hung on the wall, and a mantle over a closed-up fireplace displayed a number of decorative beer steins.  My wife and I took a seat at a table next to the window and a young lady brought us out a couple of menus for us to look over.  

In the front room that looks out to the street was a small bar area.  The three-sided wooden bar sat nine people and the room had some motorcycle memorabilia on the walls.  The bar area was also bright from the natural light coming in the three large windows.  

The beer menus for Big's were on chalkboards just as you walk into the dining room and on the wall in the bar area.  The nanobrewery operation was housed in the basement of the old house.  (Curiously, I looked around the outside of the house as we left and I didn't see a smoker.)  They had an Irish Stout on tap, as well a Russian double imperial stout.  They had two barrel-aged beers - a bock and another stout - and they had a Mexican Vienna lager on tap that sort of interested me.  Big's also has their own cider on tap, as well as a house-made root beer.

They had a kolsch on special that day - the Katfish Kolsch - with pints costing just $2.00.  After I took my first drink, I sort of figured out why it was on special.  It was pretty flat.  I ended up drinking it, but for my second beer I switched to the Double Barrel IPA that my wife had originally ordered.  It was a much better beer than their kolsch.  

It was standard barbecue fare at Big's BBQ & Brew Pub - baby-back ribs, pulled pork, smoked chicken, pork sausage, and a brisket platter that they have on the menu over most weekends.  With the majority of barbecue places that I'm trying for the first time, I wanted to have a combo plate.  I ended up getting the pulled pork and the burnt ends.  

The pulled pork was moist, juicy, very tender and very flavorful.  The burnt ends were also moist and tender with a nice bark on some of the pieces.  I thought the barbecue offerings I had were both very good.  

I can't say that about the sides, however.  I got the baked beans and the cole slaw.  Both were pedestrian, at best.  The cole slaw was pretty bland in taste, while the baked beans really lacked any pizzazz in their flavor.  But the smoked meats were outstanding and the portions were generous so I didn't feel cheated by having such bland sides.  

My wife ended up getting a combo of her own - the baby-back ribs with burnt ends.   The ribs were thick and meaty with a bit of a peppery rub that gave them a little zip in flavor.  They meat pulled away from the bone effortlessly and it was very tender and not overcooked.  My wife liked the ribs immensely.  She also liked the burnt ends very much, too.  My wife commented that she wasn't certain that she could eat all the barbecue on her platter and that's how I ended up getting one of the baby-back ribs to try.  

She got the cole slaw and the collard greens for her sides.  She, too, wasn't too enamored with the cole slaw, but she said she liked the collard greens.  She offered me a bite of the greens and I thought they were a little too sour in taste for me.  I remarked that some vinegar added to the greens might have helped them for me.  

They had a couple barbecue sauces available - the sauce they originally served in a small container reminded me of Cookies BBQ sauce with maybe some vinegar and mustard added.  It was good, but it wasn't as good as the raspberry sriracha sauce I asked for from our young waitress.  That barbecue sauce was simply outstanding.  It had a biting spicy taste at first, but the raspberry helped smooth out the spiciness on the back side.  I could have had a pint of that just to drink, I thought it was so good.  

For the most part, we really enjoyed our visit to Big's BBQ & Brew Pub.  We both thought the smoked meats we had were delicious and very generous in their portion size.  The sides were bland, but my wife did think the collared greens were good enough.  The kolsch beer that I first ordered was flat (I surmised that's why it was on special that day for $2.00 a pint), but the Double Barrel IPA that I got after that was a very tasty beer.  Our service was fine, the place was cozy, but the overall bill (a little over $50 before tip) was a bit of a shocker.  Still, Big's BBQ & Brew Pub was a great little find and a nice place to take a road trip to.

Porkopolis - Indianapolis

On a recent trip out to Indianapolis, I was looking for restaurants not too far from my hotel on the north side of the city for a late lunch/early dinner since I have still been on my OMAD (One Meal a Day) diet to help me continue to lose weight.  (I'm down 60 pounds since I started my diet nearly a year ago.)  I was sort of hungry for barbecue, but the two places near my hotel I had already been to before.  I was looking for someplace new and I found a barbecue place that popped up as a suggestion on my GPS that was about a 10 minute drive away.  It was a place called Porkopolis and I wasn't familiar with it.  I thought I'd go and check the place out.  

Brady Bogen and Matt Hamilton are lifelong friends who grew up together in Columbus, OH.  Bogen went into radio broadcasting while Hamilton got his degree from Indiana University and got into the hospitality business.  Hamilton worked for a number of restaurant ventures around the United States before settling in Phoenix a number of years ago.  Bogen was already living in Phoenix and working as a morning rush disc jockey at a popular hard rock/heavy metal station.  Bogen had started to market a line of barbecue sauces that he categorized as "Midwestern sweetness with Southwestern flavors".  Brady's Sauce was already a favorite around the Phoenix area by the time Hamilton and Bogen reconnected.  

Bogen's direct family lineage dates back to the early 1800's as he is the direct decedent of George Bogen, one of the first meat packers to open in Cincinnati.  Hamilton and Bogen thought that maybe they needed to think beyond just sauces and open a barbecue joint in the Valley of the Sun.  They enlisted the help of Roger McConnell, a local butcher who moved from Iowa to the Mesa area in the early 90's to open a meat shop featuring corn-fed Midwestern beef and pork.  With McConnell supplying the top notch pork and beef for the new venture, the trio opened the first Porkopolis in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler in 2012.  The got the name from a nickname Bogen's great-great grandfather called Cincinnati in the mid-1800's.  In 2016, the group opened a second location in Scottsdale.  

Gavin Hart had gone to college with Matt Hamilton at Indiana and had gotten into the restaurant business, himself.  He and his wife had been franchisees of a number of restaurants including Dunkin Donuts, Dairy Queen and BurgerFi.  The Harts owned a Dairy Queen on N. Michigan just north of 465 near Zionsville, but they were sort of getting tired with that format and wanted to do something else.  

Hamilton and Hart stayed in touch over the years and Hart voiced his desire to do something else with his Dairy Queen location, possibly a barbecue place.  Hamilton suggested that Hart come down to Phoenix to take a look at their Porkopolis operation.  Once he was there, Hart immediately liked the concept, down to the sauces they served at the restaurant.  Hart immediately signed on board as a part-owner of Porkopolis.

In early 2018, the Hart's closed the Dairy Queen location and started to renovate it into a Porkopolis location.  About six months later, the transformation was complete and they opened the Indianapolis Porkopolis in the fall of 2018.   

I came across W. 86th Street as the late afternoon traffic on I-465 was bumper to bumper.  I turned north on N. Michigan and headed under the interstate and further up the road to the north.  On my left, I saw the Porkopolis location, but there was no way for me to take a left hand turn into the place.  I went up to the light on 106th Street, did a U-turn and headed back down Michigan toward Porkopolis.  (see map)

From the outside, I could still kind of see that the building was one of those pre-fab franchise-type restaurants that, I guessed, was possibly a Kentucky Fried Chicken at one point.  Only after I found out that it used to be a Dairy Queen did I realize that I was sort of track with my thinking.  The restaurant shared its parking lot with a convenience store/gas station next door. 

Walking into Porkopolis, I found a well-appointed and cozy space with a full bar on one end, an open kitchen off to the side and a smattering of tables and booths down the long narrow dining area.  An outdoor patio was in front of the building facing N. Michigan Ave.  Since it was late in the afternoon, I was the only one in there.  In fact, the whole time I was there, I was the only one in there.  

I was seated at a booth by Kareem, a soft-spoken young man who would also be my server.  Kareem seemed distracted during my visit constantly looking out the window looking at - or for - god knows what.  He gave me a menu and I asked what kind of craft beer they had.  He really didn't know what they had, so I made my way up to the bar to check out the selection on tap.  I spied a Bell's Two Hearted Ale and ordered up a pint of that.  

The menu had your normal barbecue specialties - baby back ribs, brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken and smoked turkey.  They also had a number of barbecued meat sandwiches, as well as a burger, a rib-eye steak and southern fried chicken for people not looking for barbecue.  A number of interesting items such as jambalaya with smoked pork and chicken, pulled pork tacos, and an appetizer called fried gumbo - deep fried chunks of shrimp, catfish and okra mixed together and seasoned with a rub concocted by Brady Bogen.  

I really wanted to try some barbecue - I normally like to get the combo platter when I do barbecue - but something else grabbed my attention.  I ended up getting the smoked meatloaf.  It consisted of a mixture of pork and beef cooked in the smoker, then sliced and placed on the grill to finish it off.  It was served on a bed of mashed potatoes with green beans as a side.  A liberal amount of Brady's sweet and smoky sauce was placed on top of the meat loaf.  

The meat loaf was actually pretty good.  It had a nice smoked flavor and the char from the grill helped give it a nice finish on the taste buds.  The pork and beef mixture - how I like to make my meat loaf at home - was very flavorful.  And the sauce was a great complement to all the taste sensations.  I'm always dubious of meat loaf on the road, but Porkopolis' meat loaf more than satiated my appetite.

But I still wanted to try some of their barbecue, so along with the meat loaf I ordered the burnt ends appetizer.  It was a small bowl filled with tender brisket ends topped with the same sweet and smoky sauce that was on the meat loaf. It was sort of expensive for what I was served, but it was still very good.

They had four different types of sauces on the table - there was a regular sauce in a Porkopolis bottle, the sweet and smoky Brady's sauce, a hot and sweet Brady's sauce, and a very interesting Sriacha chile verde sauce.  I tried some of that on the mashed potatoes and I liked it immensely.  It was a little too salty for my liking, but the sauce really livened up the somewhat dull mashed potatoes.  In hindsight, I should have picked up a bottle of Sriacha green sauce when I was there.  

For my first visit to Porkopolis, I come away pretty impressed.  I was a little concerned about three things - I was the only one that was in there the whole time I was there (I left around 5:30 p.m.), the server was a little distracted (but he did an OK job of taking care of any request I had), and it is sort of a pain to get to if you're traveling north on N. Michigan.  But the smoked meat loaf was very good, as was the burnt end appetizer.  It was a nice and comfortable setting and there wasn't much of a hint that the place used to be a Dairy Queen up to a little over a year before.  I liked Porkopolis and if you're in the area you probably should give it a try. 

Reuben's Deli and Steakhouse - Montreal

When we were up in Montreal for a company meeting a few weeks ago, it was our last night in town.  Many people had taken off already and a handful of both long time and new colleagues had morning flights as I did. Trying to figure out what to have for dinner, one of our new colleagues came up with a brilliant idea - a good ol' Montreal Smoked Meat sandwich.  Now, I had been to Schwartz's Deli, probably the most famous of the smoked meat places in Montreal (click here to see the Road Tips entry on Schwartz's Deli), and I've had a sandwich from the Main Deli Steak House which is literally across the street from Schwartz's Deli (click here to see the entry on Main Deli Steak House).  But our new colleague was told by one of the local Montreal guys we work with that the best smoked meat place in downtown Montreal was a place called Reuben's Deli and Steakhouse.  And it wasn't far away from the hotel.  There were eight of us who made the walk over to Reuben's Deli for dinner that evening.  

Constantin Tzemopoulos immigrated from Greece to Montreal in 1955 at the age of 18.  His first job was working in a restaurant in Montreal, something that hooked him for the rest of his life.  Learning the restaurant business while working at different levels at various restaurants for the next 20 years, Constantine and his wife, Gloria, decided to open their own restaurant that featured both smoked meat sandwiches and steaks.  In 1976, the couple opened Reuben's Deli and Steakhouse, a welcome addition to the smoked meat scene in Montreal, but adding steaks, ribs, chicken, burgers, and seafood items to the mix.  

The Tzemopoulos family also had three boys that helped out in the restaurant - Dimitris (Jim), Tony, and Adam - all three eventually becoming a large part of the operation.  The sons also opened two other restaurants near Reuben's Deli and Steakhouse - DeVille Dinerbar, a refined, yet casual urban neighborhood restaurant, and Anton & James, a chic upscale cafeteria that features breakfast, sandwiches, wraps, salads and pizza.  Constantin Tzemopoulos was still a daily presence in Reuben's up to his unexpected and sudden death in 2016 at the age of 82.  The three Tzemopoulos boys continue to run Reuben's Deli, as well as the two other restaurants under their RD3 Restaurant Group umbrella.  

There are actually two Reuben's Deli along St. Catherine St. W. in what is called the Golden Square Mile of downtown Montreal.  There's one at 888 St. Catherine St. W. that is a subterranean restaurant, but I understand it was the original Reuben's Deli.  However, we went to the one at 1116 St. Catherine St. W. - a street level restaurant that was more modern in appearance.  (see map)  I'm not certain the two are related any longer.  

Since we were in a large group, we had a bit of a wait to get a table.  There was a small bar area toward the back, but there were only a couple of seats available and it was sort of a high traffic area as it was located just off the kitchen area.  We ended up congregating toward the hostess stand up front.  

The front deli counter displayed a number of items including pickled peppers and other veggies, along with different types of meats and cheese.  There was a large upright glass display case near the front door that held dozens of smoked and cured beef.  The wonderful smell in the place was almost intoxicating.

It was about 10 minute wait before we were able to be seated at a larger table toward the very back of the dining room.  It was a cozy area with banquette seating along a short wall.  We had a couple of waiters who came over to introduce themselves, drop off some menus and take our drink orders.  Reuben's has their own private branded India Pale Ale and I ordered up one of those.  

Smoked meat is sort of an ambiguous term in Montreal.  It's basically smoked brisket with seasonings, at least from what I can tell.  It's sort of like pastrami, but more like corned beef.  I had a former colleague who was a unique eater - I can't call him picky because he would eat some pretty interesting things, but he was particular in what he ate - and he refused to eat a smoked meat sandwich in Montreal because no one could - or would - tell him what the meat really was.  Well, from the first time I had a smoked meat sandwich in Montreal, I was hooked.  They had four different types of their smoked meat sandwich at Reuben's - a 7 ounce "76" sandwich; the Super Sandwich, which was their most popular; the Big Bang Sandwich, which was the Super Sandwich piled with more smoked meat; or the Builder's Platter where they just bring out a pile of smoked meat and some rye bread and you have at it.  

In addition to smoked meat sandwiches, Reuben's also had a number of other sandwiches, burgers, and "piled-high" club sandwiches.  Since "steakhouse" is in their name, Reuben's also had a number of steaks on the menu including a 20-ounce bone-in ribeye steak, sautéed tenderloin beef tips that were marinated in whisky, and a 16 ounce ribeye topped with a house-made chimichurri sauce.  They also had seafood, chicken, pasta and ribs on the menu at Reuben's.  

We started out getting some appetizers to appease our stomachs since we had a small lunch around noon, then a hearty walk in the woods near the Mont Tremblant ski resort area afterward.  We got a spinach and cheese dip, some thick-cut onion rings that were stacked high on a plate, and someone ordered up the chopped beef liver.  Deep-friend onion straws came on the top of the chopped liver, but I refused to try some.  I'm not big on liver, period.  

But the one appetizer that I really wanted to try was the smoked meat poutine.  When I found that you could get that as a side for an up-charge, that's what I ordered along with my Super smoked meat sandwich.  This was a decadent kind of meal.  The chopped smoked meat along with the cheese curds and gravy poured on top of some crispy French fries were a heavenly combination.  The smoked meat sandwich was more than enough with 10 ounces of thin-sliced meat, crispy on the edges, topped with Swiss cheese on a wonderful rye bread.  I normally don't eat this much food, but it was so damned good that I didn't care that I was going to have to revert back to a massive diet once I got back home.  (I gained six pounds during this trip to Montreal.  That's sort of normal as we always eat well when we go there.)

Most of us ordered the smoked meat sandwiches, but one of my colleagues with with Reuben's center-cut tenderloin beef filet.  He got blue cheese on the top and it came with sautéed mushroom caps and was served in a reduction sauce.  He was trying to eat healthy, so he got a side of grilled vegetables on the side.  He thought the steak was very delicious and was happy with what he got.  

Another one of my colleagues went with the ribs.  They were big meaty smoked beef ribs slathered with a house-made barbecue sauce. It was a pile of ribs and he liked them so much that he almost finished off the whole plate.  Toward the end, he was offering a couple bones to people around the table, but most of us were so full from the wonderful smoked meat sandwiches - and the great smoked meat poutine that I had.

I've now tried three different smoked meat houses in the downtown Montreal area and I'll have to say that out of all of them I liked Reuben's Deli & Steakhouse the best.  I'm sure there are others to try, but the lean smoked meat at Reuben's was tender and full of flavor.   The smoked meat poutine was just an epicurean delight, and I while I was a little remorseful from the absolute gluttonous display I put on, it was worth going on a crash diet directly after I got home.  The wait staff was attentive and professional, and the whole atmosphere at Reuben's was cozy and inviting.  If you're going to be in Montreal and want to try a smoked meat sandwich, you can go stand in line for 30 minutes plus at Schwartz's deli, or you can get a great sandwich in a nice setting at Reuben's.  Or you can do both!

Jack Stack Barbecue - Kansas City

I first started traveling on the road in the mid-80's working for a company out of Kansas City.  Now, I had been to Kansas City many times previously because I had a girlfriend who lived there for a number of years before distance just made it too hard for us to stay together.  But during my trips to see her during our time together, I was too young and culinarily naive to realize that Kansas City had an outstanding barbecue scene.  On my first trip to Kansas City working for my new company in the mid-80's, my boss and his wife treated me to a meal at the Jack Stack Barbecue in Martin City, MO.  It was the first of what would be many meals I've had at the original Jack Stack location.  Over the years, Jack Stack has expanded to five locations around the greater Kansas City area.  Staying in downtown Kansas City for a couple days recently, I found that I was walking distance from my hotel to the Jack Stack location in the old Freight House.  I decided to head over there for dinner on a cool and somewhat rainy evening.  

Years ago before I found a format or a voice for this blog, I had a couple small posts on the Jack Stack location in Martin City, which was actually called the Smoke Stack when I first went there in the mid-80's.  But the constant through the history of the Smoke Stack - and then later on with what became Jack Stack - is the Fiorella family.  

Russ Fiorella was one of 14 children who grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Kansas City.  His parents, Italian immigrants, were originally farmers on the far east side of Kansas City until they were forced to find another line of work when farm prices fell in the 1930's.  Like many of his brothers, Russ ended up running a small neighborhood grocery store and worked as the butcher.  Russ loved to barbecue the meats he cut, and nearly every Sunday you'd find him smoking brisket, ribs, or pork shoulders for the Fiorella family.  

Pictured right - Russ Fiorella standing in front of his neighborhood grocery store/butcher shop.  Photo courtesy Jack Stack Barbecue.  

As larger grocery stores started to take over, Russ knew that his little neighborhood grocery store couldn't survive.  The story goes that Russ took his wife, Flora, to the hospital to give birth to the couples' sixth child.  Instead of hanging around the hospital, Russ went over to a small roadhouse on the south side of Kansas City called The Lucky Inn and bought the place.  The purchase surprised everyone around Russ, including Flora who had no idea he was even thinking about owning his own restaurant.  Russ turned The Lucky Inn from a roadhouse tavern into a barbecue place and named it Smoke Stack BBQ.  

The only hitch was that in order to buy The Lucky Inn, Russ Fiorella had to sell the family's seven bedroom, seven bathroom home and move the family - three boys and three girls - into the small apartment above the restaurant.  But business started going well for the Fiorella's and by the time the seventh child came into the world around 1963, Russ was able to move the family to a larger home.    

A fire destroyed the building in 1966, but the Fiorella's rebuilt and it wasn't long before business started to come back from the devastating fire.  By the early 70's, three of Russ' children opened their own Smoke Stack locations around Kansas City with Russ' help, with oldest son Jack opening his place in Martin City, a small town on the far south side of Kansas City just inside the Missouri state line with Kansas.  

Jack's location was next door to the famous Jess & Jim's Steakhouse - a destination restaurant that has garnered international fame over the years (and, as a personal side note, I think is overrated) - and that certainly didn't hurt his initial presence in the area.  In fact, the location was such a huge success that Jack Fiorella and his wife, Delores, moved to its present day location at 135th and Holmes Road in 1978.

Pictured left - Jack Fiorella.  Photo courtesy the Fiorella family and the Martin City Telegraph.

With business up and going at his barbecue place, Jack Fiorella soon opened a second restaurant in Overland Park, KS called Hatfield and McCoys that offered some of the barbecue items that the Smoke Stack restaurants had along with an expanded menu.  However, tough economic times in the early 80's forced the closure of that restaurant.  In the meantime, Jack had neglected the Martin City barbecue location enough that business was down and they weren't even open for lunch any longer.  Crestfallen by his failure at another restaurant and over a half million dollars in debt, Jack directed all his efforts to his barbecue restaurant in Martin City.  He came back to the restaurant full time with a small sign outside the restaurant that simply said, "Jack's Back!"  People started to come back in droves to his barbecue place and within a couple of years he had paid off his debts from his failed restaurant.  

Delores and Jack had always envisioned a more upscale barbecue restaurant compared to the other sit-down barbecue joints that were all over the Kansas City area.  They had been one of the first barbecue places in the area to smoke meats with hickory wood after they opened in 1974, and Delores brought a woman's touch to the menu adding items such as seafood, chicken, lamb and steaks.  They expanded the Martin City location putting in two additional dining rooms and it became just as popular of a destination restaurant as Jess & Jim's just down the road.  

(Russ Fiorella passed away in 1986 and two of his daughters continued to run the original Smoke Stack location until 1999 when they closed the restaurant and the building was torn down soon thereafter.  Flora Fiorella was still involved with the business up to the time that it closed and she passed away in 2008.)  

By the mid-90's with an eye upon expansion, Jack and Delores had officially changed the name of their business to Fiorella's Jack Stack and opened a second Jack Stack restaurant in Overland Park in 1997.  In 2000, a third Jack Stack opened in the renovated Freight House in Kansas City, and a fourth location opened in the Country Club Plaza area of Kansas City in 2006.  In 2016, a fifth location in Lee's Summit, MO was opened.  After eating at the one in the Freight House, I have now eaten at all five locations in the greater Kansas City area.   

Jack and Delores Fiorella's son and daughter, Kevin and Jennifer, also helped in the business as it grew.  Catering and private dining were introduced in the early 90's at a facility just down the street from the Martin City Jack Stack, and by 2000 the company had started a mail order business to ship ribs, burnt ends and other barbecued meats around the United States.  In 2009, Jack and Delores retired selling the company to their daughter Jennifer and her husband Case Dorman who is the CEO of the Jack Stack empire today.  A fourth generation Fiorella family member, Case and Jennifer's son Keaton, works in the catering department for Jack Stack.  

The Freight House in Kansas City is located in the Crossroads Art District, a collection of unique boutiques, restaurants, studios and art galleries on the south end of Kansas City's downtown area.  Originally built in the late 1880's, it was used for storage of freight and dry goods that came in on dozens of trains that stopped in Kansas City each day.  As the advent of truck freight and outlying warehouses came into being in the 1950's, the Freight House began to see a significant drop in usage.  By the 1980's, it was all but closed down and fell into disrepair.  

In 1995, a group of investors bought the dilapidated property and began a three year process of repurposing the building into usable space.  The owners envisioned three restaurants in the space.  Celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich opened the first restaurant, the eponymously named Lidia's, in 1998.  The Fiorella family opened Jack Stack in 2000, and a restaurant by the name of City Market opened in 2003.  City Market closed in 2010 and was replaced soon thereafter by Grunauer, an Austrian/German restaurant owned by famed chef Peter Grunauer.  (Look for an upcoming post on Grunauer at some point in the near future.)  

As I said, it was a very short walk - less than five minutes - from my hotel to the Jack Stack BBQ location in the Freight House.  (see map).  I had never been to that location and as I walked through a vehicle entry way between Lidia's and Grunauer, I walked into a large parking lot that faced Union Station just across the multitude of tracks between that and the Freight House.  It was sort of surprising to me that I had never been to this place in all the years I've been coming to Kansas City.  

Since I was a single diner, I tried to get a seat in the bar area.  But the bar was packed including the sit down areas.  I went to the hostess stand to see if I could get a seat in the dining area.  She sort of hesitated and said, "Well, we really don't have a booth at this time."  I didn't think I heard her correctly and I looked out at the dining area and saw a sea of tables in the center of the room.  I said, "I don't really need a booth."  She looked at a four-seater table in the center of the room that was empty and asked if I could have that.  She escorted me right there and dropped off a menu for me to look over.

The main dining room at the Freight House Jack Stack BBQ is pretty impressive.  It's a long and narrow space with a vaulted ceiling with wood truss supports.  From the supports were faux candle lighting hanging down above the middle of the dining area.  The brick walls had pictures of trains that used to stop at the Freight House and Union Station.  There was a large room toward the back of the dining area that could be used for private dining or large groups of up to about 20 people.  A statue of the bull depicted in the Jack Stack logo was the centerpiece on the large table.  

My server for the evening was a young lady by the name of Tara.  She asked me what I would like to drink and I ordered up a Boulevard Pale Ale which is made less than a mile away from the Jack Stack at the Freight House.  Then I settled in to take a look at the menu.

Actually, I've eaten at Jack Stack locations so much over the years that I really don't need a menu.  The primary barbecue offerings haven't changed much over the years - pork ribs, lamb ribs, beef ribs, pulled pork, smoked chicken, burnt ends, brisket, as well as smoked ham, turkey and sausage are the barbecue staples of the place.  They have a number of sandwiches to choose from with all their smoked meat offerings, as well as a grilled French dip sandwich made with sliced prime rib beef, and a chicken chipotle club sandwich.  And, of course, since it is Kansas City, Jack Stack also offers hickory-grilled steaks, pork chops, and seafood entrees.  One thing that I've been very tempted to try at some point is their hickory smoked prime rib.  I'm guessing that just has to be outstanding.  

But like always, I went with the combo barbecue platter.  I got the three meat combo with sliced brisket, burnt ends, and pulled pork.  Fries come with the meal, but you also get a choice of two sides.  The hickory pit beans are always a must, and I really like their cole slaw at Jack Stack.  The cole slaw is creamy with a somewhat sweet and somewhat spicy taste with a dash of paprika added.  

They have two different types of sauces at Jack Stack, both are served warm.  One is a conventional Kansas City sweet and smoky sauce, the other is a hotter sauce that has more of a peppery taste.  They don't really emphasize the sauces at Jack Stack and that's OK because the meats are usually very good.

And on this visit, it was not exception to the rule.  The pulled pork literally melted in my mouth with each bite.  The brisket was tender, lean and full of a great smoky beef flavor.  And the burnt ends were done to perfection - large, chunky and tender.  I've had some pretty suspect burnt ends around Kansas City over the years, but the ones at Jack Stack have consistently been very good over the years.   

The visit to the Freight House Jack Stack BBQ completed my scorecard of eating at all five locations in the Kansas City area.  A lot of barbecue places have popped up in the Kansas City area over past twenty years that have tried to emulate the Fiorella family's success in the quality of their meats, the foods other than barbecue that they offer, and the more upscale dining settings that have long defined what Jack Stack is all about.  I know there's a lot of choices for barbecue in Kansas City - and I will say that there are a couple three that I may like better than Jack Stack.  But if you're going to Kansas City and looking for a starting point where to try barbecue for the first time, I would say start at Jack Stack BBQ and go from there.  The consistent quality of the barbecue is one of the reasons why I keep going back time and time again.  

Judy's Barge Inn - Buffalo, IA

There's a number of little towns up and down the Mississippi River that always seem to have one or two places that have good views of the river along with a serviceable food menu along with cold adult beverages.  My wife and I went out to Buffalo, west of Davenport, last summer to go have lunch at Judy's Barge Inn.  A buddy of mine lives out near Buffalo and he mentioned that we should meet out at Judy's for lunch sometime.  We finally got around to doing that during the holiday season late last year.  

Judy Van Blaracom and her husband, J.D., characterize themselves as "river people".  For years, the couple has lived on Enchanted Island, a small housing development that is right next to - and sometimes in - the Mississippi River on the southwest side of Davenport.  When a longtime restaurant in Buffalo became available a little over three years ago, Judy decided to jump in with both feet and buy the place.  She convinced her sister Terry Ruth to join her in the venture, and Judy's daughter Michelle soon joined up with her mom and aunt.  J.D. Van Blaracom is also involved in the business as sort of a "jack-of-all-trades".  Judy and her sister came up with the food menu with the same philosophy they had while growing up - make food that is good because they like to eat.  

I met my buddy at the bar around 1 p.m. on a weekday.  (Judy's is closed on Monday's.)  Judy's is housed in an old river house along Iowa Highway 22 that was originally built back in 1856.  (see map) There were a handful of locals milling about the bar area and into the attached dining area off to the side.  There's a back patio area that's open in the warmer months that also has a small stage for live music in the summer months.  There's also a smoker in the back patio area for barbecue specials Judy's runs from time to time.  During the summer months, Judy has a small produce garden in the back that she tends to for fresh vegetables and herbs, but also relies upon local growers to supply her with fresh produce year round.   

Judy's daughter Michelle was tending bar that day and recognized my buddy who is a semi-regular in the place.  She gave us a couple menus to look over and we both ordered a couple beers.  Judy's has mostly domestics, but they did have a few of the local Quad City-area craft beers to choose from, as well.  

It's not an extensive menu at Judy's - they feature a couple of burgers, a grilled chicken sandwich, a pork tenderloin sandwich and a sliced turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.  Appetizers are your usual fare - chicken wings and tenders, spinach and artichoke dip with chips, pulled pork nachos, and house-made pretzel sticks.  Soups and salads are also available daily.  

When my wife and I first made the pilgrimage to Judy's last summer, I had the Judy's Barge Burger - a 1/2 pound Wagyu beef patty topped with onion straws, a fried egg, bacon, and American cheese served on a butter brioche bun.  Lettuce, sliced tomatoes, dill pickles and a slice of red onion also came on the burger.  When it was brought out to me, I was blown away by the size.  But the one thing that I remember was that the onion straws were outstanding.  I prefer onion straws over regular onion rings more times than not and Judy's are very good.

Except this time, I asked Michelle if I could also get a side of the onion straws.  Well, that was a mistake.  Not because they weren't very good - there was just a ton of them!  And there was no way that I could have eaten both the huge burger and the onion straws.  I got a side of Judy's house-made barbecue sauce on the side.

The burger was just as good as I remember it was when I first went to Judy's.  I took a lot of the onion straws off the burger and asked that the fried egg be made hard as I don't like a messy burger with a soft egg on it.  There was a hint of pink inside the burger patty and it was juicy with a great beef flavor.  Judy sources her Wagyu beef from nearby Geest Farms in Blue Grass, IA.  Geest Farms raise their beef naturally without inducing hormones or antibiotics into their cattle.  (My wife and I will get some of their frozen beef from time to time at the Freight House Farmers Market in downtown Davenport during the spring and summer months.)  

My buddy ended up getting the chicken quesadilla that was part of the appetizer menu.  A side salsa and guacamole came with the quesadilla.  It was stuffed with goat cheese and chunks of chicken, then pan-fried to melt everything together.  His eyes got huge when Michelle set it down in front of him.  "Damn," he exclaimed.  "This is going to be two meals for me."  He ate about half of what he was served and had Michelle box up the rest for him to take home.  

While we were eating, Judy Van Blaracom came into the restaurant.  She came over to my buddy and gave him a big hug.  He introduced me to Judy, who I had seen before not only in her place, but at events around the Quad Cities.  Judy's blonde hair is hard to miss and she has a bright smile with eyes that seem to dance when she talks to people.  She seems like a person who would be hard not to like.

Judy's Barge Inn doesn't have an extensive menu, but what they have seems to be very good, very fresh, and served in large portions.  Their motto - "Come in Empty, Leave Full" - is certainly an apt phrase for Judy's.  Both times I've gotten the Barge Burger from Judy's Barge Inn I've been more than happy with the quality and taste, as well as the size of the thing.  I've never been able to fully finish one in a single sitting.  Judy's Barge Inn is a friendly place where people can be comfortable just whiling away their time either in the bar area or out in back patio area in the warmer months.  One thing that I want to go back to Judy's and try is their bloody mary which is over the top like many of the food portion sizes they serve.  

Flatted Fifth BBQ and Blues (and River Ridge Brewing) - Bellevue, IA

Last fall when I was working a event over a weekend, my wife decided to take a road trip on a warm fall day up along the Mississippi River in Eastern Iowa.  She ended up in Bellevue, IA and went to a little brew pub called River Ridge Brewing.  She talked about how good the beer was there and how friendly the people were.  On a cold and blustery Sunday a few weeks ago with nothing going on for us that day, we decided to get in the car and head up to Bellevue to try River Ridge Brewing.  And we ended up having lunch at the Flatted Fifth BBQ and Blues restaurant in the historic Potter's Mill in Bellevue.  

Potter's Mill is a former grist mill along Big Mill Creek not far from the Mississippi River.  The building - one of the oldest in the state of Iowa - dates back to 1845 and featured six large milling stones turned by water turbines from a dam on the creek.  E.G. Potter was the first owner of the mill and he had customers for his ground flour all around the Midwest and extending to the Eastern part of the United States and down to New Orleans.  Potter sold the mill in 1871 and it changed hands a number of times over the years before the Mill finally closed in 1969.  

The neglected property went up for auction in 1980 and it was bought by Dr. Daryll and Carolyn Eggers who had planned to restore the original mill.  However, that turned out to be a task that was unfeasible and, in turn, they transformed the property into a restaurant/gift shop.  Historical flooding on the Mississippi in 1993 caused the Eggers to close the restaurant.  They eventually opened part of the building as a bed and breakfast destination.  A couple parties bought the restaurant on contract from the Eggers, but both defaulted causing the Eggers to shutter the place for good in 2011.  The building was offered at a deep discount at auction and the City of Bellevue was offered the building at a low price, but it sat empty for three years.  

Mark Herman grew up in Mason City, IA and he and his wife, Rachel, were living in Rochester, MN for a number of years.  Mark was working as a business administrator for a local church after being a management consultant and owning his own landscaping business for a number of years while Rachel worked as a clinical nurse.  Both shared a passion for good food and good blues music, and the two had long harbored a desire to have a restaurant/music venue.  

Pictured right - Mark and Rachel Herman.  Photo courtesy Dubuque Telegraph-Herald.

Rachel's mother lived about an hour from Bellevue on the Illinois side of the river and the couple would pass through the small river town a number of times each year to and from her mother's home.  They always admired the Potter's Mill building and when they found out it was available, they jumped at the chance to buy the property.  

Retiring at the church, Mark Herman moved to Bellevue to oversee the building's renovation while Rachel stayed behind to work her job in Rochester, coming to join him on the weekends.  She eventually moved full time to Bellevue to live with her husband and the two opened Flatted Fifth in August of 2014.  Their chef since Day One has been Andrew Weis, a Bellevue native who was a bus boy at the original restaurant in Potter's Mill as a teenager.  After graduating from culinary school in the Twin Cities, Weis went to work at both the Hotel Julien Dubuque and the Diamond Jo Casino in Dubuque before joining the Herman's in the Flatted Fifth.  

As I said, our main idea going to Bellevue that day was to hit River Ridge Brewing, a nanobrewery that has been in business since September of 2016.  Two couples - Nick and Kelly Hueneke along with Kelly's brother Jeremy Roth and his wife Nikki - decided to start the brewery after years of experience both as home brewers and working in the industry.  Jeremy and Nikki Roth decided to divest themselves from the business in 2018 and the Hueneke's turned to one of their bartenders, Nic Hockenberry, to join them in the business.  

Nic's wife, Alison Simpson, also worked at the brewery and when they told Alison's father, Greg Simpson, and her step-mother, Amanda, that they were going to buy into the business, Greg Simpson jumped at a chance to buy part of the business, as well.  Greg Simpson had been a beer enthusiast and a home brewer for a number of years in addition to his normal job in as a health care professional and as a political operative in Dubuque.  Hockenberry and the Simpson's joined as owners in late summer of last year.

We pulled up in front of River Ridge Brewing around 1 p.m. on that blustery Sunday.  It's located on the main road through Bellevue.  (see map)  Nic Hockenberry and Alison Simpson were behind the bar with Greg Simpson standing at the end of the bar.  They welcomed my wife and I into the place, and Greg Simpson asked if we had ever been in the place before.  My wife recognized him from her first visit and she said, "Well, he hasn't, but I was here awhile back and talked to you just after you bought into the place."  He gregariously welcomed her back as we settled in at the small bar near the front.  

River Ridge is not that big of a place, the bar seats about six and there are tables and seating areas along the side and toward the back.  Down a hallway past the brewing room is an exit to a beer garden that is open during the warmer months.  

We got a couple of beers - the Iowa Bale Ale, a combination American pale ale and Indian pale; and the Oar What IPA that had a great hoppy taste to it.  River Ridge tries to buy local ingredients for their beers when they're available.  They don't serve food at River Ridge, but they do have two different types of beer cheese spreads and crackers that are available for $7.00.  They work with a local cheese maker to make a mild and a spicy cheese spread.  My wife thought she needed a little something to tide her over, so I sprung for the mild cheese spread and crackers.  The mild cheese spread had a bit of a spicy bite to it and I could almost imagine how more intense the spicy cheese spread would have been.  We had a few crackers with cheese and took the remainder home with us.  

After finishing up at River Ridge Brewing we made our way down to the historic Potter's Mill building to have something to eat at The Flatted Fifth.  (see map)  We went inside and were greeted by LouAnn, a friendly lady who showed us to a table on the upper level with a small stage was in the corner.  The Flatted Fifth hosts a number of local, regional, national and even international blues artists on their stage on most Saturday nights.  In fact, the restaurant/venue gets its name - Flatted Fifth (also known as the Devil's Interval or Devil's Chord) - from the fundamental chord structure and progression used by blues guitarists.  

The interior of the main dining area featured hand-hewn rafters and support pillars with stone walls.  Old grist mill machinery was on display in some areas.  It was warm, laid-back and cozy in The Flatted Fifth - so cozy that Food and Wine Magazine named the restaurant as the most cozy in the state of Iowa in 2017.  

Back behind the main dining area was a smaller dining room that was used for overflow in the restaurant.  This room had full stone walls with a handful of tables that could handle groups of 4 to 6 people for food.   

Since it was Sunday, they were featuring their brunch menu at The Flatted Fifth.  LouAnn said they had a special on bloody mary's that day and we had a choice between ones infused with Flatted Fifth's house-made barbecue sauce or a regular bloody mary mixture.  I took the BBQ bloody while my wife got the regular one.  I also got a pint of the Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sue to go along with my bloody mary.  The BBQ bloody was thick and had a spicy taste, but the sweetness of the barbecue sauce was not something that I particularly liked.  My wife's bloody mary was also a bit spicy, but I liked the taste of their mixture better than the BBQ bloody mary.  

If we would have had access to the regular lunch menu, we would have found a limited selection of Cajun-inspired and barbecued meat sandwiches and some southern entrees such as red beans and rice, chicken pot pie and shrimp & cheesy grits.  The dinner menu opens up more choices, especially on the entree side of things including Cajun seafood pasta, chicken Tchoupitoulas, blackened catfish, and a Bourbon Street-style ribeye steak.  The brunch menu menu cut down on both the sandwiches and entrees, but featured chicken & waffles, pecan-crusted French toast, and a Cajun omelet stuffed with andouille sausage, shrimp and crawfish meat.  

One thing they had as an appetizer that day was a burnt end brisket platter that came with fries.  My wife and I decided to give that a try, but we didn't want the fries.  She got the cole slaw instead.   We were sort of surprised at the number of burnt ends that LouAnn brought out to us.  It looked more like a full meal rather than an appetizer.  But the burnt ends were very good.  They came with Flatted Fifth's sweet and smoky barbecue sauce that had a bit of a spicy kick.  The burnt ends were tender and lean, and had a wonderful barbecued/smoked taste quality.  

I wanted to try the jambalaya they had on the menu.  For brunch you can get a half portion or a full portion.  I took the half portion with a side salad that came with it.  One again, when LouAnn put the bowl down in front of me I had to ask if this was really a half portion.  "It sure is," she replied.  I remarked that I could almost imagine how big the full portion would be.  "We don't have many people walk out of here who are still hungry,"  LouAnn commented.  The jambalaya was a mixture of smoked chicken and andouille sausage in a creole sauce with the holy trinity of onions, bell peppers and celery on top of a bed of Cajun-style rice.  It was good - not the best jambalaya I've had - but it was still passable.  Especially when I got it a bit more spicy with some dashes of Tabasco sauce.  I concentrated mostly on the chicken and sausage sauce and left most of the rice.  Between the burnt ends, bloody mary's and jambalaya - not to mention some of the crackers and cheese spread that we had at River Ridge Brewing - that was pretty much all we were going to eat that day.  

After finishing up with our meal, LouAnn invited us to head upstairs to the third floor to the art gallery/coffee shop the Herman's dubbed "A Corner to Fill."  This used to be the bed-and-breakfast part of Potter's Mill years ago.  There's an elevator that we took up to the third floor that came out on a landing with a view of the mouth of Big Mill Creek with the Mississippi River just beyond.  

The third floor space features a cozy little combination gift shop/art gallery/coffee shop and seating area.  There was a young girl manning the area and we were the only ones in there.

The rooms featured a number of paintings and artworks by local artists.  Rachel Herman's mother and Mark Herman's sister both had a strong connection to the arts and they dedicated the area in Potter's Mill to the two ladies.

This is the type of place where my wife likes to linger and look around.  The area featured tables and chairs where people could enjoy coffee and pastries while playing board games.  We were kind of surprised we were the only ones there as it was sort of a nice little place to hang.

We made our way down the stairs to the second floor and walked into a large room that appeared to be used for private functions, meetings and receptions.  There wasn't really much to see in there other than some of the original woodwork in the room. 

It was certainly a good trip to Bellevue that day with a stop at River Ridge Brewing, then lunch at The Flatted Fifth located in the historic Potter's Mill building.  While we enjoyed the beers along with the beer/cheese spread at River Ridge, we were more than happy with the burnt ends and the jambalaya we had at The Flatted Fifth.  Potter's Mill is still a very unique place to visit, a place we'd been by many times over the years but finally took the time to visit on this trip.  If you're ever out on the Great River Road along the Mississippi south of Dubuque, take the time to stop for lunch or dinner at The Flatted Fifth, and then head over to River Ridge Brewing for a good craft beer.

The Shaved Duck - St. Louis

A place that I've heard about many times during my trips to St. Louis over the past few years is a hip little barbecue spot by the name of The Shaved Duck that goes a step beyond many of the traditional barbecue places in "The Loo".  I have tried to go there a handful of times, but each time the place was packed with people waiting outside to get into the small restaurant.  On a visit to one of my accounts in St. Louis earlier this year, we lucked out and were able to get a table for 4 people around 6:30 on a weeknight.  Much to my wife's consternation, as she will be very upset when she reads this, I finally got a chance to try The Shaved Duck.

Alastair Nisbet grew up in Aberdeen on Scotland's north east coast.  It's not quite the hot bed of barbecue where one would cut their teeth on smoked briskets, ribs, or pork butt.  In his formative years, he worked in restaurants in Scotland.  That is, until he was in his early 20's when he met an American woman and eventually moved to the U.S.  It was during his first visit to the U.S. where he not only fell in love with the woman, but he also fell in love with barbecue.  The first time he tasted pulled pork, he was blown away.  It wasn't long after he moved to the States that he bought his first smoker.  

Ally - as he was soon known to friends in his new home of St. Louis - knew he wanted to open a restaurant one day, but he needed to save up some money and also get some health insurance since free insurance isn't available for ex-pats from the U.K.  He worked in sales for five years before he went to work at a restaurant to learn the ins-and-outs of the business.  Within a year, Nisbet had his plan in place to open a Scottish restaurant - his home away from his hometown of Aberdeen.  He found a spot in the Central West End of St. Louis and opened The Scottish Arms in 2005.  It featured common Scottish and American fare along with a wide selection of imported beers and live music.   

(Pictured Right - Alastair "Ally" Nesbit.  Photo courtesy Food Talk STL.  Click on this link for a wonderful audio/video/print feature on Ally Nisbet and The Scottish Arms.)

A lot of Scottish food is based upon using the land and sea for the best ingredients.  French cuisine is similar to Scottish food in terms of using the land for their food.  Once "The Arms" was up and going for a couple years, Nisbet turned his attention to a new concept - a restaurant that offered Americanized French (or French American) foods.  He teamed with a couple of young chefs to help out with the restaurant and hired a bar manager that brought in an eclectic beer selection.  Coming up with a name for the place proved to be a bit of a conundrum.  Sitting around trying beers one evening in a group, Nisbet came up with the non-sensical Shaved Duck name.  Everyone laughed at the absurdity of the name, but it stuck.  The Shaved Duck opened in the spring of 2008 in a building that started out as a neighborhood grocery store, but had most recently been a small restaurant by the name of Pestalozzi Place.  

From its start, The Shaved Duck was a hit.  Their beer selection was called by one local publication as the best in town.  Their butter-poached filet mignon, their duck confit, their curry tagliatelle, and their duck-fat frites (fries) had critics and food enthusiasts in St. Louis dancing in the aisle.  Unfortunately, the Great Recession of 2008 affected a lot of restaurants and The Shaved Duck was not immune from the downturn.  By the end of the year, Nisbet decided to pull the plug on the concept and regroup.  

Barbecue was still a passion for Nisbet and he thought that he could save The Shaved Duck by doing something along the lines of a barbecue place, but with little twists and by keeping some of the more popular menu items from the first incarnation of The Shaved Duck.  Nisbet's two chefs and his bar manager didn't agree with the direction of the new concept, so they ended up leaving before he re-opened The Shaved Duck in late January of 2009.

The re-incarnation of The Shaved Duck proved to be the right one for Nisbet.  The barbecue, traditional sides and holdovers like the duck confit brought people in the doors in droves.  The place was always packed when I went there three or four times in the past.  But tonight, we were lucky to get in right away.  

We pulled up across from The Shaved Duck located at the corner of Virginia Ave. and Pestalozzi St. in the heart of Tower Grove East in St. Louis.  (see map)  Going inside, there was a small bar area that sat six people and featured ornate glass windows behind the bar.  For being well-known for their craft beer selection, I was sort of taken aback at how small the bar area was.  

On the wall near the bar was a mural of significant St. Louis-area musicians over the past 100 years.   The Shaved Duck features live music in terms of a solo artist playing in a corner of the bar nearly every night.  The night we were there, a musician by the name of Pierce Crask was playing his guitar and singing in the bar.  

We were guided to the back area of the restaurant where the small dining area sits at The Shaved Duck.  It was pretty cozy in there, but we didn't really feel like the other diners were sitting on top of us. 

Our server for the evening, she was calling herself Claire Bear, came by and dropped off menus for us.  The current beer list was on a blackboard on the wall.  I got myself the Urban Underdog lager from St. Louis' Urban Chestnut brewery.  (I also like their Zwickel Bavarian-style lager very much, as well.)

Since my guests had been there before, but I hadn't, we decided to try just a little bit of everything.  The only problem was that the first thing we asked for - the duck confit - they were out of it that evening.  Claire said that they were out of the baked beans, as well.  Well, as long as they weren't out of anything else, that was fine with me.  

Since they do a little bit of everything from the South, they had gumbo on the menu.  It was served with a dollop of rice on the top along with some chopped green onions.  Chunks of seafood and andouille sausage were mixed in with the great tasting broth.  Although they said it was made with Habanero and Cascabel chile peppers, I didn't think it was all that spicy.  It was simply terrific, one of the better cups of gumbo I've experienced.  Frankly, I could have had a bowl of the gumbo and been perfectly content.

One of the guys couldn't quit raving about the walnut and brown sugar bacon appetizer.  We got three orders that.  They cure their own bacon in-house and topped it off with walnut chunks, brown sugar, and blue cheese crumbles.  Sliced pears come on the side.  It was very good, indeed, but also very rich.  

We also had to get the smothered fries they have on the menu at The Shaved Duck.  Those featured crisp hand-cut fries topped with pulled pork meat and a cheese sauce, finished with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.  The taste of this plate was rich and decadent.  I had a couple three bites of the smothered fries because I knew if I ate more after the gumbo and a couple strips of the candied bacon, I wouldn't want to eat anything else.  

One of the things on the appetizer menu was the brisket burnt ends, but I wanted some of those as part of my dinner offering that evening.  In addition to burnt ends, they also had smoked chicken, smoked meatloaf, smoked tri-tip, pulled pork and ribs that evening.  We all sort of discussed what we were going to get and we said we'd sort of share things family style.  

My plate consisted of the burnt ends, tri-tip and three of the pork ribs.  The burnt ends were rolled in The Shaved Duck's house-made barbecue sauce.  One of the guys said, "Oh, man, we screwed up.  I should have told you to get the burnt ends without the sauce."  I could see what he meant.  The sauce was a sweet and smoky sauce with some vinegar mixed in, I believe.  I actually didn't care for it all that much.  But the burnt ends were really tender and had a great smoked flavor to them.

The ribs were just so-so, in my opinion.  They were a little dry and the rub they used didn't really do much to enhance the taste of the smoked pork ribs.  But I will say that the tri-tip was outstanding.  Tender, a touch of a smoke flavor to go along with the juiciness of the beef, the tri-tip was worth the price of admission.     

One of the guys got the meatloaf on his plate along with the tri-tip and the pulled chicken.  I tried some of the meatloaf and it was also pretty good.  It was a little dried out, but it had a nice taste quality.  I've thought about smoking meatloaf at home, but I just haven't pulled the trigger on that.  The meat loaf at The Shaved Duck pretty much convinced me that I had to do it sometime.  

The pulled pork was also very good.  Moist with a slight smoke flavor, the pulled pork was very tender and easy to cut with a fork.  It tasted all right with their barbecue sauce - better than the sauce went with the burnt ends.  

The guys were also big on the sides at The Shaved Duck.  Since they didn't have baked beans that night, I had to settle for something else.  I got the coleslaw which was pretty bland.  They had also sold me on getting a side of the jalapeño cream corn for a small side and I didn't think it was all that great.  But two other sides that were great were the sautéed Brussels sprouts and the sautéed green beans.  I normally don't like Brussels sprouts, but these were pan sautéed in butter and had a nice roasted flavor to them.  The green beans were equally surprising - sautéed similar to the Brussels sprouts, they had a crispy outer shell and weren't chewy or overcooked.  I was sort of sad I didn't get to try the baked beans, but two of the four sides I tried were excellent.  

Unfortunately, we left a lot of food on the table when we were done with the meal.  But that was all right.  We ordered a lot of food for the four of us.  Some things about The Shaved Duck I really liked - the smoked tri-tip and the smoked meatloaf were both outstanding, as were the sautéed Brussels sprouts and the sautéed green beans.  And I can't say enough about the cup of seafood and andouille sausage gumbo I had to start out with.  I think I was oversold by my guests on the walnut and brown sugar bacon and the smothered fries, as well as the jalapeño cream corn - but they were all still good.  I thought the burnt ends would have been better had they not been in the house-made barbecue sauce, and the ribs I thought were just sort of so-so.  But the service we had was exemplary, as Claire took care of us very well with every request or add-on that we had.  The Shaved Duck has a great reputation for interesting barbecue, but I may have hit them on an off night with their ribs.  But if I would have gotten the meat loaf, the tri-tip, and the burnt ends without the barbecue sauce on them - and tried nothing else - then I would be completely in the bag for The Shaved Duck.

Kue'd Smokehouse - Waukee, IA

One of my accounts in Des Moines had a client who needed some assistance with a pair of speakers he had purchased earlier this summer.  The client lived about 20 miles north and west of Des Moines and after I had finished there, I took off to go back to Des Moines for the evening.  On the way back, I passed a barbecue place that looked sort of interesting in a strip mall along Hickman Road in the suburb of Waukee.  I turned around and went back to try out Kue'd Smokehouse.  (see map) 

It turns out that Kue'd Smokehouse has some fine Des Moines barbecue in its DNA.  Owners Shad and Angie Kirton used to be co-owners of the award winning Smokey D's BBQ on Des Moines' far north side.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Smokey D's.)  Shad Kirton had grown up in Central Iowa and had gone away for culinary school.  After stints at restaurants on the west coast, Kirton came back to Iowa to run the kitchen at the Hotel Pattee, an upscale boutique hotel/restaurant in Perry, IA that quickly became a destination for food enthusiasts nationwide.  

When the hotel and restaurant fell on hard financial times about a dozen years ago, Kirton left there and got together with Darren Warth - the "D" of Smokey D's - to be the pitmaster at a small barbecue joint and to enter barbecue contests.  Warth had already won awards at a couple of the more prestigious barbecue competitions - the American Royal in Kansas City and the Jack Daniels World Barbecue Invitational in Tennessee.  But it wasn't until Shad Kirton participated in the BBQ Pitmasters reality-based competition on The Learning Channel (TLC) in 2010 that the legend of Smokey D's took off.  Kirton ended up winning the second season of the competition and a $100,000 check for his smoking of a whole pig in a traditional cinder block smoke pit in the season's final broadcast.  

With that type of success, Warth and Kirton - who already had two small barbecue places in the Des Moines area - opened their large Smokey D's location later that year just off Interstate 80 on N. 2nd Ave.  In a city that quickly became known for the barbecue offerings in the area, Smokey D's was considered by many to be the best.  Warth's wife, Sherry, and Kirton's wife, Angie were also partners in the business.  

Pictured right - Angie and Shad Kirton.  Photo courtesy Des Moines CityView.

In 2015, the Warth's bought the Kirton's shares of Smokey D's.  Shad Kirton took a year off from running a restaurant and participating in barbecue contests to concentrate on his family and to plan a new restaurant.  The Kirton's found a spot in a new strip mall in the fast growing community of Waukee and they opened Kue'd Smokehouse in March of 2016.  Earlier this year (and after my visit), Food and Wine Magazine named Kue'd Smokehouse the best barbecue in Iowa.  

It was around 7:30 when I got into Kue'd Smokehouse.  It was a pretty small place with counter service.  The menu was on a chalk board next to the front counter.  

The menu had all the normal barbecue items - pork spare ribs, brisket, pulled pork and chicken, burnt ends, sausage, chicken wings, and smoked turkey.  They had a number of house-made sides to choose from including mac & cheese, loaded smashed potatoes, and a German cucumber salad.  Their meats were all available in serving sizes of 1/4, 1/2 or 1 pound offerings.  They also had a good selection of beer including craft beers.  I got a Pseudo Sue pale ale from the Toppling Goliath brewery in Decorah, IA.

Just around the corner was the dining room with the open kitchen off to the side.  There were big smoker units along the wall and there was a faint smell of smoke in the place.  It was making my stomach jump up and down in anticipation.  

The dining area at Kue'd Smokehouse was long and narrow.  It featured a small number of two-seat and four seat tables.  There was counter/bar seating along the window and all of the two-seat tables were filled, so I took a seat there.  

It wasn't long after I sat down that my barbecue plate showed up.  I got the two meat sampler - brisket and burnt ends.  For my sides, I got the baked beans and the cole slaw - both of which were made in-house.  Two pieces of white bread come on the side with thick cut dill pickles.  They had three sauces available - a Carolina-style vinegar and pepper sauce that was very good, as well as a sweet and tangy molasses sauce, and a sweet and spicy sauce that I liked a lot.  

The brisket was cut thin, and was lean and very tender with a great smoke and spicy flavor to the meat.  The brisket was just outstanding.  But I was more than pleasantly surprised with the burnt ends.  The first few times I tried burnt ends a number of years ago, I felt they were overcooked and somewhat tough.  The burnt ends at Kue'd Smokehouse were tender and had a great smoky beef taste.  The were big and chunky, and pulled apart very easily.  They were simply some of the best burnt ends I've ever had.

The baked beans featured chunks of pulled pork and had a nice tangy taste.  I spiced them up a bit with the sweet and spicy barbecue sauce, but on their own they really didn't need much help.  The cole slaw was all right, sort of creamy and sweet, but I wasn't too enamored with that side.  

As I said, I didn't know until after I went to Kue'd Barbecue that Food and Wine Magazine had recently named them as the best barbecue in Iowa.  And from my visit, I certainly couldn't disagree with their assessment.  The brisket was lean, tender and flavorful, while the burnt ends were simply outstanding.  I really enjoyed the baked beans while I wasn't too crazy about the cole slaw.  Still, they had a nice craft beer selection to go along with their wonderful barbecue.  The dining room is a little small, but they certainly seemed to be doing a brisk business in carry-out orders.  Des Moines is fast getting a reputation for good to great barbecue joints and Kue'd Barbecue may be the best of them all.

 

Smokin' Hereford BBQ - Storm Lake, IA

The 2017 winner of the "Iowa's Best Burger" contest was a barbecue place in Storm Lake, IA - Smokin' Hereford BBQ.  Now, I've been somewhat dubious of a couple previous winners of the annual contest put on by the Iowa Beef Industry Council since 2010.  Having a barbecue place be the winner of the Best Burger in Iowa contest last year sort of raised my eyebrows.  On a trip between Des Moines and Sioux City earlier this summer, I decided to take backroads through Northwest Iowa with a lunch stop in Storm Lake.  

Chad Hustedt and Nathan Jensen grew up together in Galva, IA, a small northwest Iowa town about 15 miles to the south and west of Storm Lake.  Chad Hustedt eventually became a coach at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, while Nathan Jensen took a different course in life.  He became a funeral director.

After graduation from mortuary school, Jensen came back to NW Iowa and worked in a funeral home in Storm Lake.  When the opportunity to own his own funeral home came up a couple three years later, Jensen bought a funeral home in nearby Sac City with smaller operations in three other towns in the area.  In 2001, Nathan and his wife, Nancy, merged their funeral homes with Craig Fratzke of Fratzke Funeral Home of Alta, IA.  In addition to the Alta location, the new Fratzke and Jensen Funeral Home also had a location in Storm Lake and three other smaller communities in the immediate area.  Craig Fratzke eventually retired and Nathan and Nancy Jensen continue to run all the funeral homes with the help of funeral director Tim Smith.  And one of their employees at the funeral home is Jennifer Hustedt, the wife of Chad Hustedt.  

The Jensen's and Hustedt's had thought about doing something as a side job and they came up with an idea of running a barbecue place.  There was a building that originally was an old train depot on the west side of Storm Lake that was available and the couples opened Smokin' Hereford BBQ in October of 2015.  At first, Smokin' Hereford offered a limited menu of barbecue.  But as their reputation grew, they added more items to the menu and in early 2016 they added a Friday and Saturday night burger special to the menu.

The seasoned and char-grilled burgers made with ground beef from Coon River Farms, a family-owned beef operation south and east of Storm Lake, became such a big hit with the locals that they added the burgers permanently to the menu later in the year.  When the annual nominations for the Best Burger in Iowa came up in February 2017, a local campaign was started to alert the Iowa Beef Industry Council of the great burgers at Smokin' Hereford.  Judges later visited the restaurant and determined they had the Best Burger in Iowa for 2017.  

It was just after 1 p.m. when I pulled into the dusty parking lot at Smokin' Hereford BBQ.  A big sign with "Smoky the Bull" mounted underneath greeted me as I drove up.  Inside the place, I found a pretty spacious dining room with a small bar area toward the front door.  It was decorated with antique agriculture company signs, neon beer signs, old highway and railroad signage, and a number of old license plates tacked to a cross beam in the dining area.  Contemporary country music was playing on the restaurant's sound system.  

I ended up taking a seat along the wall in what used to be an old church pew.  The seating for their "booths" were all made from church pews either cut in half or in thirds depending upon the size of the table.  The one I sat in was a 1/3-sized pew.  The floor at Smokin' Hereford was repurposed planks from an old high school gymnasium in the area.   

The menu was on the table and I was soon greeted by a young soft-spoken lady by the name of Anita.  I ordered a cold beer from her while I looked through the menu.  The food served at Smokin' Hereford consisted of barbecue items such as beef brisket, baby back ribs, pulled pork and smoked chicken.  They also feature a smoked prime rib on Friday and Saturday nights for around $23 bucks.  That has to be outstanding.

The menu also featured barbecue meat sandwiches and tacos, as well as some interesting appetizers that included gizzards (don't see that on an appetizer menu at most places), smoked andouille sausage bites (ditto on that), and fried banana peppers (don't know if I've ever seen that on an appetizer menu).  But two things jumped out at me on the appetizer part of the menu - the Mississippi Mud Skins and something directly below the appetizers called the BBQ Sundae.  

The Mississippi Mud Skins are potato skins topped with either pulled pork or smoked chicken (beef brisket is available for an upcharge), then the meat is topped with cheese and pico de gallo.  They encourage you to top them with barbecue sauce at the table.  The BBQ Sundae, I think I've seen at a couple other places in my travels over the year.  It consisted of a pint-sized Mason jar filled with Smokin' Hereford's spicy baked beans, then those are topped with a layer of cole slaw or their spicy mac & cheese.  From there, it's topped off with a choice of brisket, pulled pork, or smoked chicken.  It's for those kind of people who don't mind all their food touching one another.  

As tempting as the barbecue sounded to me, I was there to try their award-winning burger.  I had a choice of either a quarter-pound or a half-pound burger and I went with the half-pound.  "Pink or no pink in the middle," Anita asked.  Well, pink, of course!  I also had a choice of cheese - I went with pepper jack - and for a small upcharge I could get other toppings such as sautéed mushrooms, onion strings, jalapeño peppers, or a fried egg.  I went with bacon.  

The burger was delivered on a plastic basket with on a sheet of faux newsprint paper.  The bun was toasted - not lightly toasted, but toasted enough that there were burnt marks on the edges.  Lettuce, a tomato slice, dill pickles and sliced onions came on the side.  The bacon was criss-crossed on top of the pepper jack cheese on the burger. 

The burger was thick and juicy and was very delicious in taste.  The pepper jack cheese didn't overpower the taste of the burger, nor did the bacon or the toppings I placed on the burger patty.  The beef had a robust quality taste and it was a very good burger.  If there was one quibble with the burger was that there was a little  too much bun for my liking.  But with all that was going on with the burger - the oozing cheese, the juiciness of the burger patty, and the condiments on top - the bun held together very well.  It was definitely a multi-napkin burger.

I've had some very good burgers from past winners of the Best Burger in Iowa contest sponsored by the Iowa Beef Industry Council.  But, I've also had a couple burgers that left me scratching my head and questioning the methods and criteria the judges use to determine the best burger in the state.  I know that it gets down to a popularity contest to come up with the 10 finalists for the annual contest, and I'm sure that some restaurants stuff the ballot box with help from customers.  But if that's what happened with Smokin' Hereford BBQ, they need to be commended for their effort. The burger I had there was very good - outstanding would be somewhat of a stretch because I think the bun was a little too big.  But overall, it was juicy and flavorful.  The robust taste of the locally-grown beef stood out even with toppings on the burger.  While I can't call it the best burger I've ever had, it was good enough where I didn't question the judging for the 2017 Best Burger in Iowa.  But if I ever make it back to Storm Lake and Smokin' Hereford, I'm going to try their barbecue.  

Boyd and Charlie's - Omaha, NE

Over the past dozen or so years that I've been traveling to Omaha for my present job, I've known about a barbecue place that I've really wanted to try called Boyd and Charlie's.  The problem was that it was located out in the far northwest Omaha suburb of Elkhorn.  It was always going to be kind of a haul for me to get out to Elkhorn to try their barbecue, so I usually just ate at any number of fine restaurants in the greater Omaha area.  However, earlier this year, I found out that Boyd and Charlie's had opened a second location last fall - this time it was IN Omaha along S. 60th Street.  (see map)  I decided to seek out the Omaha location of Boyd and Charlie's to give their barbecue a try.

Whereas most barbecue places pop up because of the demand created by someone who has made the rounds in the competitive barbecue cook-off challenges, it was quite the opposite for Boyd and Charlie's founder Perry Viers.  Viers really didn't do much barbecuing at home, but he did have an interest in the cuisine.  He found a corner place in downtown Elkhorn that had been basically a social club or a bar over the 100 years the building had been in that spot.  He was going to turn that location into a barbecue joint.

Viers had a friend down in Alabama who he turned to for advice on how to start a barbecue restaurant.  He helped Viers track down smokers, kitchen equipment and told him what to concentrate on as far as smoking meats.  (The one bit of advice that Viers didn't take from his friend - smoke only pork.  But Omaha is in the middle of beef country in the Midwest and Viers knew he couldn't get by without beef ribs and brisket.)  When it was close to the time he was going to open, his friend was planning on coming up from Alabama to help him get started.  However, at the last moment, Viers' friend said he couldn't make it and Perry Viers found himself in a literal barbecue ocean without a paddle.  However, jumping in with both feet, he opened Boyd and Charlie's - named after his two sons - in late July of 2003.  

The first few months were a learning experience for Viers, but he was able to make a go of things and Boyd and Charlie's started to get a following.  Three years into the existence of Boyd and Charlie's, Viers partnered with Kevin Stork to open Bella Vita, an Italian restaurant just across the street from Boyd and Charlie's in Elkhorn.  (Bella Vita is "The Good Life" in Italian, and "The Good Life" has been sort of a tourism tag that Nebraska has used for years.)  

Viers had been looking to put a second Boyd and Charlie's in Omaha and he found a building along S. 60th St. that used to house a golf shop that specialized in antique hickory golf clubs.  After some renovations to the building, he was able to open the second Boyd and Charlie's in the fall of last year.  

There's ample parking in front of Boyd and Charlie's Omaha location and the parking lot was about half full when I pulled in around 7 p.m. on an unseasonably warm early Spring evening.  Inside Boyd and Charlie's I found a space with rustic decor, mounted wild game heads and fish on the barn board walls (I was told Perry Viers is an avid outdoorsman), and a nice bar area.  

 
It's counter service at Boyd and Charlie's and the menu is located on the wall above the window that looks into the kitchen area.  The lady who was taking orders seemed confused as she waited on a couple ahead of me, then when it was my turn to order she was still sort of out of sorts.  I'm guessing she hadn't worked there all that long.  I asked if she had a beer list and she looked around and then sort of shrugged her shoulders.  "We have most of the regular beers, I guess," she said.  She started to recite some big brewery domestic beers and after about four beers her voice sort of trailed off.  

I saw a sign for Deschutes beer and asked if they had the Mirror Pond pale ale.  She said they did and she rang me up for two of them along with my food.  I took my number and went out to find a table in the dining area.  As I said, it was a rustic feel to the place and the dining area featured a wooden wagon that had sauces, condiments, napkins and utensils.  There was some eclectic background music on the sound system featuring some good and diverse tunes by artists such as Two Gallants, Rocky Votolato, Miranda Lee Richards, and Jamtown which features Garrett Dutton - better known as G. Love from G. Love and Special Sauce.  

After I settled in for a moment, I went up to the wagon to grab some sauces and a young guy came out from behind the bar and asked if I was the one that ordered the Deschutes beer.  He said, "I think she was a little confused.  We don't have the Deschutes Mirror Pond."  I winced when he said that, but he then said, "We have another pale ale from the Pint Nine Brewing Company down in Papillion (a suburb of Omaha)," he told me.  He had brought out a sample for me to try and I thought it was good enough to go with instead of the Deschutes.  

The menu at Boyd and Charlie's is very extensive with a number of smoked meats - including chopped pork, sliced brisket (with burnt ends, when available), mesquite-smoked ribs, smoked turkey breast, and sausage.  They have a number of sandwiches, burgers, and entrees such as fish and chips, and chicken fried steak.  They also feature a number of appetizers, soups and salads on the menu.  

I went with the three-meat combo - ribs, brisket and chopped pork.  For my sides, I got the fries and some baked beans.  For sauces, I tried Boyd and Charlie's regular sauce - a sweet and smoky molasses sauce; their spicy sauce - which I didn't feel was all that spicy; and their whiskey sauce that was basically their regular sauce with a whiskey base to it.  It was actually pretty good.

The ribs were meaty, lean and had good bark on the outside.  The meat pulled away nicely from the bone and it was tender to the bite.  The ribs were very good.  

The brisket was cut thick and also had a nice bark to the rim of the meat.  It, too, was tender enough and very flavorful.  The chopped pork bought up the rear as it was a little dry, but dipping it in the sauces helped out tremendously.

The sides were sort of "meh!"  The fries had a coating on the outer shell that made them extra crunchy, but they were just all right.  The beans were Alabama-style with beans, large chunks of pork, all mixed in Boyd and Charlie's house barbecue sauce.  I added some of the spicy sauce to try to zip up the taste, but it really didn't add much.  The beans were better than the fries, but not by much.

I'm glad that I finally was able to try Boyd and Charlie's - without having to drive all the way out of Elkhorn to do so.  I was happy with the meats I tried - the ribs were lean, meaty and flavorful, the brisket was thick cut and had some good bark on the outer edges, and even though the chopped pork was a little dry, the sauces helped out very well.  The sides I had - the fries and baked beans - were average, at best.  The lady working the front register where you order your food wasn't too with it that evening, seemingly lost and somewhat scattered when taking people's orders.  But still, it was a nice experience at Boyd and Charlie's - a welcome addition to the barbecue scene in the heart of Omaha.  

Whole Hog Cafe - Springfield, MO

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.  

Shigs in Pit BBQ and Brew - Fort Wayne, IN

Out visiting dealers in Fort Wayne a few weeks ago, one of my dealers was telling me about a new barbecue place that had opened up down the road from them.  "Actually, it's not new," he explained to me.  "But it's a new location for them."  He gave me directions to Shigs in Pit BBQ and Brew on N. Maplecrest Road on the north side of Fort Wayne.  (see map) 

It turns out that they people behind Shigs in Pit BBQ are the same guys who founded Mad Anthony's Brewing Company in Fort Wayne nearly 20 years ago.  (Click here to read about Road Tips' visit to Mad Anthony's.)  Todd Grantham and Jeff Neels were old college roommates who got together with Blaine Stuckey to open Mad Anthony's in 1999.  But it turned out that in addition to brewing beer, Grantham got his kicks smoking meats.  He met a like-minded local guy, Stefan Kelley, who was a networks services manager for a local software company in Fort Wayne.  Grantham and Kelley entered a local barbecued ribs competition in 2005 naming their team "Shigs in Pit" - a takeoff on the Midwestern phrase "pigs in shit" (as in "happy as pigs in shit").  When they won that competition, they caught the bug and decided to enter other contests around the Midwest.  

Grantham and Kelley enlisted Jeff Neels to go to their first Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned event in Madison, IN and picked up a sixth place finish for their smoked chicken.  Knowing that they could do even better, the group invested in commercial traveling smokers and took off for barbecue competitions around the country.

Pictured left - Jeff Neels, Todd Grantham and Stefan Kelly. Photo courtesy Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. 

Shigs in Pit eventually won eleven Grand Championships and five Reserve Grand Championships in KCBS-sanctioned events in addition to a number of other awards they gathered at other rib contests around the country.  Shigs in Pit have also been invited to participate in two of the largest barbecue contests in the nation - the American Royal in Kansas City and the Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational in Lynchburg, TN.  

Of course, like many other successful barbecue competition teams, the group decided that they needed to let the public try their award winning smoked meats.  Along with their Mad Anthony's partner Blaine Stuckey - and with the blessing of Kelley - Grantham and Neels opened the original Shigs in Pit barbecue in 2012 at the corner of Fairfield and Taylor just south of downtown Fort Wayne.  (see map)  

The success of the original location meant that they could easily sustain two locations in the city.  They found a lot along N. Maplecrest Road and built a stand-alone building from the ground up.  They opened Shigs in Pit BBQ and Brews - featuring many beers on tap that were brewed at Mad Anthony's - in the summer of 2017.

It was around 1:30 p.m. on a cold, gray day when I made it into the north side Shigs in Pit location.  The was plenty of parking around the front of the building.  A young guy was attending to the smoker that was attached to the front corner of the building.

I found an open and expansive seating area when I went inside.  Barn boards were on the facade of the front counter while corrugated tin wainscoting lined the half walls that partitioned the dining area.  

There was a small two-sided bar also with a barn board facade underneath the bar.  Flat-screen televisions hung from a barn board overhang above the bar.  They had over 20 beers on tap from Mad Anthony's Brewing Company.  

Out back behind the place was a large concrete patio with a number of lights hanging above.  It was large enough that it could possibly double the amount of patrons the restaurant can serve in the warmer months.  More parking was available behind the restaurant, as well.   

The drill at Shigs in Pit is order at the counter, they give you a number on a table pole, you find a seat and they bring your food out to you.  The menu for both dining in and carry out was on the wall behind the counter with a window that looked into the kitchen along the back wall.  (Shigs in Pit also has an extensive menu for catering events such as receptions, parties, corporate events or reunions.)  The meats featured at Shigs in Pit included Indiana-raised St. Louis-cut pork ribs, pulled pork, chopped chicken, smoked ham, smoked turkey, and jalapeño cheddar sausage, as well as brisket and burnt ends for a $1.00 upcharge.  All the meats could be made into sandwiches, but they also had gourmet sandwiches such a smoked ham Creole po' boy sandwich, a smoked turkey sandwich with a cranberry mayo with cheddar cheese and bacon, and the "Big Shig Pig" which featured smoked bologna, pulled pork, pimento cheese and topped with creamy cole slaw.  

After I ordered up my lunch, I was told that I could get my beer over at the bar.  (They rang me up at the front counter, but alerted the bartender that I would be coming over to get the beer.)  I got an Ol' Woody pale ale that I'd had before on a previous visit to the Mad Anthony Brewing Co.  I found a seat at a table near the bar, and set my table pole with my number affixed to the top of it.  They had some pretty good music playing that day - some good blues that varied from the likes of Peter Green (a founding member of Fleetwood Mac), Chicago's Lil' Ed and Blues Imperials, and classic blues from Willie Dixon, and Freddie King.  

I had about a 10 minute wait before they brought out my lunch order.  I got the ribs and brisket combination.  I also ordered a side of their fries and a side of their interesting sounding green chile mac & cheese.  A slice of garlic bread came with the meal.  The lunch was served on a small metal tray on top of a piece of wax paper.  

They had three different types of barbecue sauce to go along with the smoked meats at Shigs in Pit.  They had a tangy sauce that was vinegar-based.  I usually shy away from vinegar-based sauces, but this was actually pretty good.  Their original barbecue sauce was a sweet molasses and smoky sauce, while they had a "hot" sauce that was basically the original sauce with a hot pepper mixture added.  I thought it was very good.  

The ribs had a rub on the outside that gave the meat a bit of a spicy kick.  But it was far from overpowering.  I'd have to say that I liked the combination rub they used.  But the ribs, themselves, were very dry.  It was like they had either cooked them too long, or had left them in a warming pan too long.  The meat on the ribs was tough and chewy.  The couple of good bites that I was able to get were very good.  But the ribs were just too tough for my tastes.  Even with putting sauce on the ribs didn't help that much.

The brisket, however, was very good.  It was moist, tender, and had a great smoky beef taste.  I found that I didn't need to put much - if any - barbecue sauce on the brisket as it was very good on its own.  

The fries were thin cut and fresh, but I didn't concentrate too much on them.  I was sort of surprised they didn't have baked beans as an option for sides, but they did have some something that caught my eye - green chile mac & cheese.  I ordered that for my second side, but what I thought I was getting and what I got were two different things.  I thought that the mac & cheese would be topped with a green chile sauce, but it appears that they just put chopped green chiles in the mix.  I mean, it was all right.  But I was expecting something completely more Southwest in a culinary nature.  

While I didn't care for their dried out ribs, I thought the brisket at Shigs in Pit was very good.  I should have tried the pulled pork, but I have a funny feeling that I'll be back there at some point.  The beer selection from the Mad Anthony's Brewing Company was wide and varied giving beer lovers a chance to have about any style they wanted.  It was a nice place on the inside, open and airy; and the played some very good blues music over the sound system.  And while I thought their sauces were also very good, I just wish the ribs wouldn't have been so tough and chewy.  

Armored Gardens - Davenport, IA

We're always excited to get a new place to eat in the Quad Cities, especially one that features barbecue and a huge beer list - as in 100 beers on tap.  A new place like that opened up last fall and we finally got around to trying the place recently.  Here's what we encountered on our first visit to Armored Gardens.  

Armored Gardens is the third downtown project spearheaded by Dan Bush, a 30-something native of Davenport who also is a co-owner of Analog Arcade Bar - a grown-ups version of an arcade that features over 50 contemporary and classic pinball and video games; and the Triple Crown Whiskey Bar and Raccoon Motel - a live music venue and drinking establishment with an unnecessarily long and unwieldy name.  Along with his father-in-law Rich Cooksey - who has done the build-outs of the first two establishments, as well as the build-out of Armored Gardens - Bush is joined in ownership of his barbecue and beer establishment by Marc Kopcho who worked with Bush in some Jimmy John's outlets that Bush's family owned a few years ago.  The executive chef for Armored Gardens is Daniel Cuneo, a Connecticut native who got his culinary training in New York City before moving out to the Midwest to work at Black Dog Smoke and Ale House in Urbana, IL.  (When I read that about Cuneo in the local paper before the place opened up, it immediately piqued my interest in the place.  I thought Black Dog Smoke and Ale House is one of the finest barbecue joints in the Midwest. And if you click here, you can read the Road Tips entry on the place.)  

Armored Gardens is located on Pershing Ave. in downtown Davenport, between E. 3rd and E. 4th Streets, and across a parking lot from the Hotel Blackhawk.  (see map)  We were able to find some parking on Pershing just down from the restaurant.  The front of the restaurant looks elegant - it was designed to sort of look like a 1960's country club from the outside with large columns flanking the front door.  

The drill at Armored Gardens is that if you want food, they have a counter to the left as you come in.  The menu is on the wall and it consists primarily of smoked meats such as beef brisket, pulled pork, pulled chicken, burnt ends and sausage.  You can also get ribs, but it's by the bone and not available in slabs or half-slabs.  Sandwiches and burritos are also available to order, as well as two different sizes of mac and cheese.  Sides such as fries, baked beans, Mexican cornbread, and blue cheese and bacon potato salad are also available.   

They have a small selection of beers on tap at the food counter.  However, if you want a much larger selection, you'll need to go to the main bar.  This is where they have 100 beers on tap including a large selection of local, regional and national craft beers.  The beer menu is shown on flat screens on the wall high behind the bar, and you order by the number, not the name of the beer.  The only problem was that they weren't in alphabetical order and it was sort of difficult to figure out all they had.  I probably stood there for two minutes looking over the beer menu before settling on a Kona Big Wave Golden Ale.  My wife ended up ordering a Dale's Pale Ale from the Oskar Blues Brewing Company.  I got a pint and the pint glasses at Armored Gardens are a heavy plastic.  My wife asked for a half-pint of her beer and she actually got a glass.  

The dining room features a number of community style picnic tables in the middle of the room with a few tables along the wall.  We took a seat at one of the tables.  It was a spacious area and I'm sure that it could get pretty loud if there were a lot of people in there.  

Out back, they have a very nice patio area that will, no doubt, be used very heavily in the warmer months.  It also featured a number of community-style picnic tables, but they also had fixed umbrellas that will probably cover tables.  There was also a small concrete stage for live music.  Yeah, this is going to be a very nice place to hang in the summer months.

Well, on to the food.  After we ordered at the food counter, got our beers from the main bar (which is sort of a hassle if you're paying by credit or debit card - you have to basically pay twice), and finding a seat in the dining room, our food was brought to our table.  We got a half-pound of the pulled pork and a half pound of the brisket.  We also got a side of their baked beans and my wife wanted to try their Carolina slaw.  

They had three different sauces at a sauce bar in the dining area - a sweet red sauce, a Carolina mustard sauce, and a Carolina white sauce.  I don't care for either mustard or white sauces with barbecue, so I got some of the sweet barbecue sauce.  It was all right - I would have liked for them to have another sauce that would have been a little more spicy.  

The pulled pork was tender and moist, but it was very bland in taste.  There wasn't much of a smoky taste to the meat.  Even putting some of the sweet barbecue sauce didn't do much in zipping up the taste.  The brisket was thick cut, tender and moist, but also lacking in taste.  Once again, there wasn't much of a smoky taste - it tasted like it was cooked more in a conventional oven than in a smoker.  My wife - being the more adventurous of the two of us - got some of the Carolina white.  She said, "Maybe this will help the brisket."  She tried it and immediately said, "Oh, no.  This won't do."  She didn't like the sauce and didn't like the brisket.

The baked beans were also just all right with a healthy amount of kidney beans mixed in with other beans.  There were chunks of pork in the beans, but the baked beans were just OK.  My wife liked the cole slaw at a couple barbecue joints we were at when we were in North Carolina last year.  The combination of the sweet and spicy nature of the Carolina slaw was what she really liked.  But the Carolina slaw at Armored Gardens wasn't all that sweet, but it did have a bit of a spicy bite.  Interestingly, it seemed to have more shaved carrots in the mixture than cabbage.  She decided she didn't care for Armored Gardens version of Carolina cole slaw.

I hate to say this, but we were underwhelmed with the barbecue offerings at Armored Gardens.  We felt the brisket and pulled pork - while moist and tender - were bland in taste.  The baked beans were basically just OK in my book, and the Carolina slaw had a nice spicy bite, but there wasn't a lot of sweetness to offset the spiciness and the shaved carrots overwhelmed the cabbage in the mixture.  Their sauces were more Carolina-centric with a white and a mustard sauce, and they only offered a basic red sweet barbecue sauce.  The beer selection is vast and impressive, but ordering can be a little tedious as the beers are not in alphabetic order on the beer menu board.  If I were invited to go to Armored Gardens to have a beer with friends - especially in the summer months when the wonderful beer patio is open - I would have no problem.  But I'd suggest that we go elsewhere if we want to have food.   

ZZQ Smokehouse - Eagan, MN

Staying out near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport the last couple of times that I've gone to the Twin Cities, I was looking for a sit-down barbecue place one evening last fall.  I did an on-line search and found a place in nearby Eagan that sounded interesting to me - ZZQ Smokehouse.  I took off toward Eagan to find the place.  

Zak Zeug - the ZZ in the name of the place - grew up in a household where both parents worked full time and he was usually left to fend for himself when he was hungry.  He hated having to make his own food and he had absolutely no dream of working in a kitchen when he got older. 

However, as he grew into a young man, Zak started to experiment with barbecuing ribs.  The first few times he tried to make good ribs, they turned out not too great.  He was upset that he had spent all that time and effort to make ribs, but they weren't that good.  That's when he decided he'd study up on the art of making barbecue.  

Zeug went out and bought a smoker and he experimented with different types of meat - ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, and chicken, primarily.  He eventually became pretty good at smoking meats and cooking foods.  Suddenly, he found his calling - he actually DID like working in a kitchen.  And his dream became owning his own barbecue place.  The only problem was that he had absolutely no professional kitchen or restaurant experience.  He knew that he'd have to learn how to walk before he ran with his barbecue.  

In 2007, Zeug bought a concession trailer and he outfitted it for his barbecue offerings.  He didn't have the overhead of a regular restaurant while he was learning about the process of working in a kitchen, the costs involved, planning a menu - all the things that are needed to survive in the restaurant business.  The mobility of the trailer allowed him to be able to go to fairs and events in the area where he garnered a following for his barbecue.  By 2015, he decided it was time to take the plunge into a brick-and-mortar building and he found a place in south suburban Eagan that was attached to a convenience store/gas station at the corner of Yankee Doodle Road and Coachman Road.  (see map)  Zeug opened ZZQ Smokehouse in December of 2015.  

I had put in the address in my GPS and it took me right to the corner of Coachman and Yankee Doodle.  The only problem was the it was sort of hidden and I drove around buildings on both sides of Coachman looking for it.  I finally found it on the far side of the convenience store - I couldn't see it as I was coming from the west on Yankee Doodle, but it was easy to see if you were coming from the east.  

Inside ZZQ, I found a pretty nondescript place with an L-shaped dining room.  There were tables and chairs up front, but along the wall in the back there were some old-style booths that looked like they came out of a 1984 Hardee's.  There were architectural drawings of smokehouses and smokers on wall next to the booths.

The menu is located on boards on the side wall and behind the counter.   You order at the counter at ZZQ and they bring the food out to your table.  They had the staple barbecue fare - beef brisket, pulled pork, pork spare ribs, and chicken to choose from.   The brisket, pulled pork and pulled chicken were all available in sandwiches, as well.   They did have beer available at ZZQ, many of which were beers from local craft breweries.  I got a Heart of Glass, a blonde ale from the nearby Bald Man Brewing Company.  

I went with a combo platter - brisket and ribs.  I got two sides with the combo plate - baked beans that turned out to be pretty good, and fries that were basically a throwaway.  After I sat, I saw that the guy behind the counter preparing my meal had pulled out aluminum foil-wrapped meat from the refrigerated case behind the counter and heated the meat up on a grill.  I know some places will do that with their barbecue, but I'm not certain if I like that or not.   

They also had a sauce bar at ZZQ Smokehouse that offered eight different types of sauces.  They had sauces such as a garlic sauce, a Carolina-vinegar sauce, a Buffalo-style sauce, and a mustard dill sauce.  I took four sauces to the table with me - the hot (which wasn't all that hot, but had a noticeable bite to the taste), the spicy (which was was vinegar-based and nowhere as spicy as the hot), the smokey (sweet and not much of a smoke taste), and the sweet (that was pretty syrupy in consistency).  

The ribs were meaty, lean and very tender.  The only problem was that even with a rub on the outside of them, they weren't very flavorful.  The barbecue sauce certainly helped, but on their own they needed something to give them a little more excitement in taste.

The brisket was all over the place.  There was a lot of brisket slices on the platter, and some pieces were tender.  But other slices were tough, others were fatty.  And there was a distinct petroleum taste to the brisket that I noticed.  I've smoked enough meats, had enough barbecue in my day, and have judged a number of amateur rib contests over the years to recognize the fact that if the meat has a slightly petroleum taste, it's probably been in a smoker with too much smoke.  Frankly, the slight petroleum taste detracted from the overall flavor in the brisket.

The one good thing were the baked beans.  I usually like to season up baked beans that I have at barbecue restaurants with some of the spicy barbecue sauce.  But the baked beans at ZZQ Smokehouse didn't need any help.  They were sweet with a bit of a spicy bite to them.  

I hate to say it, but I was disappointed in the barbecue at ZZQ Smokehouse.  I really wanted to like it, but I found the ribs to not have that good of flavor even though they were meaty, tender and lean.  And the brisket slices I was served were alternately tender, tough or fatty.  And the brisket had the taste that they had too much smoke during the cooking process.  The different sauces - 8 of them - were a nice touch, but I can't say that any of the ones I tried really zinged my taste buds.  But the baked beans were delicious and they had a very good selection of local craft beers to choose from.  I'm hoping that it was an off-night for ZZQ Smokehouse because I really like to see places like this succeed. 

Mark's Feed Store - Louisville, KY

My wife and I spent some time in Louisville in the late summer going around to different places that I don't usually get to see when I travel there for business.   We were up exploring the Highlands neighborhood in the middle part of the day and found a barbecue place that we wanted to try.  Except that it didn't really look like a barbecue place, and the name wasn't really indicative of it having barbecue - Mark's Feed Store.  Still we wanted to give it a try.

Mark Erwin had been working in the service industry and had been on management teams that opened new restaurants.  One thing that he noticed that Louisville didn't really have was a good barbecue joint.  Erwin had gone around to visit barbecue masters across Kentucky to learn the tricks of the trade.  But while smoking meats was one thing, he also realized that if he didn't have the sauces to go along with the barbecued meats his restaurant wouldn't survive.

For months, Erwin worked in his kitchen to come up with the right combination of ingredients for his signature sauce.  One concoction - which consisted of 26 ingredients including 13 secret spices - was the one he deemed as the sauce that he would like to pair with his smoked meats.

Finding a spot for his barbecue joint turned out to be somewhat easier.  He found a historical building that once housed a feed store in the Middletown neighborhood in Louisville and decided to incorporate the concept into his barbecue joint.  He put in an old style barbecue pit in the place and opened the first Mark's Feed Store in 1988.  

Erwin grew the business by opening up more locations around Louisville, as well as in Lexington and Elizabethtown, KY.  But after 25 years of running Mark's Feed Store, he was looking for a change in life.  That's when Ulysses "Junior" Bridgeman came into the picture.  

Junior Bridgeman was a basketball star at the University of Louisville and enjoyed a 12 season career in the NBA, primarily with the Milwaukee Bucks.  After Bridgeman retired from the NBA at the age of 33, he bought five Wendy's locations in the greater Milwaukee area.   Milwaukee fans grew accustomed to seeing the former basketball star working behind the counter at one of his Wendy's restaurants.  

Bridgeman's Wendy's franchise stores in Milwaukee were doing anywhere between $400,000 and $800,000 in annual sales - not too good for comparable stores in similar markets.  Bridgeman instilled a team concept in his stores empowering his workers to take pride in their jobs and offering bonuses if certain goals were met.  Within a short while, Bridgeman's Wendy's locations were taking in a minimum of $1.5 million in annual sales.

Pictured right - Junior Bridgeman.  Photo courtesy Fortune Magazine.

As business grew for Bridgeman, so did the number of locations he owned.  At one point, Bridgeman Restaurants (now called Manna, Inc.) owned 160 Wendy's franchises - many of those in Wisconsin where he played professional basketball - the second most by any single franchisee in the U.S. for Wendy's - and nearly 125 Chili's locations.  He also held franchises in Fazoli's, Perkins, Fanny May Chocolates, and Blaze Pizza.  At its height, Bridgeman's company - with offices in Milwaukee and Louisville - owned around 450 different restaurant locations and employed 9000 people.

Bridgeman also owned the Napa River Grill - an upscale steak and wine place in the Westport Village shopping area on Louisville's east side - when he found that Erwin was looking to sell Mark's Seed Store.  Bridgeman's company took over ownership of Mark's Seed Store in October of 2013 from Erwin who is now in commercial real estate specializing in restaurant properties.  In 2016, Bridgeman divested many of his holdings in Wendy's and Chili's to become an independent bottler for Coca-Cola owning the rights to distribute Coke products in southern Illinois, Missouri, eastern Kansas and Nebraska.  However, he still owns Mark's Seed Stores with 8 locations in Kentucky and southern Indiana, as well as a number of franchised restaurants.  

It had just started to rain pretty heavily when we pulled up to the Highlands location of Mark's Feed Store along Bardstown Road at Sherwood Ave.  (see map)  We went around the block and found a parking spot on Sherwood next to Mark's Feed Store.  

The Highlands location of Mark's Feed Store is in an older building with a long and narrow dining area.  There was a set stairs that went to a dining room upstairs that we didn't visit.  Booths were along the walls with tables in the center of dining area, all of which had vinyl checkerboard table coverings.  

Our server that afternoon, Dylan, came over with a couple lunch menus for us.  I ordered up a pint can of the West 6th IPA from the West 6th Brewery over in Lexington, KY.  My wife just stayed with water, but I like to have a beer when I have barbecue.  

The lunch menu is more condensed than the dinner menu at Mark's Feed Store.  They feature a sandwich lunch special daily with a choice of either pulled pork, brisket or chicken with one side for $6.99.  (Add .50 cents for brisket.)  All in all, the lunch menu was pretty basic with no combo plates, no burgers, and no dinner entrees available.  But one thing they did have was burgoo as an appetizer.

For those who don't know, burgoo is a stew that is more of a social event than anything.  It's similar to booyah, a stew that is found in northern Wisconsin and northern Minnesota.  Burgoo has its roots in Kentucky where people long ago would combine the bounty from wild game hunts - usually deer meat, squirrel meat and game bird meat - then added vegetables such as corn, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and okra to the mix.  The concoction was simmered low and slow - sometimes as long as two days - in a large vat that had to be stirred on a regular basis.  The burgoo was generally served to large groups during harvest season.  

Today, burgoo is still found throughout Kentucky, but you will also find it in parts of central and southern Illinois, and southern Indiana.  Game meat burgoo from long ago has been replaced by a modern day recipe featuring a combination of chicken, pork, lamb, and sometimes beef, with a myriad of vegetables.  And depending upon the recipes used it can be made with a little bit of a spicy bite.  Most of the time these days, burgoo is made as part of a fund-raiser or a local celebration.  My sister-in-law comes from the town of Winchester, IL and they have an annual burgoo festival that draws hundreds and hundreds of people.  And the highlight is the making of the burgoo a couple days in advance.  I understand that getting a two to three hour shift manning the vats of burgoo during the overnight is usually an excuse to drink heavily during that time.  

The burgoo at Mark's Feed Store was very good.  I ordered a cup of it and it was more like a small bowl of burgoo than a cup.  Like good burgoo, it was thick - so thick that the spoon could literally stand up in the center of the stew.  It featured smoked pieces of pork, chicken and brisket with corn, peas and other veggies mixed in.  It did have a bit of a spicy kick to it, but it didn't overpowering the overall taste of the burgoo.  I would have had no problem coming back to Mark's to enjoy just a bowl of burgoo.  It's a great comfort food, for sure.  

For lunch, they had a "Bar-b-que Lite" platter that featured a choice between smoked brisket, smoked pork or smoked chicken with a choice of one or two sides.  I got the brisket along with a side of baked beans and spicy fries.  The brisket was served in a small paper food boat and was cut thick.  But it was tender and had a good smoky flavor to it.  The fries, however, didn't seem to have much - if any - spicy flavor to them.  And the baked beans were simply dreadful.  They didn't appear to be anything more than Van Camps pork and beans from a can warmed up and served.  Even adding barbecue sauce didn't help those out.  

My wife ended up getting the 4 Bone Baby Back Ribs lunch platter.  The ribs had a lot of meat on them, but they were covered with what appeared to be a glaze.  They didn't appeared to be smoked, but I tried a bite of one of the ribs and they had a good smoky flavor to them.  The meat pulled apart from the bone rather easily and were very tender to the bite.  For her side, she got the mac and cheese, but she wasn't too enamored with it.  "It tastes like it's been warmed up in a microwave," she told me.  "It's all rubbery."  

Since Mark Erwin felt that good barbecue also had to have good sauces, there were three different types of sauces on the table.  There was a tangy sweet that I liked quite a bit; a hot sauce that really snuck up at the end of the flavor; and a honey mustard that I didn't try because, well, I don't like a honey mustard sauce.  I usually like to combine the spicy and sweet sauces together, but they didn't seem to go well together.  I ended up sticking primarily with the tangy sweet sauce as I finished up the brisket.  

The highlight of the lunch was - I felt - the excellent burgoo they had at Mark's Feed Store.  While the brisket and baby back ribs were good, the sides were simply abysmal.  It tasted like the baked beans were nothing more than canned pork and beans, the "spicy" fries didn't have hardly any spicy taste to them, and my wife's side of mac and cheese was overcooked and rubbery.  But the service and the atmosphere was fine at Mark's Feed Store, as was the barbecue we had.  I just wish they would have offered a combo plate during lunch as I would have liked to have tried some of the pulled pork barbecue, as well. 

City Butcher and Barbecue - Springfield, MO

In Springfield, MO earlier this year, I sought out a place that I had read about in a local magazine on a previous visit there. This place was a combination artisan butcher shop and a Texas-style barbecue place - two of my favorite places to visit.  It sounded intriguing enough for me to give City Butcher and Barbecue a try.  

Jeremy Smith and Cody Smith both grew up in small towns outside of Springfield, but they weren't related, nor did they know each other growing up.  Both studied at the prestigious (and now closed) Le Cordon Bleu culinary school - albeit at two different locations - and both had held positions at high-end restaurants around the U.S. before moving back to Springfield.  Jeremy Smith was the sous chef at Metropolitan Farmer, a farm-to-fork organic restaurant in Springfield, while Cody Smith was the man behind Le Cochon Charcuterie, a popular artisan meat vendor at a local farmers market.  

Cody Smith actually had a background working as a manager of a barbecue restaurant in his teens.  After attending culinary school, Cody found himself working in Austin at actress Sandra Bullock's now-shuttered Bess Bistro.  It was during his time in Austin that Cody discovered that central Texas barbecue was significantly different than the barbecue he was used to growing up in southwest Missouri.  It was all about the quality of the meats and not necessarily about the sauces or rubs.

Pictured right - Jeremy Smith (left) and Cody Smith (right). Photo courtesy Feast Magazine.  

Once they decided to partner in their butcher shop/barbecue joint venture, Jeremy Smith and Cody Smith traveled to Austin to visit the artisan meat shops and the famed barbecue joints of the city to learn more about the style of barbecue they wanted to bring to Springfield.  They learned about the proper way to season the meat (mainly just salt and pepper), smoking techniques, and how to properly carve the meat.  Cody Smith came up with a number of different types of sausages, cured meats, and unique selections such as duck pastrami to sell in their artisan butcher shop.  The two found a space that housed a former restaurant in the Kickapoo Corners shopping center along S. Campbell Ave on Springfield's south side and opened City Butcher and Barbecue in December of 2014.  (see map)

(In August of 2016, the Smith's opened a satellite restaurant operation - CB Social House - in downtown Springfield.  It wasn't long after the place opened that Jeremy Smith sold his stake in both City Butcher and Barbecue and CB Social House to Doug Riddle who had been the brewmaster at Mother's Brewing Company in Springfield.)

It was around 1 p.m. when I pulled into the lot in front of City Butcher and Barbecue.  The parking lot was full and I was having a bit of trouble finding some place to park.  I thought that it must be a pretty popular place to eat.  But going inside the restaurant, I found it to be less than half full and figured that people must be shopping or eating at other establishments in the shopping center.  

Inside the entry way was an ordering area with the menu on a chalk board on the wall.  Tubs of beer were near the counter and they also had beer on tap.  City Butcher and Barbecue will stay open until the smoked meats run out for the day.  

Around the corner from the ordering counter was the artisan meat counter.  It was small and had exotic sausages and meats, but not a lot of them.  

The dining room was on the same side as the meat counter.  It was a long, narrow space with wooden booths and a long communal table in the center of the room.   There were some picnic tables out in front of the place for outdoor dining, but they were empty that day.  

The drill to order food was a bit confusing.  With any new barbecue place that I find, I like to order a combination platter of two or three meats to try with a couple of sides.  Only at City Butcher and Barbecue, they didn't offer any combo plates.  They sold their smoked meats by the pound or in any increment under a pound, but I didn't want to order up a quarter pound of this and a quarter pound of that.  

They had a brisket and pork belly specialty sandwich on the menu along with an option to get a couple of pork ribs.  Evidently, they had sides available on the menu, but I didn't see the options.  They cut the ribs, pork belly strips and brisket in front of me and placed the sandwich and the ribs on a platter.  I got a beer to go along with the barbecue and took a seat in a booth along the wall of the dining area.  

I pulled the brisket and pork belly - two pieces each - off the sandwich.  The brisket was, in a word, heavenly.  It had a great smoked flavor to it, the salt and pepper rub helped enhance the taste of the beer, it was tender and pulled apart very easily.  It was some of the best brisket I'd ever had.  The ribs were equally as good as the brisket.  The pork meat easily pulled away from the bone on the two pieces I got.  The ribs, too, had a great smoky taste to them, but it wasn't overpowering.  

The disappointment was the pork belly.  The pork was excessively fatty.  I was able to pull some meat away from the fat, but there was a lot more fat than meat on the pieces.  The meat that I had was very moist and  flavorful.  But it was just too fatty.  

City Butcher and Barbecue does offer barbecue sauce at the tables, but quite frankly you didn't really need them.  The ribs and brisket were so good with just the simple salt and pepper rub that I didn't feel the need to put any sauce on them.  And nearly every barbecue pit master will tell you that the best barbecue is the kind that you don't need to sauce up.   

My first visit to City Butcher and Barbecue won't be my last. The ribs and brisket that I had were outstanding, but the pork belly that I tried was just too fatty for my liking.  Other than that, City Butcher and Barbecue offered some of the best barbecue I've had in the Midwest.  Their philosophy of having select cuts of meat to smoke, the use of only salt and pepper to season the meat before it's smoked, and keeping the choices as simple as possible all add to the experience of great barbecue.     

Lynn's Barbecue and Saloon - Eldridge, IA

Just north of Davenport is the small bedroom community of Eldridge.  There's a small public golf course along U.S. Highway 61 called Rustic Ridge and it has a combination clubhouse/restaurant/bar between the parking lot and the first tee.  A little over two years ago the owners added Memphis-style barbecue items to the menu.  My wife and I had been talking about going out there to try their barbecue for some time and one recent evening we decided to go have dinner at Lynn's Barbecue and Saloon.  

Kevin and Sandy Wohlford bought the Rustic Ridge Golf Course in 2001, the third owners of the golf course that began back in the 1970's.  Initially, Sandy was the clubhouse manager while Kevin kept his day job and worked at the course when he could in the spring, summer and fall months.  But improvements to the course in 2006 and a remodel of the clubhouse/restaurant four years later meant that Kevin needed to be more hands-on with the golf course.  The Rustic Grille restaurant was famous for their delicious sandwiches and their Friday night fish fry, and their bar area was a favorite for golfers and non-golfers alike.  

In early 2015, they changed the decor of the restaurant and bar area to more of a barn wood motif and decided to add barbecue to their menu.  They continued with some of their more popular items on the menu, but the focus was more on the Memphis-style dry-rubbed barbecue they began to feature.  They decided to call it Lynn's Barbecue because the Wohlford's middle names were both Lynn.

Now, I'd been out to Lynn's Barbecue with my wife and friends of ours on a couple of occasions to have drinks and to hang out, but we'd never had the food.  While it's easy to see the golf course and the old style water tower with the Lynn's BBQ sign on the side from Highway 61, it can be a bit confusing getting back to the entrance of the golf course/restaurant.  Many people have made the mistake of taking a right onto Country Club Court - like I did the first time I went out there.  But you continue on E. Iowa Street until it curves around toward the parking lot for the golf course.  (see map) 

The outside of the building still has sort of a country/rustic look to it - almost like it was an old barn at one point.  Inside the bar/restaurant, the walls have a faux barn board look to them.  There's a handful of booths along one wall with a various sized tables in the middle of the room. 

The bar is always popular at Lynn's Barbecue and there is a line of high-topped tables near the bar for drinkers and diners.  In the corner of the dining area is a small stage they used for karaoke or live music from time to time.  

There's a patio just outside the bar that looks out onto the No. 1 tee box and onward out onto the first fairway.  It's a quaint little golf course with tree-lined fairways.  It almost makes me want to take up golf again so I can enjoy the outdoors at Rustic Ridge.  

We sat at one of the booths in the restaurant and we were greeted by Taylor, a young lady who would be our server that evening.  She dropped off menus for us to look over.  The beer selection at Lynn's Barbecue is actually pretty good with a number of craft brews to choose from.  

The menu is pretty extensive at Lynn's Barbecue.  As I said, they kept many of the items on the menu when they added more of a barbecue-centric fare.  Burgers, sandwiches, wraps, salads, and appetizers were included on the menu.  But we were there for the barbecue.  They had pork ribs, brisket, pulled pork and burnt ends on the menu, as well as pulled pork and brisket sandwiches.  

I got the beef brisket with a side of baked beans.  The brisket was powdered on one side with a slightly spicy rub that somewhat overpowered the taste of the beef.  It was put on after it was sliced and I thought that was a bit strange.  The barbecue places I've been to in Memphis usually lets the customer add more rub if they desire.   A slice of cornbread with a small tub of honey came with the barbecue.  The brisket was all right - once again, the rub sort of masked the true taste of the beef, but it was tender enough and wasn't dried out.  The cornbread was dried out, but I didn't care about that.  I'm not much of a cornbread person.  The beans were also good and I was able to zip them up in taste by putting some of Lynn's hot and tangy sauce in there.  I wouldn't call it hot as much as a bit of a spicy taste to the sauce.  (They also featured Lynn's original sauce - a sweet Kansas City-style sauce - and a honey-mustard barbecue sauce that I didn't care for as much.)   

My wife got the burnt ends and she thought they were just all right.  She likened them more to beef tips like you'd get with noodles.  They didn't have as much of the rub on them, but they were tender enough.  She got the cole slaw that she thought was sort of bland, and she definitely wasn't happy with her very dried out cornbread.  At the end of the meal, she was like, "Eh!  It was OK.  But I don't think I'd be beating a path out here on a regular basis to have barbecue."

The barbecue we had at Lynn's Barbecue and Saloon was just all right, in our opinion.  They had so much of the Memphis-style rub on the brisket - put on AFTER they cut it into slices - that I really couldn't taste the beef.  My wife thought the burnt ends were sort of like regular beef tips like you'd find in a beef stroganoff dish and didn't have much of a smoky flavor.  The baked beans I had for a side were fine, but better when I added some of Lynn's hot and tangy barbecue sauce to them.  My wife felt the cole slaw was bland, and we both thought the cornbread was way too dry.  Even the honey in the small tubs that came with the cornbread couldn't save the taste.  But it's still a nice place to go get a drink with nice views and a sort of rustic feeling to the place.  And the service was prompt, friendly and efficient.  We'll probably go out to Lynn's again at some point to have drinks again and maybe a burger, but I don't know if I'd get the barbecue.   We really wanted to like the smoked meats at Lynns as there's not a lot of barbecue options around the Quad Cities.  But the barbecue we had at Lynn's was just average, at best.  

Big Hoffa's - Westfield, IN

Out in the northern suburbs of Indianapolis earlier this summer, I was in the mood for some barbecue.  I did a search on line to find something in the area around Westfield and Carmel, and I found a place that sounded intriguing to me - Big Hoffa's.  It wasn't far from the hotel where I was staying and I decided to head over to Big Hoffa's for dinner.  

Adam Hoffman grew up in California and started out his food career at an early age.  In grade school, the young Hoffman would sell candy and beef jerky treats to friends.  When he got old enough to work in a restaurant, he found work in a variety of coffee shops near his home.  Hoffman's restaurant career evolved over the years and he eventually became an corporate operations manager for California Pizza Kitchen.  However, working in the corporate office in Los Angeles wasn't for him and Hoffman longed to get back into working in restaurants. 

About 14 years ago Hoffman took a trip to Indianapolis and stayed a few days in the Hamilton County area north of the city.  He liked the area so much that he went back to Los Angeles, quit his job and moved halfway across the United States and ended up in an apartment that he had never seen until he got there.  

Hoffman decided his new life would be doing barbecue.  He studied techniques and played around with some different barbecue styles when he was living in California.  His barbecue gatherings with friends out there were always a big hit.  Once he moved to Indiana, he procured a smoker and a truck, and he began to sell his barbecued ribs, smoked brisket and pulled pork in parking lots and at events around Indianapolis. 

Pictured right - Adam Hoffman.  Photo courtesy Indianapolis Star

Like most people who do barbecue contests or have a food truck that features barbecue, Hoffman discovered a following that would allow him to serve barbecue from a store front.  He found a small place for his first location, but he quickly outgrew that.  In 2007, Hoffman moved into his current location along East Main Street in Westfield in what is basically a pole barn with a number of other businesses in it.  (see map)  Big Hoffa's has been there ever since.  (Hoffman announced last year that he was going to break ground on a new location in Westfield with an opening in the Spring of this year.  But as of now, Big Hoffa's is still in the E. Main Street location.) 

It was around 8 p.m. when I got into Big Hoffa's.  The lot had a number of motorcycles parked in it with a handful of patrons dressed in their road leathers eating barbecue out in front on some picnic tables.  The electric smoker for the establishment was sitting out in front.  Hoffman says that he slow cooks his ribs for 12 hours, his pork shoulders for 25 hours and his beef brisket for 30 hours ensuring tender, fall-off-the-bone quality to his meats.  In addition to barbecue at Big Hoffa's, they also have a small ice cream parlor - cleverly called "Skull and Cones" - that serves ice cream cones and cups.  

Inside Big Hoffa's, I couldn't decide whether I had walked into a shrine for the Oakland Raiders or the recreation of a pirate's den.  Jolly Roger flags were hanging all around the dining area and pirate artifacts where on shelves on the wall.  Hoffman once explained that pirates were possibly the original barbecuers, and that a pirate decor doesn't get dated and is always interesting.  I'll have to say that he had an interesting variety of pirate objet d'art.

Big Hoffa's features counter service with a menu on the wall behind the counter.  In addition to pulled pork, brisket, pulled chicken, ribs and rib tips, Big Hoffa's has a number of sandwiches with the meats, and also features a number of specialty dinners including a rice teriyaki entree with a choice of barbecued meat on top,  a mac and cheese dish with pulled chicken on the top, and something called the Hoffanator - seasoned French fries topped with mac and cheese, in turn topped with pulled pork, baked beans, barbecue sauce, and somewhat interestingly, ranch dressing.  

As I like to try different things when I first go to a barbecue joint, I got a half-pound of pulled pork and a half pound of beef brisket.  For sides, I got baked beans and some potato salad with cayenne pepper mixed in.  The young lady who was working the counter (Adam Hoffman was there, too, but he was talking with some people about some catering) sold me on the cayenne potato salad.  I also got a bottle of Bell's Two Hearted Ale.  They also had a number of the local Sun King beers available, as well

When they brought the food out to me moments later on a small baking sheet, my eyes must have grown double their size.  "This is a lot of food," I exclaimed as the young lady sat it down in front of me.  "Don't worry.   We have to-go boxes," she assured me.  I knew there would be no way I'd be able to eat all of this in one sitting.  But I made a good go of it. 

The brisket was good - thick slices of beef that had a bit of a smoky taste.  I added some of their sweet barbecue sauce to the brisket, but they had a spicy sauce that had a subtle kick on the back side.  Mixed together, they were perfect.  The brisket was good, but it wasn't as good as the pulled pork.  

The pulled pork was outstanding.  It was moist, tender and had a nice smoky flavor to it.  I do like sauce with my barbecue, but the pork was so good that I didn't want to taste anything else with it.  Whatever technique Adam Hoffman did with his pork butt, I have to say he had it down.  And then some.  

The baked beans were heavy in brown sugar and needed some help with the sauce.  I added in both the sweet sauce and the spicy sauce and they perked up in taste rather well.  But the cayenne potato salad had a great mustard taste on the front end and a surprising spicy kick on the back end.  The young lady did not undersell the cayenne baked potato, they too, were very good. 

Big Hoffa's Barbecue was a great find in my travels.  While the brisket was good, the pulled pork was outstanding.  The baked beans needed a little help with a mixture of the sweet and the spicy sauces, but the cayenne potato salad that the young lady at the counter sold me on had an excellent taste sensation.  It's not fancy and if pirate memorabilia upsets you, you're not going to like the interior.  But I found it all rather interesting.  Big Hoffa's has some very good to excellent barbecue, the portions are more than generous, and I would highly recommend a visit if you're in the northern suburbs of Indianapolis.  

The Smoke Pit - Concord, NC

On our recent trip to North Carolina, we had flown into Charlotte arriving in the late afternoon after a delay in Detroit.  After picking up our rental car, we took off toward Winston-Salem, our destination for the first weekend we were there.  However, my wife was famished from having little to eat since breakfast and we decided to stop somewhere along the way to get some Carolina barbecue.  I brought my personal GPS with me and east of Charlotte near the city of Concord I did a quick look for barbecue places in the area.  The first name that popped up was a place called The Smoke Pit.  We took a chance on it, pulled off the interstate and a few moments later we pulled up in front of The Smoke Pit.  

With Concord also being the home of the Charlotte Motor Speedway, we were in the heart of NASCAR country.  And The Smoke Pit has a NASCAR connection with co-owner Devin Barbee.  

Devin Barbee started out in motor sports in the mid-80's after graduating from high school.  His uncle, Ray Fox, Jr., was building engines for NASCAR teams and he took in his young nephew to have him learn the family secrets of engine building.  (Fox's father, Ray, Sr., was the longtime engine builder for NASCAR legend Junior Johnson, and also built engines for NASCAR pioneer Fireball Roberts before becoming a NASCAR race car owner in the 60's.)  Ray Fox, Jr. was the primary engine builder for car owner Robert Yates whose main driver at the time was Davey Allison.  Young Devin Barbee was a jack man in the pits for Allison during races. 

After Ray Fox, Jr's untimely passing in 1990, Devin Barbee went on to work for car owner Jack Roush as an engine tuner before going to work for the Hendrick Motorsports team in 1996, eventually becoming the primary engine builder for racers Terry Labonte and then Kyle Busch.  But long hours and incessant travel made it tough on Barbee and his young family back in Concord.   

Knowing that he needed a change and a new challenge in life, Barbee sat down with his sister to sort out what he may want to do.  His sister said that people need to eat, so why not do something to do with food?  When they were growing up, there was a grocery store in the Concord area - Dover's Supermarket - that had fresh cut meats, seafood and a reputation as being the best butcher department in the area.  But there was no place like that any more in Concord and Barbee decided to open a butcher shop in the former Faggart's Hardware Store on Concord Parkway North.  Renovating the space and putting in a butcher shop in one side of the building, Barbee opened The Stock Market in the spring of 2009.  The other side of the building was left vacant because Barbee had a plan for that side at some point down the road.  

About four years after Barbee opened The Stock Market, business was going very well when he was approached by Joey Graham, a barbecue aficionado who had worked in restaurants to pay his way through college and eventually managed a number of restaurants over the years.  Graham had been to barbecue places in Kansas City and Memphis, as well as all across Texas and his native South Carolina to come up with his own style of barbecue.  It turned out that Devin Barbee's plan in the back of his head was to open a restaurant in that space.  In 2014, Barbee and Graham opened The Smoke Pit next door to The Stock Market.  In early 2017, the two - along with partner Jeremy Beaver - opened a second Smoke Pit location in Salisbury, NC.  And possibly by the time this post is published, the trio will have opened a third Smoke Pit in Monroe, NC.  

We pulled into The Smoke Pit just before 6 p.m.  (see map)  It looked nice from the outside and there seemed to be a lot of cars in the parking lot.  There was an outside dining patio, but no one was seated outside.  Sharing a front door with The Stock Market, we went inside The Smoke Pit.  I took a quick look into The Stock Market and decided that I'd like to go in there to look around after we finished dinner, but unfortunately the meat shop closed moments after we went into The Smoke Pit.   

It's counter service at The Smoke Pit with a big menu board on the wall near the cash register.  There was a sign that asked patrons to order first and then pick out a table.  But we didn't have to worry about that as the restaurant was about 3/4's full and we were the second people in line.  The Smoke Pit's menu was what I would call Texas-style barbecue with brisket, ribs (wet or dry), pulled pork, barbecued chicken, and burnt ends on the menu.  Unfortunately - for me - there wasn't any beer available.  I do like a cold beer with good barbecue, but I was not going to get that at The Smoke Pit.

The restaurant, itself, was nice and open, but the tables were a little close together.  There were a number of colorful paintings of longhorn cattle, bison, horses and other livestock on the walls above the booths.  After we ordered our food, we ended up getting a table in the center of the restaurant.  As we waited for our food, the line to the front counter to order had grown to more than a dozen deep with people standing out in the joint entry way between the barbecue joint and the butcher shop.  We realized that we had gotten there right before the rush and people were now waiting on tables to open up.  The Smoke Pit was a very popular place.  

My wife ended up getting the burnt ends - a healthy portion of burnt end parts of a beef brisket slathered in a sweet and smoky barbecue sauce.  The burnt ends were thick cut and tender with a bit of a burnt bark to the outer side.  She thought they were absolutely delicious, but there was way more than she could eat.  I had to try a couple of them and I thought they were moist and flavorful - better than some burnt ends I've had in Kansas City, the home of good burnt end brisket.   

For her sides she got a piece of corn bread and something they called "red" cole slaw.  They had two different types of cole slaw for sides and the girl explained that the "white" cole slaw was just regular creamy cole slaw, while the red cole slaw was a vinegar base with a spicy taste to it.   She liked the spicy cole slaw a lot and offered me a bite.  It was very good.  

I went with the brisket and pulled pork combo with a side of mac 'n cheese and some baked beans.  Cut slices of Texas toast came on my platter that was served on butchers paper on a tray.  They had three sauces on the table - the same sweet and smoky sauce they had on my wife's burnt ends, a sweet and smoky sauce that had a little spicy kick to it, and a Carolina-style peppery vinegar sauce that I have to say was not too bad on the pulled pork.  

The portions they served at The Smoke Pit were huge.  I had five or six thick strips of brisket that were all tender, most and full of a great barbecue flavor.  The outer bark of the brisket gave the beef a nice smoky taste.  The chopped pulled pork was also moist and smoky in flavor.  Adding some of the spicier sauce with the beef was a nice palate pleaser, but you really didn't need any sauce for the brisket.  And, as I said, adding some of the Carolina-style peppery vinegar sauce to the pork made the taste even more enjoyable.  

My baked beans were all right - nothing great, but certainly not bad.  I added some of the spicy sweet sauce to them to zip up the taste and it helped them out.  The mac 'n cheese side was also just all right, but I would have liked to have gotten the red cole slaw instead of the mac 'n cheese.   

We were about halfway through the meal when I remembered that we were going to have barbecue the next evening as part of the rehearsal dinner/family gathering that was taking place the night before the wedding.  "Oh, well," my wife said.  "If it's half as good as this barbecue, we'll be all right."   (Side note - the catered barbecue we had the next night may not have been as half as good as the barbecue at The Smoke Pit.) 

Our GPS search for a nearby barbecue joint didn't steer us wrong - The Smoke Pit was top notch.  The brisket, pulled pork and burnt ends that we had were all fabulous.  The best side of all that we tried was the spicy "red" cole slaw that had a vinegar taste.  I enjoyed trying all three of the sauces they had on the table and I surprisingly liked the vinegar/pepper-based sauce on the pulled pork the best.  About the only quibble I had was that they didn't sell beer to go along with the barbecue - a minor inconvenience, though, for a guy who likes a cold beer with his barbecue.  Nonetheless, the barbecue at The Smoke Pit was very, very good and the portions were huge.  I felt bad leaving some of the meat behind since we were traveling, but I'd put their barbecue up against many of the very good to excellent barbecue places I've been to in my travels.

The Drake - Burlington, IA

We had a couple that used to live next door to us who we became very good friends with.  To our dismay, they moved back to their hometown in Southeastern Iowa about six years ago.  We still stay in touch and when our friend was having a significant birthday earlier this year, we went down to help surprise him at a bar in his hometown outside of Fort Madison.  After we'd been there for about 90 minutes, we took off and started back home.  However, we ended up in Burlington to go have dinner at a place we had tried to get into last summer, but it turned out they were closed on Sundays.  This time we were able to get into The Drake for dinner.  

Burlington is an old river city whose first permanent settlers date back to 1834.  Just four years later, the city had grown precipitously and when Iowa was named a territory that year, Burlington was named the territorial capital.  In 1841, the territorial capital was moved to Iowa City, but Burlington continued to grow thanks to river and rail commerce.  One of the companies that was founded in Burlington was Drake Hardware.  Dating back to 1864, Drake Hardware became one of the largest hardware distributors in the Midwest by the turn of the 20th century.  In 1906, they built a large building taking up about a half a block along Front Street between Washington and Columbia along the river front in downtown Burlington.  Drake Hardware continued in business until 1980 when they closed their doors.  

In the early 1920's, Dan Riley and his brothers started an oil company in Burlington getting his product from Pennsylvania.  Riley Pennsylvania Oil Company became regionally famous for their slogan, "Riley Brothers, That's Oil!"  By the 1950's, the Riley Brothers had branched out to manufacturing paint for farms and homes.  And by the 60's, the Riley Brothers were involved in selling industrial coatings to manufacturers around the Midwest.  

In 1971, partners Sam Jennison and Ken Bartels purchased Riley Brothers and renamed the company Riley, Inc.  When lightning struck their oil production facility in 1976 destroying the plant, Jennison and Bartels refocused their business with the paint operation renaming the company Riley Paint continuing to service home, farm and industrial paint needs.  

The big building that once was the home to Drake Hardware had sat empty for five years before Sam Jennison decided to move the offices of Riley Paint into the building.  But the large warehouse in the back was what Jennison really wanted to develop.  The original thick brick walls were still in place throughout the space, the five-foot-wide foundation of the building was still solid, and the Southern white pine support posts and beams were in great shape.  Jennison plotted out the floor plan of the restaurant so that every seat in the place would have a river view.  Not all would have an expansive view of the Mississippi, but at least you'd see some water with every seat.    

Pictured right - Sam Jennison.  (Photo courtesy Iowa Restaurant Association)

In addition to being the owner of Riley Paint and The Drake, Sam Jennison is also on the board of directors for the Iowa Restaurant Association and is also an author, penning his book "This Way to Happiness" in 1978.  Jennison is also an adventurer who once solo canoed on the Mississippi between Minneapolis and St. Louis. Jennison is currently semi-retired with his three sons now running Riley Paint, but there's a good chance you'll see him most nights at The Drake which is run by his son Jim "Jimbo" Jennison. 

We got into The Drake around 8 p.m. on a Saturday night.  We parked on Washington in front of the Riley Paint offices.  (see map)  We entered the door and no one was at the hostess stand.  We looked around the lobby area and found a number of antiques and historical items that were on display.  

We took a quick look around the corner to a large room that was evidently used for a banquet room.  A smaller room was off to the side with a bar.  While the banquet room was empty, there was a party going on in the smaller room.

A hostess finally showed up and she said there would be no wait for a table.  We were taken past the open kitchen that featured the essence of smoked wood in the air.  

Along the wall across from the kitchen were a number of plates on display with autographs of famous performers, politicians and personalities who had dined at The Drake over the years.  We saw autographs from the groups Styx and Lady Antebellum, as well as politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, and an autographed plate from the 2004 British Open winner Todd Hamilton who grew up in nearby Oquawka, IL. 

The dining areas at The Drake are sort of split up into different areas.  There was a step-up room across from the front of the kitchen that was sort of reminiscent of dining on a rail car.  Along one wall of the restaurant were a number of booths for dining.  

We were seated at a table along the north wall of the restaurant.  It had a paper covering and crayons were supplied at the table.  We played Tic-Tac-Toe a couple three times as we settled in.  The exposed brick walls gave the restaurant an old-time feeling, yet it was comfortable.  We were given menus to look through and it wasn't long before our server for the evening came over to greet us.  She was a young lady with an even demeanor who looked like she may have been a bit overwhelmed.  My wife ordered a glass of the house pinot grigio while I ordered up a beer while we looked through the menu.

There was an Iowa basketball game going on that evening and I got up to check the score in the bar.  The bar area was also expansive with a number of tables and booths throughout.  There is also a patio that is open in the warmer months that give diners a great view of the Mississippi.  

I went back to the table and my wife asked what the score was.  "I don't know," I said.  "They didn't have the game on.  They had the ESPN game on."  I thought it was rather odd considering the vast majority of places in Southeastern Iowa would have had the game on.  

Our server was serving our drinks as we were talking and she asked, "Are you talking about the basketball game?"  I told her that I was.  "Oh, our owner is a big Iowa State fan," she explained.  "When he's here, the Iowa game usually isn't on the TV's in the bar."  Well, that explained that!

The menu at The Drake consisted of a number of wood grilled meats, as well as ribs, seafood, pasta, sandwiches and even pizza.  They featured a number of barbecued items such as burnt ends, smoked pork chops, wood-fired chicken, and a slow-smoked brisket.  Steaks included ribeyes, tenderloin filets and New York strip cuts.  Seafood featured on the menu included a Jamaican-jerk seared ahi tuna, grilled grouper, and an almond-crusted walleye.  On Friday and Saturday nights they also feature smoked prime rib, but we were informed by our server that they had run out of the prime rib about a half-hour prior.  

We ordered our main entrees and after basic dinner salads for openers, our food came out.  I ordered the beef tenderloin filet with my customary rare temperature.  It was 12 ounces in size and it came with a side of the Drake fries.  I got a glass of the house cabernet to go with the meal.  

The outer shell to the steak was rather dry and tough, but inside it was cooked to an acceptable temperature with a deep red center.  There was something missing in the taste of the steak, however.  It was very lean and not very juicy.  It was almost like bison in its taste.  I added some fresh ground horseradish to the outer layer of the steak to help with the taste, but seemed rather lifeless.  For as dry as the outside was, I'm glad I didn't order the steak medium-rare as it probably would have been even more dry.  

The Drake fries were - from my guess - nothing more than leftover potatoes that had been wedged and deep-fried.  They, too, were just all right.   I'm not a big potato guy, but these were dry and somewhat overcooked. 

My wife ended up getting the 4 ounce grilled salmon with vegetables.  She thought the salmon was fine, but once again it was a bit dry on the outside from the high heat from the wood grilling process.  Her mixed vegetables she deemed to be just "all right".  She said they were overcooked and sort of mushy.  

We passed on dessert as we were both pretty full from our meals.  Before we left, we took a look around the restaurant to see what it was all about.  Actually, it was a pretty neat place.  The decor and use of the original building gave The Drake a wonderful ambience.  

As we were taking pictures of the place, Jimbo Jennison came over to see why I was taking pictures of the place.  I didn't identify myself as a restaurant blogger, but I told him that I like to take pictures of interesting places where we've eaten.  He was gracious and told us a bit about the history of the building, as well as about the outdoor deck that they have open in the warmer months.  "You need to come back when the weather gets nice," he said.  

While we really wanted to like our meals at The Drake, we just felt that they were slightly above average, at best.  The beef tenderloin filet I had was sort of dry on the outside, but nice and tender inside.  But it was sort of lifeless in its taste.  The Drake fries were bland and also somewhat overcooked.  My wife's salmon also had a tough outer shell, but the filet was flaky and wasn't fishy in taste.  However, she thought her vegetables were mushy and overcooked.  I couldn't complain about the service we had, although our server's demeanor was almost void of personality and robotic.  But the ambience and decor at The Drake was worth the visit.  I only wish our food would have lived up to the anticipation we had for the place.   (Picture courtesy The Great Lakes Casual Traveler.)   

Smoking Barrels Barbecue - St. Louis

In St. Louis recently, I was in the mood for some barbecue and I decided to seek out a place that I'd read about a couple years ago that was getting a bit of a following in the area.  I ended up heading over to Smoking Barrels BBQ which was located in the Princeton Heights neighborhood on the south side of St. Louis.  

Usually, the back story of a barbecue restaurant usually centers around a team of weekend competitive barbecue aficionados who are convinced to open their own place.  Or maybe the guy behind the restaurant learned how to barbecue from his grandfather who had an old smoker in his backyard.  Well, the story behind Smoking Barrels is far from that.

Dennis Machado grew up in poverty in his native country of Honduras.  His father passed away when Machado was a young boy and he was forced to find work to help his widowed mother raise his seven other siblings.  As a teenager, Machado literally walked into the United States to find work north of the border.  

He ended up in St. Louis and opened a short lived Mexican restaurant along Cherokee Street.  After that closed down in the mid-90's, Machado found work in the kitchen of a new barbecue place on the far south side of St. Louis - Bandana's.  He found that working in a barbecue joint was much more to his liking.  He worked at Bandana's for 17 years getting enough money saved up to send for some of his brothers to join him in the U.S. and to build a house for his mother in Honduras.  

17 years on the job at Bandana's taught Dennis Machado the art of smoking meats.  Along with his friend Fernando Ordonez, they decided to open their own barbecue place in St. Louis' South City.  They found a place on the corner of S. Kingshighway and Milentz Ave. in Princeton Heights that had been a number of restaurants, most recently - and somewhat ironically - a Mexican restaurant.  They opened Smoking Barrels BBQ in late March of 2013.  

It was about a 10 minute drive from my hotel to Smoking Barrels BBQ.  I found a parking spot on Milentz Ave. next to the restaurant.  (see map)   Behind the restaurant was a large smoker and up front near the street was a smaller smoker on a trailer with a wood-covered top and a family of pig statues peering out to the cars traveling along S. Kingshighway.  

Inside the restaurant, I found a chair at a four-seater table in the middle of the restaurant.  The place wasn't all that big, but the tables were spread out enough that you didn't feel like someone was sitting in your lap at the next table.  There was a small bar area toward the back of the restaurant.  Smoking Barrels BBQ was well lit with industrial lights hanging from the ceiling.   

I was greeted by my server - Dylan - who dropped off a menu for me to look through.  I ordered up a beer - a Budweiser, of course - to have while I looked to see what I was going to get that evening.  Smoking Barrels has ribs, pulled pork, brisket, smoked chicken, smoked turkey, and smoked sausage for their barbecue items. They feature many of their meats in sandwiches and they also have a number of "barrel" specials on the menu for family or group dining, or for those with a ravenous appetite.  

I ended up getting the three meat combo plate - chopped pork, sliced brisket, and ribs.  For my sides I got baked beans and battered French fries.  Grilled garlic bread also came with the meal.  There was a lot of food on my plate.  

The chopped pork was moist and tender, but sort of bland in taste.  The sauces - a Midwest sweet and smoky sauce and their Texas spicy sauce that wasn't all that spicy and was rather thin and runny - helped the taste of the pulled pork a bit.  The brisket, on the other hand, was very good.  The beef was tender and had a nice smoky taste to the meat.  The ribs were probably the best part of the meal - they were meaty with a sweet glaze on the outer bark of the meat.  The pork pulled away easily from the bone and it was moist and far from overcooked.  

I sort of liked the battered fries - they had a crispy outer shell and a nice flaky inside.  I enjoyed dipping them in a combination of the sweet and spicy sauces.  The baked beans I would call "church lady" beans - they were sort of sweet and runny, the kind that I remember getting at church pot lucks when I was a kid.  I did add some spicy sauce to zip them up a bit, but they were still sort of what I call unoffensive.  

Smoking Barrels BBQ was good - maybe not the best I've had in St. Louis - but still good enough to be put into the conversation about the better place in the city.  The ribs were meaty and cooked perfectly with the meat easily falling away from the bone.  The brisket was also very good with a great smoky taste to the meat.  The pulled pork was a little bland, but the sauces Smoking Barrels provides helped with the overall taste.  The service I received that evening was prompt and efficient, and my server also had a good sense of humor.   I'd have to say the barbecue I had at Smoking Barrels BBQ was enjoyable and satisfying.  

Frick's Tap - Davenport, IA

The oldest bar in the state of Iowa happens to be Breitbach's in Balltown (click here to read the Road Tips entry on Breitbach's).  After a recent renovation of a long-time bar on Davenport's west end, I learned the second oldest bar in the state is in the Quad Cities - Frick's Tap.  We had heard that the new owners had done a wonderful job renovating the building that has housed the bar since the late 1880's, and on a snowy Saturday afternoon we decided to go down and take a look for ourselves.  

The west end of Davenport in the late 19th century was a neighborhood influenced by German immigrants who settled in the area.  There were a number of breweries in downtown Davenport and in 1888 Charles Frick opened his eponymous tavern - in what was originally a bakery - with the credo of "Good Beer Served Properly".   With meat packing plants in the immediate area, Frick's served countless plant workers well into the 20th century.  When Prohibition took effect in 1919, Frick's stayed open as a root beer and ice cream joint.  (I was told by an elderly neighbor years ago that Frick's operated a grain alcohol still in the back of the place during Prohibition.)  In 1924, Charles Frick passed away and his son Edwin "Ed" Frick took over ownership of Frick's.  

Surviving Prohibition, Frick's began to sell beer again in 1933 and became a landmark watering hole for local politicians and community leaders in Davenport.  In 1942, Ed Frick ran for mayor of Davenport and won.  Ed Frick turned over his interest in the bar to his son, Edwin "Ross" Frick.  Ed Frick served only one term at mayor of Davenport - I'm not certain but it appears that he may have passed away in 1944.

Pictured right - the second and third generation of Frick's ownership.  Edwin "Ed" Frick and his son, Edwin "Ross" Frick.

In the subsequent years, Ross Frick continued to host many of the city's movers and shakers at his long, narrow tavern on the west end.  Ross Frick also tried his hand at politics twice running as the Republican candidate for mayor of Davenport, but he lost both times.  

Ross Frick and his wife, Floy, lived in the apartment above the tavern.  It was said that Floy Frick kept an immaculate garden in the area behind the tavern for many years.  When Ross Frick died in 1986, Floy sold Frick's to Chuck Fogle.

Chuck Fogle ran Frick's for six years until he passed away from a heart attack in 1992.  Fogle's wife Betty -who was a devout Baptist and an avowed teetotaler - suddenly had a tavern with monthly bank payments on her hands.  She didn't want anything to do with the over 100-year-old tavern and ended up leasing it out to the first of what turned out to be five different people who ran the place for the next 22 years.  When the person who was running Frick's in 2014 didn't have his liquor license renewed, Frick's Tap ceased to be.

The building sat vacant for well over a year before an investment group headed by Nathan Sharp bought the property from Betty Fogle.  Sharp and the two other investors were Davenport "west-enders" who grew up watching Frick's and the surrounding area along W. 3rd St. slowly decay.  The building that housed Frick's was listed in 1974 on the National Register of Historic Places, and Sharp and his fellow investors wanted to bring back the glory days of Frick's Tap.  

They started out gutting the two floors of the nearly 5,000 square foot building and updating the electrical, plumbing and heating and cooling in the place.  They upgraded the infrastructure tearing out walls to expose the original brick, put in new flooring and expanded the lower floor for more seating.  Construction crews spent over seven months restoring and rehabbing the building, and in late August of last year the new Frick's Tap opened its doors.  (Still a devout abstainer well into her 80's, Betty Fogle was quoted in the local paper as saying that while she was happy for the work that was done to the building that houses Frick's, she had no plans to go see the renovations.)

We parked on W. 3rd just west of Fillmore where Frick's stands on the northwest corner.  (see map)   What we found was a very nice place with a lot of new stone masonry mixed in with the original brick on the wall near the bar.  While they did a good job of integrating new features in the place - such as nearly two dozen televisions hung on walls throughout the bar - they also kept the architectural integrity of the original building that was built over 135 years ago.  A vintage neon sign that says, "Good Beer Served Properly" hangs above the door at Frick's.  (I don't know if it's the original neon sign that used to hang in the front window, but it might be.)  Interestingly enough, there was an multi-colored LED panel that hung on the wall opposite the bar above a chalk board that scrolled the current stock prices of Quad City-based companies.  

There was a small dining area off to the side of the bar up front.  It was well lit with the large front windows letting in natural light.  A smaller room behind a stone wall had some extra tables in that area.

Upstairs, they tore out the apartment that housed the Frick family for years and made the space an overflow bar area/party room.  There was a small deck off the back of the space that would be open in warmer months.  Reclaimed barn boards hide the support columns around he rectangular bar that features corrugated tin underneath.

We were getting more than a few looks from some of the local regulars as we walked in and proceeded to a table in the back of the bar.  Even after we sat at a high four-seat table in the back near the back door that went out to the parking lot behind the building there were people leaning back to get a glimpse of the two new visitors to Frick's.  

One of the ladies from behind the bar came over to greet us and to see if we were going to eat.  At the time we were there, the kitchen was still not 100% completed and they were selling only appetizers and some barbecued items that were made on a smoker that was sitting behind the building.  They had a number of craft beers on tap including local beers from Great River Brewery, Bent River Brewing Company and Green Tree Brewery.  We ended up ordering a couple of beers on tap while we looked through the abbreviated menu.  

Most of the main entrees were barbecued meats such as brisket with a mustard-based dry rub; chopped pork shoulder seasoned with their house-made "None of Your Frick'n Business" dry rub; baby back pork ribs with a similar dry rub; and half of a smoked chicken.  Appetizers included wings - boneless and bone-in; chili with smoked beef included; potato wedges topped with a Monterey Jack cheese; and something they called the "Frick'n Heart Attack" - 1/2 pound of in-house cured, smoked and sliced bacon with barbecue sauce.  

We thought about getting the meat sampler appetizer - a choice of three different types of smoked meats served with three different types of sauces and sweet rolls.  But we ended up getting two other appetizers - the "Frickles" - fried pickles covered with panko bread crumbles - and the brisket nachos - tortilla chips covered with chopped brisket, cheese, barbecue sauce and Frick's house-made baked beans.     

The fried pickles were actually pretty good.  They came with a side of ranch dressing and the taste of the panko bread crumbs was a nice touch to the crisp warm pickle inside.  They were some of the better fried pickles we've tried.

The brisket nachos - and I'll use a term that was first coined by my fellow blogger, The Slakingfool - was a glorious mess.  The brisket chunks were large, but tender and flavorful.  The sweet barbecue sauce had a bit of a spicy back taste, but was very good.  Along with the cheese and the tasty baked beans mixed in, we thought this was a great appetizer.  Both appetizers were more than enough for us as the portions were good-sized and generous.  

We're going to get back to Frick's once they get their full kitchen up and running and they've expanded their menu.  The neighborhood around Frick's can still be a little "iffy", especially at night, but they've done a wonderful job rehabilitating the old building and breathing life into what is called the second oldest bar in the state of Iowa.  The appetizers we had were tasty, the service wasn't bad, they had a good craft beer selection, and we certainly liked the homey, neighborhood atmosphere (even though some of the regulars kept checking out who the two "strangers" were).  Frick's Tap has injected a bit of fresh air into what has been a stale part of Davenport for a number of years. 

Jon Russell's BBQ - Overland Park, KS

On my (seemingly) never-ending quest to try all the barbecue places in Kansas City, I had been reading about a place in Overland Park that has been open for over 4 years that was supposed to have top quality barbecue.  Jon Russell's BBQ is the culminating effort of two high school friends who started on the barbecue competition circuit over 25 years ago.  

Jon Russell's is named after the two owners - Jon Niederbremer and Russell Muehlberger - who started out in 1990 as a competitive barbecue team.  In just their second year of competition, Niederbremer and Muehlberger were named Grand Reserve Champions at the prestigious American Royal barbecue competition held annually in Kansas City.  The following year in 1992, the pair won the coveted Grand Champion award at the competition.  Over the years, the two have won numerous local and regional barbecue competitions and continue to compete when they can today.  

It turns out that Muehlberger is the one with a culinary background working for years as a chef in upscale restaurants and as a consultant for other restaurants.  Niederbremer was in the building trade before they opened Jon Russell's BBQ in the summer of 2012 in a former Quizno's location in the Prairie Center office, retail and restaurant complex at the corner of Quivira Road and W. 135th in Overland Park (see map).  Jon Russell's is part of the 39BevCo group that also includes the Club 1000 event and reception center in downtown Kansas City, MO; and two upscale convenience stores - the Prairie Market in Lenexa, KS (which also features Jon Russell's barbecued meats to go) and the 39th Street Market located in World of Spirits near the Westport neighborhood in Kansas City, MO.

It was just before noon on a sunny weekday when I pulled into the parking lot in front of Jon Russell's BBQ.  It was a little confusing getting into the parking lot at Jon Russell's from Quivira, but I was able to find it with a few twists and turns in the Prairie Center complex.  

Walking into the place, you'll find a large chalkboard behind the front counter with the menu on it.  It's your typical Kansas City barbecue fare such as ribs, burnt ends, brisket, pulled pork, chicken, sausage, ham, and turkey.  They have platters available as well as barbecued meat sandwiches and salads on the menu.  Sides include baked beans, mac and cheese, cole slaw (when available), house-fried potato chips, onion rings and fries.  

After I ordered at the counter, I found a seat in one of the booths along the wall.  The dining area wasn't anything fancy, but it was comfortable enough.  There was a pop dispenser, utensil station (plastic utensils, at that), and a barbecue sauce counter along the opposite wall from the booths.  

One of the workers in the kitchen brought my lunch out to me.  I had ordered the Blue Ribbon Combo Platter - brisket, burnt ends and ribs.  For sides, I got the baked beans and an order of fries.  I got a Boulevard Pale Ale to go along with my meal.   

The ribs at Jon Russell's BBQ are their signature item and I have to say they were very good.  They were meaty with a hint of a smoky taste and they were very tender.  Not "fall-off-the-bone" tender, but tender enough where they easily pulled away from the bone with each bite.  The outer bark on the ribs was crispy, but not burnt.  

The burnt ends were equally as tasty.  The thick chunks of brisket ends were moist and tender.  They were very good.  And the brisket slice that I got was thick and juicy, and it easily cut with the plastic fork they provide at Jon Russell's BBQ.  

For the sides, the French fries were seasoned and pretty good.  I used the to dip into the different barbecue sauces they had to offer at Jon Russell's BBQ.  (More on the sauces in a bit.)  And the baked beans were thick and sweet with a spicy bite on the back end.  They also had chunks of meat in the baked beans.  Normally, I like to zip up the taste of baked beans with a spicy barbecue sauce, but these were fine as they were served.  

Being a sauce guy, Jon Russell's had a number of different sauces to choose from.  However, many of the sauces were fruit-based - a nod to Russell Muehlberger's barbecue mentor - the late Karen Putnam - who was a charter member of the Kansas City Barbecue Society and a competitive barbecue chef on her own.  I'm usually not big on fruity barbecue sauces, but I have to say the spicy blueberry sauce was very good.  It had the sweet and tart blueberry taste with a spicy zing on the back end.  The combination of the blueberry and the spicy hot pepper taste were a great combination.  

They also had a cherry chipotle sauce that had that great smoky chipotle taste that was cut with the sweet and tart cherry flavor.  There was a honey and spice sauce that I thought was pretty good.  The pineapple poblano sauce was an interesting combination, but I was too chicken to try the Smokin' Ghost sauce - a sweet sauce mixed with ghost peppers.  Out of the sauces, I liked the spicy blueberry and the cherry chipotle the best.  But I would have also liked to have had a good ol' sweet and smoky Kansas City-style sauce, as well.  

Trophies and awards line the walls at Jon Russell's BBQ and it's no wonder why they have won so many barbecue competitions over the past 25 plus years. I thought the ribs were some of the best I've ever had in the Kansas City area, the burnt ends were also top-notch, and the brisket was moist, tender and flavorful.  The sauces - especially the spicy blueberry and the chipotle cherry - were also very good.  Jon Russell's BBQ can easily go up against the more famous and established barbecue places in Kansas City, possibly very well surpassing some of those in the quality of their barbecue.  Jon Russell's BBQ is one of the better barbecue places I've found in Kansas City.

Dalie's Smokehouse - Valley Park, MO

I was reading in Sauce Magazine (I call Sauce my restaurant bible for St. Louis) in late 2015 about the newest addition to the family tree of barbecue places that is headed by pitmaster-extraordinaire Skip Steele - Dalie's Smokehouse.  It was in the far western part of St. Louis County in what is called Valley Park and I decided to head there for lunch one day on a trip to St. Louis last fall.  Any barbecue place that has the DNA of Skip Steele and his partner Mike Emerson, I'm up for giving it a try.  

Skip Steele, of course, is the godfather of all the good barbecue places to eat at in St. Louis.  Along with Emerson, they are famous for two of the best places for barbecue in "the Loo" - Pappy's Smokehouse and Bogart's Smokehouse.  (Click here for the Road Tips entry on Pappy's and here for the entry on Bogart's.)  Steele got his start cooking barbecue as a 14-year-old when he made his first smokers out of 100-gallon propane tanks salvaged from a metal scrap yard near his home in Georgia.  He had his first restaurant - a carry-out barbecue place - when he was going to college.  After college, Steele worked in restaurants, but then found work with a freight company that shipped products around the world via ocean going freighters.  Steele worked for the company for nine years before being able to retire and get back into his first love - barbecue.  

Steele joined his college roommate Terry Black at Super Smokers helping to open locations around St. Louis. (Click here for Road Tips' entry on Super Smokers.)  It was at Super Smokers that Steele met Mike Emerson and the two forged a friendship that eventually took them to a partnership that continues today.  In addition to Pappy's and Bogart's, Steele and Emerson's parent corporation - Mothership - holds shares in other St. Louis restaurants such as Adam's Smokehouse (click here to see the Road Tips entry on Adam's), as well as Southern, a southern-style "hot chicken" eatery next to Pappy's that opened last summer; as well as the Notorious P.I.G. in Missoula, MT.  They also have a stake in a barbecue restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany - Boogie's - a restaurant run by Falk Norris, a German native who worked at the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis for over 20 years before heading up the food and beverage service at Washington University.  Norris fell in love with Pappy's Barbecue and he wanted to open something similar to it back in Germany.  Norris studied under Steele for 18 months and he went back to Germany to open what is thought to be the first true barbecue smokehouse in that country.  (Above right - Mike Emerson and Skip Steele.  Picture courtesy St. Louis Magazine.)  

For their seventh restaurant, Steele and Emerson found a spot that used to house the former Squeakers BBQ and Bar in a strip mall at the corner of Big Bend and Dougherty Ferry Road.  (see map)  They had a soft opening on June 30 of last year ramping up throughout the summer to get the kinks out of the business.

Steele paid homage to his maternal grandfather "Papa Joe" Dalie Wells by naming the new barbecue joint after him.  Wells was born into a wealthy family who had interests in manufacturing, insurance and banking.  When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the Wells family lost everything and Joe Dalie turned to teaching, then running a taxi company before he got into the restaurant business.  As a 12-year-old, Skip Steele learned the art of cooking and barbecue from working in the kitchen at his grandfather's restaurant.  There's a corner of the restaurant that is set up as sort of a shrine to Joe Dalie Wells.  (Picture at left courtesy St. Louis Magazine.)

Dalie's is in a corner spot in the strip mall and while it's nothing fancy, it was comfortable enough.  Large windows allowed for the natural light to come in.  Sturdy tables and chairs were interspersed around the place and the walls were adorned with posters and beer signs.  A couple three flat screen televisions also hung from the wall.

Being a Dalie's rookie, I made the mistake of taking a table instead of going to the cash register to order.  A young lady came out and explained to me that it was similar to Pappy's and Bogart's - you place your order at the cash register and they bring it out to you.  The menu is on a chalkboard behind the cash register.  Like Pappy's and Bogart's, Dalie's Smokehouse will run out of meat during the course of a day and they immediately put up "86ed" next to the meat that they've run out of.  

Ribs, pulled pork, pulled chicken, brisket, smoked ham, beef & pork belly pastrami, and smoked roast beef are the meats on the menu.  Sandwiches and platters are available with nearly all the meats.  Combo plates include a half-side or a full-side of ribs with your choice of a meat, or a half-rack of ribs and a half chicken, or you can get "The Judge" - a full slab of ribs or a full chicken, your choice of three-sandwiches and four sides.  Sides include baked beans, mac 'n' cheese, potato salad, apple sauce, thick cut fries, cole slaw and "fire-and-ice" pickles - sweet and spicy pickles that Skip Steele found on a trip to barbecue joints in Mississippi a few years back.  

They had a "Pick 2" platter on the menu and I got the pulled pork and the brisket.  I was sort of at a loss as to get other than baked beans and the young lady who took my order said, "Our mac 'n' cheese is a big seller for us."  I took her advice and got that.  I also got a cold beer to go along with the barbecue.  (Barbecue and cold beer are just made for one another.)  

Similar to the other restaurants Steele and Emerson are involved in, the meats I had at Dalie's were delicious.  The brisket was thin and lean with a hint of a smoke ring around the edges.  It was easy to cut and tasted wonderful.  The pulled pork was tender and juicy with a hint of a smoky taste to it.  The meats were fabulous.  

The baked beans were also a winner - thick and saucy with chunks of meat mixed in.  And the mac 'n' cheese that the lady at the counter suggested were also very good.  The cheesy mixture of macaroni noodles, bread crumbs and real bacon bits had a rich and decadent taste.  (I would have liked to have tried the fire and ice pickles.  Well, there's always next time.)

Being a big sauce guy, Dalie's didn't disappoint.  They had six sauces on the table and I tried them all.  Papa Joe's Original sauce was thick, sweet and tangy with a pepper taste on the backside; the Cranberry Cayenne was fruity, sweet with a spicy taste on the backside; the Voodoo had a little bit of sweetness with a very spicy backside; the Sweet Hope was sweet and smoky; the Dalie's Vinegar was a somewhat spicy vinegar-based sauce; and the Carolina Sweet was a Carolina-style sweet mustard sauce.  I didn't care at all for the Carolina Sweet, and I wasn't thrilled with the Dalie's Vinegar sauces.  But I really did like the Cranberry Cayenne where the sweet fruity taste of the cranberries tamped down the spiciness of the cayenne spice.  And I liked mixing up the spicy Voodoo with both the Sweet Hope and the Papa Joe's Original sauce.  There were a lot of taste sensations going on with the mixture of the sauces.  

Well, Skip Steele and Mike Emerson have done it again.  The owners of the arguably best barbecue places in St. Louis have another winner with Dalie's Smokehouse.  The pulled pork and brisket platter was delicious, as were the mac 'n' cheese and baked beans sides that I got.  I enjoyed the variety of sauces Dalie's had to offer and the place had the comfortable barbecue joint vibe.  Now people in West County don't have to drive deep into the city to try some of Steele's and Emerson's barbecue.  They have pretty much the same thing at Dalie's Smokehouse.  

Spitfire Bar & Grill - West Fargo, ND

I was driving between western North Dakota and the Twin Cities last fall and decided to stop at Fargo to get some lunch.  I was sort of hungry for barbecue, so I did a search of barbecue places in the area and one place - Spitfire Bar & Grill - caught my eye.  I set my GPS to the address for Spitfire Bar & Grill and headed there for lunch.

Like many places, Spitfire came to be because the owners got their start on the barbecue competition trail.  Tim and Mary Olson were chiropractors in Fargo, but they loved barbecue ever since Tim sampled some of the best smoked meats he'd had while he was living in Oklahoma and Texas before settling back in his home state of North Dakota.  Knowing that he couldn't get Texas-style barbecue in Fargo, he ended up having his own smoker shipped up from Texas and placed in his backyard.  Soon, he was feeding friends and neighbors who raved about his barbecuing prowess. 

In April of 2007, an Uno Pizzeria & Grill location closed in West Fargo.  The Olson's along with managing partner Gordy Ferkul then turned it into a barbecue place.  They procured a Southern Pride SPK-500 industrial smoker and installed it in the kitchen area.  Spitfire Bar & Grill opened with a soft opening in the summer of 2007 to help get the kinks worked out before they had their grand opening in the fall of 2007.  

About the same time they opened Spitfire Bar & Grill, the Olson's came across a television program one evening that showed the highly competitive barbecue circuit in parts of the United States.  The barbecue bug had hit him hard and he was determined to get into competitions around the Upper Midwest.  Nearly from the start, the Olson's "Team Spitfire" began to win the competitions they entered.  More wins meant bigger and better equipment and they got their big competitive smoker trailer in 2011.  

The Olson's continue to run the competition circuit around the U.S. and have participated numerous times in two of the biggest barbecue competitions - the Jack Daniels World Barbecue Championship in Lynchburg, TN; and the American Royal Barbecue Championship in Kansas City.  Team Spitfire garnered a sixth place overall finish at the Jack Daniels WBC in 2009 and his ribs earned a third-place finish in that category the same year.  

Spitfire is technically in West Fargo along 13th Ave. E.  (see map)  It was around 1 p.m. when I pulled into the parking lot and went inside.  The main dining area had a cozy contemporary look and feel to the place.  The focal point of the dining area was the large wood burning cooker for Spitfire's wood-fired steaks, seafood, and spit-roasted chicken.  Many of the trophies the Spitfire barbecue team has won in competitions were on display in the dining room.

I ended up taking a seat at the bar.  The bar area was spacious and bright with a number of flat-panel televisions hanging on the wall.  My bartender server that day was Ambar, a pleasant blonde-haired lady who dropped off a menu for me to look through.  I saw that they had my favorite beer - Kona Big Wave Golden Ale - on tap and I ordered one of those.  I like places that have Big Wave on tap.  

As I alluded to earlier, there's more than just barbecue on the menu at Spitfire.  In addition to wood-fired steaks, seafood and chicken, they also feature flat bread pizzas, pasta dishes, sandwiches and wraps, wood-fired burgers, soups and salads.  But I was there for the barbecue that day and I wanted to sample a little bit of everything.  The only problem is that they didn't have a sampler platter at Spitfire.  They only seemed to have sandwiches with pulled pork or brisket.  And the only rib combo they had on the menu came with either steak and ribs or chicken and ribs.  

I finally found a beef brisket platter they had on the menu and I ended up ordering that.  The only problem is that it was expensive - $19.95 for the platter with two sides.  I figured there must be a lot of beef that came on the plate.  

There really wasn't.  Oh, it was probably a little over a half pound of brisket on the plate, but I still didn't think it was that good of a value.  For my sides, I got a bowl of the Spitfire baked beans and some fries.  

The brisket was tender, but it was dry.  It almost tasted like cafeteria-style roast beef.  I didn't get much of a smoky flavor to the beef.  It was somewhat disappointing.  

To add to the disappointment of the brisket, they gave me a small 2 ounce container of barbecue sauce.  It was a vinegar-based sauce that was just all right in my book.  And because the beef was so dry, I had to use a lot of the sauce to help get the beef down.  I needed a couple of the containers to help out the beef, but I quit once I ran out of the first container of sauce.  And they didn't have any sauce in bottles.  Being a sauce guy, I like to try different types of sauce on my barbecue.  The brisket needed all the help it could get.   

The fries were also sort of "meh!", but the baked beans saved this meal from being a complete dud.  The beans were great - thick and meaty with chunks of pork with nearly every bite.  Even the sauce they used in the beans was very good.  The beans were - unfortunately - the only saving grace for what was otherwise a forgettable meal.  

I don't know if Spitfire is known as much for their brisket as they are for their ribs, but I was disappointed in the brisket I had on my visit.  The baked beans were the highlight of what was otherwise a bland-tasting meal.  While the service as attentive and prompt, I thought the barbecued brisket was underwhelming.  Spitfire wins local awards for the best barbecue in Fargo and has won a number of regional barbecue competitions, but the barbecue I had was not what I would call award winning. 

Burnt End BBQ - Overland Park, KS

I came across a barbecue place that has been open for awhile in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Burnt End BBQ.  I was sort of surprised that I hadn't been there before, but I just happened to look over to my left as I was sitting at a traffic light and saw the sign.  When I went in to try the place, I asked one of the workers how long they'd been open.  "Oh, I don't know.  Four years, at least," is what he told me.  So, here is the story of my visit to try the barbecue at Burnt End BBQ.

Burnt End BBQ is one of a handful of restaurants under the PB&J Restaurants banner that includes YaYa's European Bistro with locations in Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver and Little Rock, the Newport Grill with locations in Kansas City and Wichita, and the Paradise Diner in Kansas City.  The head of PB&J Restaurants Paul Khoury also has a hand in Red Robin and Twin Peaks franchises around the Kansas City area.  

Khoury has had a long career in the restaurant business starting in the mid-70's with the Gilbert/Robinson corporation that oversaw Houlihan's and the Bristol Seafood Restaurants.  In 1978, he got into the management-trainee program with Gilbert/Robinson and met another management trainee by the name of  Bill Crooks.   For the next nine years, Khoury and Crooks managed restaurants for Gilbert/Robinson, but they eventually decided to do something for themselves.  In 1987, they opened their first restaurant - the Paradise Grill - in the Oak Park Shopping Mall in Olathe.  

Kansas Citians didn't take to Paradise Grill right away as it was more of an upscale diner featuring a fusion menu of Southwestern and American fare.  But as more of the population got used to the out-of-the-box thinking that Khoury and Crooks were conjuring up in the kitchen, Paradise Grill became a popular destination.

From there, the duo were contacted by a local developer who was building an upscale shopping complex in suburban Mission.  It was there that they opened the Coyote Grill in 1989.  Two years later the same developer had built the Town Pavillion in downtown Kansas City and Khoury and Crooks opened their City Scene restaurant there.  The same year, another developer worked with them to open the first Grand Street Cafe location in Kansas City.  They also had a Southwestern restaurant called Paulo & Bill in the Kansas City area, and they opened two restaurants in St. Louis - Cafe Eau (now known as the Chase Club located in the luxurious Chase Park Plaza) and Eau Bistro.  From there, they opened the first YaYa's Mediterranean Bistros in Memphis and Denver.  (The original name of Ya'sYa's was Yia's Yia's.  They transitioned over to the Ya Ya's moniker with openings in St. Louis and Little Rock a few years later.)  

9/11 hit the restaurant business hard in 2002 and Khoury and Crooks started to look at restaurant opportunities where the check amounts would be much smaller than the $25 to $35 per person meals they had been working with at their restaurants.  That's when the partners became Red Robin franchisees.  They sold Paulo & Bill and the two St. Louis restaurants in 2002, then sold the Grand Street Cafe in 2003 and opened the first Red Robin restaurants in the Kansas City area.  

Crooks, growing weary of the restaurant business, sold his shares in PB&J to Khoury in 2006.  (Today, Crooks heads Good Food Good Future, a consulting firm for start up restaurants in the Kansas City area.)   Khoury continued on with the restaurants, soldiering on through the recession of 2008 and in 2009 opening a YaYa's in St. Louis and in Little Rock.  Some of the PB&J restaurants closed during that period, but by 2010 Khoury was ready to start a new upscale restaurant venture opening the first Newport Grill in Wichita.  When the Prairefire shopping and entertainment district opened in 2014, PB&J put in two restaurants in the complex - a new Paradise Grill concept that focuses on seafood, and a Newport Grill.  

Pictured right - Paul Khoury.  Photo courtesy Kansas City Business Journal

PB&J has also garnered a reputation in the Kansas City area for giving long-time employees Harley-Davidson motorcycles as an appreciation gift.  Once an employee hits 15 years of working for one of the PB&J restaurants, they receive a free motorcycle.  This started when one of the chefs at one of his restaurants asked Khoury if there was any bonus for 1 year of employment, 5 years of employment and 10 years of employment.  Khoury said, "I suppose one extra week of vacation."  When the chef asked Khoury what he would get at 15 years, he said, "Well, what would you want?"

The chef told him that he wanted a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.  Khoury got to thinking that keeping employees in an industry where turnover happens at a furious place, maybe something like a Harley-Davidson would be an incentive to those who would stick with him.  Even though the chef who put the idea in Khoury's head didn't make it to the 15 year mark, Khoury has now given away well over 40 Harley-Davidson motorcycles to employees who have stuck around for at least 15 years.  

Steven "Smokey" Schwartz got his start in the barbecue business as a co-owner of Joe's Barn Barbecue in suburban Olathe in the early 80's.  After Joe's Barn closed, he went over to the famed Fiorella's Jack Stack in Martin City working his way up to executive chef and pit master.  (Click here to read Road Tips' entry about Fiorella's Jack Stack.  This was from 10 years ago and, admittedly, it was not that good of an entry.  The place deserves a better write-up with pictures.)  After 10 years at Jack Stack, Schwartz went to PB&J Restaurants in 2005 to work on barbecue concepts for their restaurants.  Schwartz helped open Burnt End BBQ in 2011 at the corner of W. 135th and Nieman Road in Overland Park.  Their catering business was a hit, but the walk-in traffic they experienced was not up to par.  They moved to a much higher profile location at the corner of Metcalf and W. 119th St. in Overland Park in February of 2014.  (see map)  Earlier this year, PB&J opened a second Burnt End BBQ location in Denver's Tech Center area.  

I got into Burnt End BBQ around 8 p.m. on a warm evening in Kansas City.  It's counter service to order your meal and there was no line in front of me when I got in there. The dining room was contemporary, well-lit and comfortable enough.

The menu is printed on back-lit boards as you walk into the restaurant.  They have all the typical Kansas City-style smoked meats available at Burnt End BBQ - brisket, pulled pork, ham, spare ribs, turkey, chicken, sausage, and, of course, burnt ends.  Most of the meats are available either on their own or in sandwiches.  They also have steak burgers on the menu, as well as specialty sandwiches such as The Chop - a blend of brisket, burnt ends, pulled pork in Burnt End's traditional Kansas City-style barbecue sauce and topped with onion straws, or The Stack - brisket, ham and turkey topped with smoked bacon slices and a pepper jack cheese sauce.  

I like to try a little bit of everything when I go to a barbecue joint for the first time and they had a two meat platter with a choice of two sides on the menu.  However, one of the meats I wanted to try - the brisket - I was informed that they were out of that night.  "Just ran out about 15 minutes ago," the guy behind the counter told me.  Somewhat crestfallen, I ended up getting the burnt ends and pulled pork.  For my sides, I got baked beans and I couldn't decide what else to get.  They had items such as both a classic-style potato salad and a baked potato salad, mac & cheese, white cheddar grits, and a cucumber-tomato salad.  Fries, potato wedges and onion straws were also available, but they weren't part of the "sides" package with the platter.  I ended up getting the baked beans and the sweet and spicy cole slaw on the recommendation of the guy who took my order.   The meats were served on a slice of Texas toast and dill pickle slices also came with the platter.  I got a Boulevard Frequent Flier Session IPA to go along with my meal that evening.  

When I first started to go to Kansas City a number of years ago - over 35 years ago now - I didn't care much for burnt ends cut from brisket.  The first ones that I tried were so dried out and tasteless that I was sort of turned off to burnt ends after that.  I started to work for a company in Kansas City in the mid-80's and my boss used to take us to Fiorella's Jack Stack in Martin City for barbecue and he always ordered the burnt ends.  I was more of a brisket, rib or pulled pork kind of guy and never really got into burnt ends.  But I'm starting to come around to burnt ends after having some at other Kansas City and St. Louis area barbecue joints over the past few years.  The namesake burnt ends at Burnt End BBQ were thick and meaty, tender and smoky with a nice bark on the outer shell.  These were some of the better burnt ends I'd ever had.  

The pulled pork was equally as good - moist, flavorful and a slight smoky flavor.  This was shaping up to be one of the better barbecue meals I've had during my visits to Kansas City area barbecue joints.  

If you're a regular reader to Road Tips, you know that I'm a sauce man.  Many barbecue chefs say that you generally don't need barbecue sauce on the meat if it's flavorful enough.  And I agree with that.  I generally start out eating the meats without any sauce to experience the overall taste.  But if they have some interesting barbecue sauces, I'll give them a try.  (Many times I like to dip fries into the sauces and try them that way.  But I didn't get fries this time.)  They had three different sauces at Burnt End BBQ developed by pit master Steven "Smokey" Schwartz - a traditional Kansas City sweet and smoky sauce, a sweet honey glaze sauce, and a spicy Southwest style sauce that had a bit of a sweetness to the front end of the taste with a somewhat spicy and peppery bite on the backside.  I liked the southwest spicy sauce the best with the traditional K.C.-style sauce right behind it.  While the honey glaze sauce was good, I didn't think it was as good as the others. 

I usually like to add some barbecue sauce to the baked beans at most barbecue places to give them a little sweet and spicy zip to the taste, but the beans they had at Burnt End BBQ didn't need any help.  They were already sweet and a little spicy with a hint of hickory smoke.  The consistency of the baked beans were thick helped by the sauces and the chunks of brisket and pork mixed in with the beans.  

But I have to saw that the sweet and spicy cole slaw even topped the good taste of the baked beans.  The sweet/sour/spicy combination that was going on with the cole slaw was an outstanding taste sensation.  Overall, this was a very good to outstanding barbecue meal.  

You can't think of Kansas City with out thinking of barbecue.  And because there are so many good barbecue places in the city, it would be very tough to go wrong with wherever you go.  But some stand out more than others and I have to say that I would very much recommend Burnt End BBQ if you go on a barbecue quest in the greater Kansas City area.  Although I was disappointed they didn't have brisket that evening, the namesake burnt ends were a wonderful substitute.  The pulled pork was some of the best I'd had in Kansas City, and the sides - superb baked beans and an excellent sweet and spicy cole slaw - were a great compliment to the meal.  Burnt End BBQ more than holds its own against some of the more famous and established barbecue joints in Kansas City.  

Swine Dining, Bellevue, NE

I've driven by a barbecue place a handful of times in the south Omaha suburb of Bellevue - Swine Dining.  And reading about the place in local travel magazines in the Omaha area, it turns out that Swine Dining has won a number of barbecue competition and people's choice awards over the past few years.  Leaving Omaha late one morning and heading toward Kansas City, I stopped off at Swine Dining for lunch before I left the area.  

Eric Ging got his start - like many barbecue chefs - working the competition barbecue circuit.  Working out of his mobile barbecue truck - the Pig Rig - Ging was a regular barbecue competitor and also offered up his barbecue at special events and fairs, and was usually seen in parking lots around Bellevue and near Offutt Air Force Base.  When a chance to open a restaurant came up, Ging opened Swine Dining just east of the Olde Towne area of downtown Bellevue.  (It appears that there may have been a change in ownership in April of 2015, but from what I could find on-line it still lists Eric Ging as the owner.)

It was just before noon when I pulled up in front of Swine Dining on Mission Road just west of the Missouri River bridge that takes you across to Iowa.  (see map)  I was able to park on the street across from the restaurant and went inside.  It's counter service at Swine Dining and the order window has the menu just above it.  It's a pretty short menu for a barbecue place and they don't sell beer to go along with the smoked meats.

There are two dining areas at Swine Dining - a smaller one in the same room as the counter and this room off to the side that featured some worn booths and tables with ice cream parlor chairs.  A number of awards were on the walls along with some signage from other barbecue places.  

As I said, the menu at Swine Dining isn't deep featuring pork ribs and 1/2 chicken for main entrees and a handful of sandwiches including brisket, pulled pork, barbecued chicken, and smoked sausage.  They didn't have combo plates available for individual diners, but they had combos that would feed 3 to 6 people available.  But that was going to be way too much food and it was too pricey to try three meats and a couple of sides.  On given days, Swine Dining also has specials such as a traditional southern Brunswick Stew made with smoked meats, barbecued pork tacos, and feather bones - small pork riblets taken from the back of the tenderloin of a pig.  

I decided to get the brisket sandwich and two sides lunch special they had that day.  The brisket was served dry and open-faced on a small hoagie bun.  I got the baked beans and fries to go along with the brisket sandwich.  They had two different types of barbecue sauce at Swine Dining - a Kansas City-style sweet sauce and a spicy sauce that I didn't think was all that spicy.  

The brisket was thin, lean and had some pretty good flavor. The spicier of the two sauces went very well with the taste of the meat.  The beans were pretty good, as well.  They were heavy in molasses and had a very sweet taste.  I mixed in some of their spicy sauce with the beans to zip them up a bit.  And finally, the fries were also pretty good.  They were a thicker, steak-fry style with a crispy outer shell and a nice flaky inside to them.  The overall taste of the barbecue was above average.

I'm the kind of guy who likes to try different types of smoked meats when I go to a barbecue place.  I was somewhat disappointed in that the cheapest combo plate was around $40 bucks at Swine Dining, so I just ended up getting the brisket - which was available only as a sandwich option.  And I'm also the kind of guy who likes a cold beer with my barbecue, something that Swine Dining also doesn't offer.  Other than that, I thought the brisket sandwich, baked beans and the fries were all above average compared to other barbecue places I've been to.  Swine Dining was a good place to try, but I don't think I'd drive out of my way to have a meal there again.  

Brobeck's BBQ - Overland Park, KS

When you talk barbecue, you have to talk about all the great places that are in and around the Kansas City area.  There are so many excellent places to choose from, if a barbecue place falters even a tiny bit, they're usually out of business sooner than later.  One place that has been around for nine years in Overland Park is Brobeck's BBQ, but they have a number of years prior experience on the barbecue contest and catering circuit before they opened their restaurant.  

Doug Brobeck grew up in eastern Tennessee and understood the importance of good pork barbecue in the culture of the Appalachian Mountains.  He perfected his technique of pork barbecue as a young man and eventually ended up in the Kansas City area.  Brobeck entered a handful of barbecue contests and won many awards in the early 1990's.  Buoyed by the accolades he received from the barbecue competitions, Brobeck opened Stilwell Smokehouse on the far south side of Kansas City in 1994.  Soon, Stilwell Smokehouse was known as one of the top places in the Kansas City area to get pork barbecue.  

But they did more than pork at Stilwell Smokehouse - they were also famous for their smoked sausage, chicken and they held their own in the barbecued beef category versus some of the more prominent barbecue places in the Kansas City area.  But by 2004, Doug Brobeck decided that he'd had enough and sold the restaurant to two young men.  Unfortunately, the two guys had different ideas as to do barbecue and it didn't jive with the loyal customer base that Doug Brobeck built up over a 10-year-period.  The Stilwell Smokehouse closed not long after Doug Brobeck sold the restaurant.

But with barbecue in his blood, Doug Brobeck knew that he had to have another barbecue place.  In 2007, Brobeck - along with his sons Dave and Dean - opened Brobeck's BBQ in a small strip mall just east of Roe Ave. on Indian Creek Parkway in Overland Park.  (see map)  

I got into Brobeck's BBQ around 7:30 one evening when I was in Kansas City.  I was staying less than five minutes away from Brobeck's and I was able to find parking in front of the restaurant.  The interior of the L-shaped restaurant features a bar area with a number of tables, as well as a long narrow space toward the front of the restaurant that featured a number of booths.  

I was seated in one of those booths by the young hostess who dropped off a menu for me.  I ordered a Boulevard Single Wide IPA, but was then told by my server that they were out of the IPA, but they had the Boulevard Frequent Flier Session IPA.  I do like the Single Wide IPA, but the Frequent Flier was fine enough.  

One of the signature appetizers at Brobeck's BBQ is their house-made ham salad dip.  My server brought out a small sample of the ham salad after she asked me if I had ever been to Brobeck's before.  She said that they sold over 200 pounds of the ham salad dip weekly.  She said, "It's our most popular appetizer and people buy it by the pound to take home."  A guy and his wife seated near me ordered a pound container of the ham salad to take home with them after they finished their dinner.  The ham salad was tasty, it had a sweet taste to it and it would have been a good opener for any meal.  

They also had the ham salad available as a meat choice for sandwiches and platters as well.  Their most famous sandwich is the pulled pork "Tennessee Porker" sandwich served on a large hoagie bun.  But I just wanted to get some barbecue and I went with the sampler platter with smoked sausage, three pork ribs and sliced beef brisket.  I got a side of their baked beans and some steak fries as my sides.

Brobeck's has a proprietorial spice rub that they use on their meats.  They are served dry with a choice of either their sweet molasses barbecue sauce or a mustard-based sauce.  Brobeck's also has a barbecue sauce bar featuring a number of locally based barbecue sauces such as KC Masterpiece, Gates BBQ, Arthur Bryant's and some other places.  I stuck with the Brobeck's sweet KC-style sauce.  

I normally don't get smoked sausage, but I had some outrageously great smoked sausage in Chicago the week before I was in Kansas City.  When I found out that the barbecue sample platter came with sausage, I thought that would be fine.  And it was.  The sausage at Brobeck's had a great smokey and spicy taste.  I liked the sausage tremendously. 

The ribs were also fine - the rub on the outer bark of the ribs had a slightly spicy and peppery taste.  The meat pulled away from the bone rather easily and it was tender and flavorful.  The ribs were above average in my book.  

The brisket, however, left a lot to be desired.  The beef was thinly cut, but it was dry and tasted like buffet-style roast beef.  A lot of sauce was needed to help get the brisket down.  As good as the sausage was, the brisket was very disappointing.  

Maybe they need to concentrate on just pork products at Brobeck's BBQ.  The sausage - I thought - was excellent and the pork ribs were very good, as well.  The brisket, aaaah, not so good.  It was the only disappointing aspect about Brobeck's BBQ during my visit there.  The service was adequate and the ham salad sample was a nice touch.  And it was also very tasty and it's easy to see why they go through so much of it during the course of a week.  I think I'd recommend just sticking with the pork barbecue on visits to Brobeck's BBQ.  That seems to be in their wheelhouse - more so than the beef brisket.  

Pork Shoppe - Chicago

Earlier this year, one of my dealers in the Chicago area was telling me about a Christmas party they had for their staff at a barbecue place that had opened last year.  I wasn't familiar with the place - Pork Shoppe - but I soon found that it was the second location of a highly acclaimed barbecue place in Chicagoland.  One afternoon when I was in the area, I stopped into Pork Shoppe in the Andersonville neighborhood for lunch.  

The thing about it - I should have been familiar with Pork Shoppe.  They've been heralded as one of the top barbecue places since they opened the first Pork Shoppe in 2010 in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood.  Co-owners Steven Ford and Mike Schimmel have been in the restaurant business for a number of years, teaming up when Ford hired Schimmel to work at the hip Moroccan restaurant Tizi Melloul on N. Wells St. in downtown Chicago.  

Ford started in the restaurant business when he was just 12 years old washing dishes and at 15 he was bussing tables.  He worked at a series of restaurant jobs over the years rising through the ranks, and by 1996 he was the maitre d' at the upscale Vietnamese restaurant Le Colonial.  He left Le Colonial in 1999 to open Tizi Melloul.  Schimmel, who also got his start in the restaurant business at an early age, went to work at Tizi Melloul not long after it opened and eventually partnered with Ford in the restaurant.  They closed Tizi Melloul after a nearly 11 year run to open the first Pork Shoppe location in 2010.   Jason Heiman, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and the longtime chef at Tizi Melloul, was brought along to run the kitchen at the new restaurant.  

In Andersonville, the Kingfisher Restaurant closed its doors in 2011 and the building sat vacant for a couple three years.  A couple of possible restaurants looked hard at the space, but never pulled the trigger.  Sensing a need for barbecue in the neighborhood, Ford and Schimmel thought the building would be a good place for a second Pork Shoppe location.  But they needed help in the venture, so they approached Ford's mentor Joe King whom Ford worked for at Le Colonial.  King - who founded the upscale King Cafe, and who is the owner of Rockit Bar and Grill - partnered up with Ford and Schimmel to make the Andersonville Pork Shoppe happen.  They opened the doors in May of 2015.    

The Pork Shoppe in Andersonville is located on N. Clark near where Clark breaks off as a diagonal and Ashland heads straight south.  (see map)  There is a parking lot off to the side of the building that makes it easy to get into Pork Shoppe quickly without having to search for parking along the street.  

While the original Pork Shoppe is a small counter-serve place with an emphasis on take-out, the second location in Andersonville is a much larger space with a full service bar, and two larger dining rooms.  Barn-boards adorned part of the walls of the dining rooms, interesting wooden half-barrels were used as light fixtures, plaid-covered seating in corner booths, and some playful murals that depicted three wolves chasing a pig as a take from the old children's story/fable The Three Little Pigs.  

It was around 1:30 when I got into Pork Shoppe and it was nearly deserted after the lunch crowd departed.  I was told I could sit anywhere and I took a booth across from the bar.  A pleasant young woman by the name of Molly came over to greet me and drop off a menu.  I ordered up a Lagunitas IPA from a long list of locally brewed beers they offered and enjoyed music playing in the background by the likes of Glass Animals, Phantogram, BØRNS, and Peter, Bjorn and John while I looked through the menu.  

They had a number of lunch specials on the menu including brisket tacos, a pulled pork sandwich, and an interesting pork belly pastrami sandwich.  But I was more interested in getting the meats to try.  In addition to the meaty St. Louis-style and tender baby-back ribs on the menu, they also had chopped brisket, pulled pork, pulled chicken, a mustard and spice rubbed beef try-tip, and the aforementioned pork belly pastrami that brined and spiced in house.  

I ended up getting an a la carte platter of a quarter pound each of the beef brisket and the pulled pork with a side of the baked beans.  The baked beans were mustard-based and it was a healthy sized bowl that was served to me.  The meats came in basic paper boats and the meal was served on a small cooking tray - the new hip thing that I'm seeing at a number of restaurants.  (I have to admit - last year we went out and bought four of these smaller metal trays to have at home because they're easy to handle, especially when we're taking food out to the deck for meals outdoors.) 

The beef brisket was moist and tender, as was the pulled pork.  I liked the flavor of the brisket a tad more than the pulled pork, but both were very good in their flavor.  I wasn't sure that I liked the taste of the baked beans with the mustard-base, so I added some one of the three barbecue sauces they had on the table to get them more to my liking.  

The three sauces - a Kansas City-style thick sweet sauce, a Southwest-style spicy sauce, and a Carolina-style tangy vinegar-based sauce - were all very interesting.  The spicy sauce had a noticeable bite that was sneaky hot on the back end.  The tangy Carolina sauce was fine with smooth taste, but the sweet Kansas City sauce - I thought - was the best of all three.  Mixed with the spicy sauce, the taste of both had that sweet and spicy combination that I like in a good barbecue sauce.  

But the meat was truly the star of my meal at Pork Shoppe. The brisket was very good, as was the pulled pork.  I want to go back at some point and try the pork belly pastrami.  I liked the baked beans well enough, but I wasn't quite sold on the mustard-base they use.  Adding some of the very good sweet sauce and the sneaky hot spicy sauce to the beans made them more to my liking.  The atmosphere at the Andersonville Pork Shoppe was fresh and inviting, and the service I received from Molly was top-notch.  For my first visit to Pork Shoppe, I was sort of kicking myself that I hadn't tried the original location before this.  There will definitely be more visits to Pork Shoppe in my immediate future.  

(Update - I was driving by Pork Shoppe in the Spring of 2018 and saw that it was closed.  I found out that they had closed in February of 2018.  I had been there a couple times since my initial visit, so I'm sort of bummed they're gone.)

Q Fanatic - Minneapolis

I was up in Minneapolis earlier this year heading back to my hotel along S. Nicollet Street on the city's south side.  On my left, I saw a restaurant that I hadn't noticed before - Q Fanatic Barbecue.  It turned out that they had been open for about a month - their sign was a temporary sign on the side of the building.  I decided to go back the next evening to give them a try.  

It turns out that this Q Fanatic is the second location of what is a sort of famous barbecue joint in the Twin Cities.  Charlie Johnson grew up in Central Minnesota, the son of parents who ran an organic farm.  In addition to growing vegetables that his parents would can, the family also raised sheep and goats for dairy products.  Johnson's first true job in a kitchen was working in a pizza restaurant when he was 16.  The restaurant bug caught him and he took culinary courses at a local community college.  He then landed a job working at a resort in Vail, Colorado.  

It was while Johnson was in Vail that he decided to go the route of being a chef and he enrolled in the two year culinary program at the Culinary Institute of America.  Before graduating, Johnson had an externship at Disney's Epcot in Florida.  After graduating, he went back to Minnesota to find work, but nothing of interest was available.  He decided to go back down to Central Florida and he ended up as the sous chef at the opening of Capriccio, in the Peabody Hotel (now the Hyatt Regency Resort) in Orlando.    

After a couple of years at Capriccio, Johnson moved on to Boca Raton and worked at several high-end restaurants.  His high school sweetheart, Jodi, had moved down to be with him and they ended up getting married when they were living in Florida.  Both wanted to get back to Minnesota to raise their family (they have five children) and Charlie took a job developing the restaurant and kitchen at the-then new Radisson Hotel (now the Courtyard Marriott) in downtown St. Cloud.  From there, he took a stint as the Executive Chef and Events Coordinator at the Green Haven Golf Club in Anoka, MN on the far northwest side of the Twin Cities.  

After four years at Green Haven, an opportunity arose when the Johnson's had a chance to buy a bankrupt Italian restaurant in Bloomington, MN.  They successfully ran The Italian Cafe for 8 years before Charlie developed a case of ulcerative colitis.  Due to the longterm uncertainty of his medical condition, they were forced to close the restaurant and Charlie spent a couple years trying to beat his debilitating condition.  

During his downtime, Charlie saw a growing trend of barbecue places around the nation and he felt there was a void of barbecue places in the Twin Cities area.  (He's a smart guy - there still IS a void of barbecue places in the Twin Cities.)  He dove headfirst into learning the art of low and slow cooking over a six-month period.  When they found a former pizza place in a strip mall in Champlin, a suburb on the far northwest side of the Twin Cities, Charlie and Jodi were ready to take their next step in life.  They opened the doors to Q Fanatic in 2007.  At first they didn't have a lot of money - Charlie had no income during the time he was recuperating from his medical condition - so the inside of the restaurant was pretty spartan.  It took them a couple of years to get enough money up to buy a second smoker.  

Q Fanatic turned out to be a big hit.  It was consistently voted as one of the best - if not THE best - barbecue in the Twin Cities year after year.  It was even featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on The Food Network, but I didn't see that episode.  (I'm not a huge Guy Fieri fan, but I have visited some places in the Midwest that he's been to.)   In 2015, the Johnson's found a building at the corner of 60th and Nicollet in South Minneapolis that used to house a former Peruvian restaurant.  Once again, they put together a restaurant on a shoestring budget and eventually opened their second location in March of this year at 6009 S. Nicollet.  (See map)

The Q Fanatic location in South Minneapolis is not a large place by any means.  It features just a handful of tables and possibly sat only a dozen people.  It was my guess that they were hoping a number of people would get their barbecue to go.  It was clean, well-lit and somewhat cozy.  They had some good music playing in the house - American-roots and blues music from the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Johnson and Johnny Cash.  

Had I known that they were still undergoing a soft opening, I probably would have waited going in for my first visit.  They didn't have their beer permit as of yet (Johnson said in an article that he needed to sell more brisket), and the regular menu they had at the new location was pretty limited.  In fact, the menu was basically a sheet of paper stapled to the board above the counter.  

They only had brisket, pulled pork and pulled chicken available that evening.  Sides included baked beans, fried potato wedges and a house-made potato salad.  Since beer wasn't available, they did have pop or water.    

They didn't really have a sampler platter available yet, but the guy at the counter suggested that I get a 1/3 pound of brisket and a 1/3 pound of pulled pork.  I also got a side of baked beans to go along with it.  "Do you want a couple biscuits," he asked holding up what looked like two cut pieces of French bread.  Sure, I took the biscuits.   He served it up in an aluminum foil container tray.  The presentation wasn't fancy, but I don't care for fancy barbecue that much.  

Q Fanatic makes all their sauces in house - they have up to seven different barbecue sauces at their main location (and they may have all of them now that they've been open for awhile in South Minneapolis), but that evening they only had their espresso sauce (sort of a sweet sauce with a touch of a coffee taste), and mild honey barbecue sauce.  I tried some of the espresso sauce with my meats.

The brisket was tender and moist, it had a nice smoke ring around the outer edge, and the bark on the outside had a nice combination spice rub.  It was slightly spicy, but it wasn't overpowering.  This was some pretty good brisket.

The pulled pork, too, was moist, tender and tasty.  It had a nice little smoky taste to it and it went well with the sweet espresso sauce.   I certainly enjoyed the pulled pork, but I thought the brisket was even better.  

The baked beans were also very good.  I added some of the sweet espresso sauce to the beans, but they didn't really need it.  The sauce wasn't that thick, but it had a bit of a spicy edge.  Mixed in with the beans were chunks of meat.  Not the best I've had at a barbecue joint, but still well above average.  

I'm hoping the next time I make it back to Q Fanatic they'll be up and running on full steam.   As I said, had I known that they were open for less than 45 days, running a limited menu, and still not having a license to sell beer, I may have waited a few more months before going in.  But what I had on my initial visit was very good.  The brisket was excellent, the pulled pork and the baked beans were very good, and I liked the sweet espresso barbecue sauce.  Q Fanatic's South Minneapolis location isn't big, nor is it fancy, but it's all about the barbecue.  Damned fine barbecue.  

 

Q39 BBQ - Kansas City

Kansas City is the capital of barbecue - plain and simple.  If you asked someone from Kansas City to name the five best barbecue places in the city, they'd come up with seven.  One would think that a place could become saturated with barbecue joints, but that's not the case in K.C.  New ones seem to pop up on the landscape every year and one that opened a couple years that has been generating a lot of buzz in the barbecue community in Kansas City is Q39.  

Rob Magee grew up in New Jersey and at a very young age he figured out that he wanted to be a chef, mainly because chefs can go wherever they want to and the young Magee always thought he'd end up in Hawaii.  He took courses at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY and after he graduated 30 years ago he took a job in Dallas.  It wasn't quite Hawaii, but Rob stayed in Dallas for seven years before moving on to become an executive chef and a food and beverage director for hotels in Houston, Charlotte, Denver and Nashville.  In 2000, he ended up getting hired on as the food and beverage director at the Westin Crown Center in Kansas City.  A year later, he ended up as the executive chef at the Kansas City Airport Hilton hotel and it was there where he caught the Kansas City barbecue bug.  

Pictured right - Kelly and Rob Magee.  (Picture courtesy Kansas City Business News.)

In 2002, Magee formed Munchin' Hogs, a competitive barbecue team that ended up competing in up to 40 different barbecue competitions annually.  Twice Munchin' Hogs was named as the top team in the nation and they were consistently in the Kansas City Barbecue Society's Top Ten on an annual basis.  

Magee continued to run the restaurant at the Kansas City Airport Hilton - Cafe Weatherby - but he had many of his Munchin' Hogs favorites on the menu alone with other American dishes.  Of course, like many other rib joints that I've eaten at over the years, people told Magee that he needed to open his own place and focus just on barbecue.   In April of 2014, Magee - with his wife, Kelly - opened Q39 in the old Oriental Feast restaurant on W. 39th Street in the Midtown/Westport neighborhood of Kansas City.  (see map)  About two months ago, Magee announced they would be opening a second Q39 location in Overland Park, KS in the former 

It was just before noon when I made it into the parking lot for Q39 and it was already packed.  I found a space behind the building situated in a small strip mall area along W. 39th St. and went in.  The interior of Q39 was completely gutted by the Magee's and with the help from REALM Architecture + Design based out of Phoenix (they were the ones who also did the internal work on the BRGR Kitchen + Bar restaurant that I visited here) they transformed the space into what it is today - an open dining room with sort of a rustic/contemporary industrial look with an open kitchen area in the back.  Communal tables were set up in the middle of the dining area with a bar area up toward the front.

Along a back wall of the dining room, Magee has many of the trophies he garnered in his years of competitive barbecue competitions on display.  From 2006 to 2012, Munchin' Hogs won over 50 Grand Champion trophies and countless Reserve Champion trophies at competitions around the U.S.  

I ended up seated at the bar for this visit to Q39 as many of the table were filled in the dining area.  I squeezed in between a couple guys finishing up their early lunches and I have to say the barbecue on their plates looked scrumptious.  The bartender/server - Ryan - gave me a menu and asked what I wanted to have to drink.  I gave a quick glance to the beers they had on tap and immediately ordered up a Boulevard Pale Ale.  

They do barbecue a little differently at Q39.  For the lunch crowd, they smoke their meats over night to assure the barbecue is fresh and flavorful for the noontime crowds.  For the dinner crowds, they begin smoking their meats in the morning to make sure that they'll be serving fresh barbecue that evening.  They never smoke their meats and hold them to warm up later at Q39.  Everything served at Q39 - from their bacon (which is brined for 3 days and then smoked), their sausage (it took Magee four months to learn how to make sausage), their burger meat (it's ground in-house with a mixture of Black Angus certified brisket and chuck), and even their sides including a potato salad made with tarragon and a spicy pickle slaw with jalapeños that they put on top of their burgers.  They also make their own smoked chipotle ketchup in house at Q39.   

If you read Road Tips regularly, you know that I like to try a little bit of everything when I try out a new barbecue place in my travels.  Q39 has a sampler plate on their menu that allowed me to pick three meats for my lunch.  I picked brisket, pulled pork and a small rack of ribs.  For my side, I got baked beans.  A small square of corn bread came with the meal - I don't care much for corn bread at all.  (How's that for a guy who grew up in Iowa?)

The brisket and the pulled pork was moist, tender and flavorful.  They were both served with a bit of a very good house-made Kansas City-style sweet and smoky sauce with a small container of sauce on the side.  The portions were generous - the brisket slices were thick and about 8 to 10 inches in length.  The ribs were meaty with a smoky flavor and easily pulled from the bone.  This was top-notch barbecue in my book.

The highlight - for me - were the baked beans that Q39 makes in-house.  The baked beans featured pinto beans, burnt beef ends and a nice sauce that I didn't have to doctor up with barbecue sauce.  I loved the baked beans at Q39, they were some of the best I've ever had at a barbecue restaurant.  

It was a lot of food for lunch - I don't think I had dinner that evening when I got up to Omaha later in the day.  I was still stuffed from lunch.  But it was all good at Q39.  The brisket, the pulled pork, the rack of pork ribs - all were excellent in flavor and texture.   Ask me what my favorite rib joints are in Kansas City and Q39 has now joined the mix of the ones that I really like that I can recite off the top of my head.  There are some world-class barbecue places in Kansas City and Q39 is easily part of that top echelon of rib joints.  Rob Magee never did end up working at a restaurant in Hawaii and it's a good thing for those in Kansas City that he didn't.   

Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse - Chicago, IL

I like to get barbecue for one of my big dealers in the Chicago area from time to time they will have barbecue delivered from a joint that's not too far from their place, Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse. I've always thought their barbecue was very good and I wanted to go directly to the source at some point to give it a try fresh out of the kitchen.  I finally had a chance to go to Rub's on a warm afternoon on a recent visit to Chicago.  

The man behind Rub's is Jared Leonard, a former ski-bum who was living in Vail, CO.   He befriended some guys from Alabama who were selling barbecue out of a food truck near the ski slopes.  Leonard was hooked and he began to smoke meats for his friends.  He got pretty good at it - or so he thought.    

He eventually moved to Chicago and became an on-line stock trader.  But on weekends in the summer, he was manning a smoker at any number street festivals around the greater Chicagoland area.  After awhile, he decided to change vocations and turned in his stock trading job to run a barbecue place full time.  He and his wife Amanda found a small place on Lunt Ave. off of Western Ave. in the West Rogers Park neighborhood, installed a gas smoker behind the place that was surrounded with a chain link fence and barbed-wire at the top of the fence, and opened the doors to his barbecue joint six years ago.  

Pictured right - Jared Leonard

One of his first customers was Chicago barbecue guru, Gary Wiviott.  Wiviott was doing reviews of barbecue places for the Chicago Reader, a local free weekly newspaper, and he thought that Leonard's barbecue was, well, not that great.  But Wiviott saw potential in the young guy's barbecue.  Leonard admittedly didn't know the first thing about the "low and slow" cooking method using wood that Wiviott championed in his book "Low & Slow" that he co-wrote with Colleen Rush.  But he dove deep into learning the cooking technique, so much so that he ended up hosting a number of classes teaching the low and slow smoking method to backyard barbecue enthusiasts.  Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse Cooking Classes teaches "Barbecue 101" which dissects regional barbecue styles, the types of wood to use in smoking, the time and temperature needed for different meats, and what types of rubs and sauces to use.  The three-hour class costs $120 per person and comes with tastings and a diploma given to each attendee at the end of the session.  Sessions are usually held on Friday and Saturday, and Leonard has taught over 500 classes over the years.  Leonard also has a barbecue supply shop at Rub's where people can pick up wood, rubs, sauces and even meats to make their own barbecue at home.  

Gary Wiviott knew what he was talking about when he said he saw a lot of potential in Leonard after his initial visit six years ago.  Wiviott teamed with Jared Leonard to found the Windy City BBQ Classic, the only Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned barbecue event in the Chicago area.  The event doesn't allow gas or electric smokers - it's a wood only event.  Wiviott and Leonard started the event in 2013, but the event was suspended for this year as they are going through a reorganization of the event.  The organizers hope to have another event next year.

As Leonard's classes grew in popularity, so did his little restaurant.  A year after opening, Leonard was able to move both of his wood smokers into a small store front that had opened up around the corner on Western Ave.  And in 2013 when the space next to the smokehouse opened up, he was able to move his restaurant to the spot effectively giving the restaurant double the seating space.  Amanda Leonard runs the catering operation of Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse while raising the Leonard's two children.  

In May of this year, the Leonard's opened a second restaurant - The Budlong - a Nashville-hot style chicken eatery on N. Broadway in the Lakeview neighborhood.  The restaurant is named after the family who used to own 500 acres of farmland where modern day Lincoln Square is located.  Eventually, Jared Leonard would like to have a larger Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse location complete with a brewpub and a stage for live music.   

When the Leonard's opened Rub's six years ago, a number of people were puzzled by their location of a barbecue restaurant.  They were on the southern edge of a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood with a number of kosher restaurants and grocery stores north of them at the corner of Western and Touhy.  To the south around the corner of Western and Devon, a large South Asian population lived with a number of Indian restaurants and grocery stores.  It turned out that being the only place of its kind in the area was a plus for Rub's.  It stood out against the other restaurants in the area.  

I found a parking spot just south of Rub's along Western Ave. (see map)  I went into the small store front to see what it was all about.  And it's none too big.  There's a handful of wooden tables with banquette bench seating along the wall with a picnic table along one wall.  State flags from the likes of Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina - all barbecue hot spots - were hung on the brick wall.  

I took a table along the wall with the banquette bench seats and the young lady who seated me gave me the album cover of Simple Dreams by Linda Ronstadt.  I was a little confused at first, but opening the cover was the menu for Rub's.  It turned out that all the menus were inside double  record album covers (or single albums that were inside double covers).  I thought it was a pretty cool way to show the menu's off.  

The first thing I discovered is that Rub's doesn't serve alcohol, but is a BYOB place.  That wasn't that big of a deal for me, but I do like a cold beer with my barbecue.  On the table, however, were fresh house-made dill pickle slices.  They were very good.  

Rub's features meaty St. Louis-style ribs, pulled pork, sliced brisket, pulled chicken and smoked sausage.  Their sides - made fresh every day - feature truffled mac & cheese, giardiniera cole slaw, meaty baked beans and Rub's signature custard-filled cornbread.  They also have a ground brisket burger on the menu, a pork or chicken panini sandwich, a reuben made with pulled pork, and the brisket melt with beef brisket topped with provolone cheese.  

As I'm wont to do when I try a barbecue joint for the first time, I like to try at least a couple different meats - sometimes three if I can also get a couple ribs.  Rub's had a Big Guy's Meal with 1/4 pound each of the pulled pork, pulled chicken and brisket slices along with three rib bones.  That seemed like a lot of food for me on that visit, so I ended up getting the 1/2 + 1/2 platter with pulled pork and sliced brisket - a quarter pound of each.  Cole slaw came on the side along with smoked kettle chips - there's no fryer at Rub's.  But I also wanted to try their baked beans, so I got a side of those, as well.

It wasn't long before the food was brought out to me.  The brisket slices and the pulled pork nearly filled the plate - it seemed like it was more than a 1/4 pound each.  A fresh-baked bun came with the platter in case you wanted to make a sandwich.  

They had four different types of barbecue sauce on the table at Rub's - a smoked jalapeño that had a bit of a back bite in taste, a smoky sweet sauce that I thought was just all right, and a Carolina mustard sauce that I didn't try.  However, I was happy to see that they had their citrus chipotle sauce on the table.  I'd had that before when I'd had barbecue brought in to my dealer and it is just outstanding.  The smoky spiciness of the chipotle side of the sauce is noticeable, but is cut back at the end of the taste by a touch of the sweet citrus.  It was, by far, the best of the sauces they had at Rub's.  

The brisket was tender with a hint of a smoky flavor.  The pulled pork was moist and also a bit smoky in taste, but it wasn't overpowering to the overall flavor of the pork.  I wasn't certain what I liked better - both were outstanding.  

But the baked beans were off the hook excellent.  They featured three different types of beans and were mixed with smoked pork, sausage and beef chunks along with chopped green peppers.  I added a bit of the citrus chipotle sauce, even though they didn't really need it.  The beans were so good that I finished all of them without even touching the smoked kettle fries or even opening the container of cole slaw.  

I was going to take a picture of the front of Rub's, but a fierce thunderstorm had begun - complete with hail - when I was in the restaurant.  I needed to get to my next appointment and I made a mad dash to the car instead of stopping to get a picture of the outside of the restaurant.  I figured that I could get the picture on my next visit and put it in the entry.  

And there will be a next visit to Rub's.  Having the barbecue catered in and having it taste wonderful is one thing, getting it fresh out of the kitchen is another.  Everything I had at Rub's was very good to excellent.  I enjoyed but the sliced brisket and the pulled pork, but the meaty baked beans were outstanding as was their excellent citrus chipotle barbecue sauce.  Jared Leonard has a great little place going here and he's figured out the true ways of low and slow barbecuing with wood.  Either if you get it catered for 35 or have it in-house - Rub's is outstanding barbecue.

Salt + Smoke - St. Louis

We were down in St. Louis a couple summers ago for our annual Cardinals baseball weekend and while our wives were shopping in the Delmar Loop, my friend Scott and I were seated at Blueberry Hill having beers and bloody mary's.  I looked directly across the street from Blueberry Hill and saw a place that I hadn't noticed before - a place called Salt + Smoke.  I asked the bartender about the place.  "Salt and Smoke," he replied in the phrase of a question.  "Yeah, that just opened about a month ago.  It's basically a barbecue and bourbon place."  He said it was very good.

Earlier this year, I had called one of my dealers in St. Louis to let him know that I would be down to see him.  He said, "Hey, I went to a barbecue place the other night with a friend of mine and I think it may be the best barbecue I've ever had."  I asked him the name of the place and he said, "Salt and Smoke.  It's in the Delmar Loop in U City."  When I asked if it was the place just across from Blueberry Hill and he said, "Yep!  That's the place!"  We immediately agreed to head there for dinner a couple nights later.

The official name of the place is Salt + Smoke, but everyone seems to forget there's a plus sign in the name and just calls it Salt and Smoke.  In any event, the restaurant is owned by Tom Schmidt who also owned Franco, a popular French-cuisine restaurant that closed earlier this year that was located in the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis.  Schmidt had run Franco for 10 years before deciding to close the restaurant to focus on Salt + Smoke which was growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.

Pictured right - Tom Schmidt (Photo courtesy Riverfront Times.com)

Salt + Smoke actually started out as Nico, a Mediterranean-themed restaurant that Schmidt opened in 2012.  At both Franco and Nico, Schmidt - along with Executive Chef Jon Dreja - would cure their charcuterie in house.  Not thinking that Nico was working out after a couple of years, Schmidt decided to do an about-face and transform the restaurant into a an urban barbecue joint.  Nico closed in June of 2014 and a week later Salt + Smoke opened in the same spot. Dreja was the original pit master and Chef Haley Riley was in charge of the kitchen.  Riley is now both the head chef and pit master at Salt + Smoke.  All the meats served at Salt + Smoke are smoked and cured in-house. 

We got to Salt + Smoke around 6:30 that evening.  My dealer and I we were escorted to a table in the middle of the dining area.  The restaurant was dimly lit and pictures that I took of the place didn't turn out very well.  I was able to get a picture of the liquor stock behind the bar, even with the Edison lights glowing in the shot.  It was an impressive array of bourbons and whiskeys.  (Click here to see the liquor and beer menu.)   

Our server for the evening was an outgoing guy by the name of Tim.  He took our drink orders as we took a look through the food menu.  I ended up ordering a Schlafly Kolsch beer, one of the better Kolsch's I've had.  My dealer ordered the same.

When Tim brought our beers to us, my dealer immediately ordered up a couple appetizers - the smoked chicken wings and the burnt end toasted ravioli.  They take burnt ends from the brisket, wrap them in breaded ravioli shells and flash fry them.  They were served with a mayo-based sauce that had a bit of a peppery bite to the taste.  I thought they were just all right.  

The wings were large and meaty with a great smoky flavor to the meat.  I'm not big on smoked wings, but the ones they have at Salt + Smoke were very good.  This was a nice start to the meal.  

In addition to the appetizers on the menu at Salt + Smoke, they have a number of sandwiches including a pulled pork sandwich, a smoked trout sandwich, a falafel burger for the vegetarians in the crowd, a fried jalapeño and cheddar bologna sandwich, and - of course - a brisket sandwich.  Main entree plates include pulled pork, brisket, pulled chicken, and St. Louis-style ribs.  I ended up getting the three meat combo - brisket, pulled pork and ribs.  I got two sides with the platter and I selected baked beans and, on the recommendation of my dealer, I got the white cheddar cracker mac.  A popover roll came with the meal.

My dealer got the brisket and the pulled pork with a side of the creamed corn and the white cheddar cracker mac.  He put some of the peppery white barbecue sauce on the pork before I was able to get a picture.  In addition to the white barbecue sauce, Salt + Smoke also had a sweet sauce - My Sweet Bestie - that had a nice sweet and smoky flavor to it, as well as a mustard-based sauce - Mustarolia - and what turned out to be my favorite, the Hotangy that was exactly as it is named.  Adding a bit of the Hotangy with the sweet and smoky sauce was a nice combination.

The brisket was heavenly.  They had a nice bark on the outside of the meat with a nice smoky flavor.  The brisket was moist and tender.  It was simply excellent.  The ribs were thick, meaty and tender with the meat easily pulling away from the bone.  The rub they use on the pork ribs was a nice combination of salty with a bit of a bite.  The pulled pork - although very good - was my least favorite of the three meat items I had.  

As you can see in the pictures, they don't scrimp on serving sizes at Salt + Smoke.  I was able to sample some of the beans, which were very good.  The white cheddar cracker mac was excellent, but it was very rich.  I think I had maybe three bites of the beans and mac & cheese because I was trying to concentrate on the excellent barbecue.  By the time I threw in the towel, I was stuffed.  It was too much food.  Too much GOOD food.  

For a city that for a number of years had a couple three good barbecue joints to choose from, over the past few years there have been a number of great to world-class barbecue places pop up in the St. Louis area.  Salt + Smoke just adds to that ever growing number.  The brisket and ribs were some of the best I've had.  The pulled pork was very good, but not as good as the ribs or brisket.  The sauces were interesting, the burnt ends toasted ravioli and smoked chicken wings were good to excellent, and Tim's service was efficient and friendly.  It would be so tough to say which barbecue joint in St. Louis is at this juncture, but Salt + Smoke definitely is in the conversation.  

Smokehouse BBQ - Columbia, MO

I was in the mood for barbecue when I was in Columbia, MO on a recent visit.  I knew there were a couple of good ones in the city, but one I hadn't been to was the Smokehouse BBQ on the west side of Columbia.  I ended up going there one evening to try their barbecue. 

It turns out that I had been to a Smokehouse BBQ a couple three times before.  One of my dealers in Kansas City was telling me of his love for Smokehouse a number of years ago and I ended up going to their location in the Zona Rosa shopping and entertainment district on the city's far north side.  (Click here to read about that visit to Smokehouse BBQ.)   Since then, I've been back there twice to have some barbecue and I've always found the place to be good and reliable. 

Smokehouse Bar-B-Que has been in business since 1986.  Owner Darioush Ghasemi knew that in order to stand out in one of the barbecue havens of the U.S. he was going to have to do something a little different.  He went upscale with his first restaurant offering steaks, seafood and pork chops along with brisket, pulled pork and baby back ribs.  Ghasemi once had five Smokehouse BBQ locations with four in the Kansas City area and a foray into Tulsa, OK in 2012.  However, he closed the Tulsa location about a year after it was in business and closed the Overland Park, KS location in September of 2014.  About a week after closing the Overland Park location, Ghasemi opened the new Columbia, MO spot.   

The Columbia Smokehouse BBQ is located in a strip mall at the corner of N. Stadium Blvd. and W. Worley, just south of the Columbia Mall.  (see map)  It was just after 8 p.m. when I walked in.  It was a sparse crowd in there that evening.  A couple three tables in the dining area were filled, but that was about it.

I ended up sitting at the bar.  There were four other people at the bar when I got there and they were all gone by the time I finished up that evening.  Five flat screen television were hung over the back wall of the bar, each of them had a basketball game on.  The bartender that evening, Brannon, came over to drop off a menu and to take my beer order.  They had Schlafly beer on tap and I got a pale ale. 

The menu at the Columbia Smokehouse BBQ seemed to be similar to the one in Zona Rosa that I've been to before.  They had spare ribs and baby back ribs, barbecued meat sandwiches, as well as pulled pork, brisket, chicken, turkey and smoked sausage platters.  It was more than just your basic barbecue fare on the menu.  

I ended up getting the two meat combo platter - brisket and burnt ends.  I've not been a big fan of burnt ends over the years, but the ones that I've had at Smokehouse BBQ in Kansas City have been pretty good.  I got a side of fries with some baked beans, as well.   And like good barbecue places, Smokehouse BBQ provides half slices of white bread to help sop up the sauce, and dill pickle slices to have a vinegar taste to counter-balance the barbecue sauces.   

The brisket was tender and flavorful, but was served with Smokehouse BBQ's house sauce mixed in.  I would have liked it to be plain and then I could add my own sauce.  The brisket, I felt, was very good.  

The burnt ends, however, were another story.  I've smoked enough meats and judged enough barbecue contests to detect a petroleum taste to the meat if it's been over-smoked.  That was clearly the case with the burnt ends.  They were meaty and moist, but that faint taste of petroleum turned me off to them.  I know it's not petroleum, but a by-product of the smoking process.  Too much smoke on the meat and it develops this sort of taste.  That was the burnt ends at Smokehouse BBQ that evening.  

The fries were very good - crisp on the outside and moist on the inside.  And the baked beans were also very good.  I like to doctor up my baked beans at most barbecue places by adding some barbecue sauces - usually a spicy one and a sweet one.  But the baked beans at Smokehouse BBQ didn't need much help.

Brannon came over to check on me and see how everything was.  He asked if I had ever had the barbecue at the Smokehouse before.  I told him that I'd been to the one in Zona Rosa a couple three times, but this was a my first trip to the one in Columbia.  He said, "I used to work at the one over in Gladstone (MO).  I had a chance to transfer over here and I really like the area."  (It's tough not to like Columbia.)   He admitted that business has been a challenge, but that things seemed to be picking up over the past few months. 

So, other than the faint petroleum taste on the burnt ends, the brisket at Smokehouse BBQ was pretty good - moist and flavorful.  The baked beans and the fries I had for sides were also good.  The place was clean, comfortable and a little nicer than most barbecue joints.  It wasn't great, but it was far from bad.  And that's what I've come to expect from my visits to Smokehouse BBQ in the Kansas City area and now in Columbia.  It's consistently good, not great, but good.   

Wobbly Boots Roadhouse - Osage Beach, MO

A friend of mine had taken a motorcycle vacation down to the Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri last year and he sent some pictures via Facebook from a place he was at in Osage Beach - Wobbly Boots Roadhouse.  I'd seen the signs for Wobbly Boots going through Osage Beach on my trips between Jefferson City and Springfield, MO a few times over the past couple of years and often wondered how the food was there.  When I saw my friend after he got back from his motorcycle road trip, I asked him out Wobbly Boots was.  "You haven't been there," he asked incredulously.  "I figured that as many times that you go down that way that you'd been there a couple times before."  Nope, I'd never been but on a subsequent trip between Jeff City and Springfield late this past year, I stopped into Wobbly Boots for lunch. 

The brother duo of Mark and Brian Barrett are the owners of Wobbly Boots.  They've been in the restaurant business in the Osage Beach area for over 20 years running popular restaurant/bars such as Dog Days on the Lake and Shorty Pants Lounge.  In 2002, the brothers bought out J-J Barbecue and the recipes of John Hangley who also owns the Dickie Doo Barbecue in Sedalia, MO.  Using J-J Barbecue as the basis of Wobbly Boots, they eventually closed that restaurant and opened Wobbly Boots in the summer of 2012.  Tom Livingston is the pit master for Wobbly Boots, which opened an Iowa location in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, in late 2014. 

The Wobbly Boots in Osage Beach opened after the new Highway 54 Bypass opened in 2012.  Before the bypass, travelers had to lurch through Osage Beach passing shops, hotels and restaurants.  Now with the bypass, it shaves as much as 20 minutes of the travel time it took to get through Osage Beach to Camdenton - sometimes longer during the height of the vacation season in the Lake of the Ozarks.  In order to let travelers know that Wobbly Boots existed, the Barrett brothers had a plan - they put up Wobbly Boots billboards in both directions coming into Osage Beach on the new bypass.  It's those billboards that piqued my interest over the past couple of of years of traveling through the area. 

Getting off the bypass onto the Osage Beach Parkway just before the bridge, I had to double back to get to Wobbly Boots.  (see map)  It was around noon during the week when I stopped and the large parking lot was half full of cars.  Entering Wobbly Boots, I was greeted by a hostess and I asked if I could just sit at the bar which was part of the main dining area.  She gave me a menu and I took a seat at the bar.  Amy was the bartender that day and I saw that they had Schlafly beers on tap.  I got a Schlafly Pale Ale while I looked through the menu. 

In addition to barbecue at Wobbly Boots, they also feature a number of appetizers - award winning chicken wings, brisket quesadillas, and bacon-wrapped shrimp stood out on the menu.  They also have a number of burgers, wraps and sandwiches, as well as rib-eye steaks, a brown sugar teriyaki salmon dinner, and prime rib that is sold on Friday and Saturday nights. 

But barbecue is their big draw and they feature baby back and spare ribs, barbecued chicken, brisket, pulled pork, turkey, ham and smoked sausage.  I ended up getting the two meat combo plate - pulled pork and brisket.  I had a choice of one side to go along with the meat and I got the baked beans.  Had I gotten two choices I also would have the Texas fries along with the beans. 

The pulled pork - in my estimation - was great.  It was moist, tender and had a slightly-smoked pork flavor.  The brisket - though not as good as the pulled pork - was also very good.  It, too, had a subtle smoky taste to the beef.  The barbecue sauce that was given to me was robust with a bit of a spicy bite on the back end.  It went well with the pulled pork and brisket, which, quite actually, were very good on their own without the sauce.

Usually, I feel a need to zip up baked beans at most barbecue places with some of the sauce.  But the baked beans at Wobbly Boots were very good on their own.  They were thick and sweet with chunks of pork mixed in.  This was some pretty darned good barbecue in my book. 

I really didn't know what to expect with the barbecue from Wobbly Boots, but I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised with both the brisket and especially the pulled pork that I had.  The baked beans were good, as well, and the sauce was adequate.  It was a lot of food for the combo plate and I was definitely full when I finished.  The Osage Beach location of Wobbly Boots more than acquitted themselves admirably in the world and ways of barbecue.  With a number of barbecue places to choose from in the Lake of the Ozarks area, I don't think you can go wrong with Wobbly Boots. 

The North End Barbecue and Moonshine - Indianapolis

On a recent trip to Indianapolis, I was staying out on the north side of the city.  I was sort of hankering for barbecue that evening and I did some looking around on line to see if there was anything in my immediate area.  I found a place that I wasn't familiar with - The North End Barbecue and Moonshine.  I thought that the name alone was intriguing enough.  When I saw that they billed themselves as a "regional" barbecue place, I decided this was the place I'd try that evening. 

One of the reasons that I hadn't heard about the place until this particular time was that it opened in June of 2014.  Owner/chef Ryan Nelson started his love for the finer aspects of culinary delights as a youngster in Minnesota going to Canada and Wisconsin on family fishing trips.  Walleye became the young Ryan's favorite and he later fell in love with seafood of all types and varieties.  

While attending the University of Minnesota, Ryan worked at the Italian-inspired Seattle-based Palomino restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.  (The Minneapolis Palomino is now closed, but there is one in Indianapolis.  Click here to see Road Tips' review on Palomino.)  After graduating from college, he moved to Indianapolis and got a job in the kitchen at the Oceanaire Seafood Room.  He worked his way up to sous chef, then eventually he was named as the executive chef and operating partner of the Indianapolis Oceanaire location. 

But Nelson - still in his 30's - was looking to have his own restaurant.  He wanted a menu that was based upon fresh sustainable food that changed seasonally.  Nelson wanted to use locally sourced foods when he could, and he built his restaurant out of reclaimed wood, bricks and stone sourced within a 500-mile radius from Indianapolis.  In 2011, Nelson and his wife, Laurie, opened Late Harvest Kitchen near the Fashion Mall at Keystone on Indianapolis' north side. 

Pictured right - Ryan Nelson

Bouyed by the success of Late Harvest Kitchen, Nelson and Late Harvest Kitchen chef Mitch McDaniel began to experiment with barbecue techniques in the kitchen.  There were barbecue places in Indianpolis, but Nelson didn't think they were to the standards of true "low and slow" techniques found in North Carolina, Memphis, Kansas City or St. Louis.  Using a variety of spices on the meats during the smoking process, Nelson and McDaniel thought they had come up with a winning barbecue taste.  

After procuring a space that used to house Cafe Nora in north Indianapolis' Nora neighborhood, not far from Late Harvest Kitchen, Nelson installed two large Southern Pride smokers that could each handle up to 500 lbs. of meat.  After remodeling the space giving it a rustic, yet contemporary industrial look, The North End Barbecue and Moonshine opened in June of 2014.  In addition to traditional barbecue, the restaurant focuses on a large selection of eclectic bourbons - over 50 different ones I counted - and a nice variety of craft beers on tap and available in cans and bottles. 

It was around 7:30 p.m. when I walked into The North End Barbecue that's located in a small shopping complex off 86th St.  (see map)  It was an exceptionally warm fall evening and there were some people out on the patio and the bar area was rather packed.  I opted to get a seat in the dining room.

The hostess guided me to a table in the long, narrow dining room that featured some interesting rustic decor including some interesting circular light fixtures with Edison light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.  The crowd in the dining room was and interesting mix of families, couples and friends hanging out. 

I was looking through the menu when my server for the evening - Bobby - showed up to greet me.  I ordered a Stone Brewing Co. Delicious IPA from him to enjoy while I decided what I wanted to eat. 

As with other barbecue places that I'm visiting for the first time, I like to have a little bit of pork and beef to try.  However, The North End Barbecue didn't have a sampler plate on the menu.  They featured baby back and spare ribs, Carolina-style pulled pork, brisket, smoked turkey and Texas-style sausage.  Keeping in Ryan Nelson's wheelhouse of seafood, The North End Barbecue also offered a smoked salmon entree on the menu.  

I saw something on the menu that piqued my interest - the Texas Red Chili.  It featured chunks of brisket and house-made bacon with chopped spicy chiles.  I got the cup size of it to give it a shot.  It was topped with "The Works" - cheese, sour cream and chopped green onions.  It had a good spicy bite to the taste and it was some excellent chili. 

Since I couldn't get a sampler plate, I decided to get the Texas beef brisket entree.  I got two sides to go along with the brisket - baked beans and fries with bone marrow butter and jalapenos.  It was all served on a small baking sheet that are becoming increasingly popular to served foods in barbecue - and non-barbecue restaurants.  (And at our home.)

When I ordered the baked beans, Bobby told me that their baked beans weren't like regular basked beans.  "They're not the soft beans like other baked beans you've probably had."  I told him that I still wanted to try them.  "I like to let people know about the beans," he explained.  "We make 'em in house and soak 'em over night before we put them in the baked beans."  But it turned out that they weren't all that hard, but had a good texture and consistency. 

There were four different types of barbecue sauce available on the table.  They had a Kansas City-style sauce that was thick and sweet with molasses; a Carolina mustard sauce that I didn't care for (I don't like mustard sauces at all); a Texas Red that was supposed to be spicy, but it really wasn't; and a Classic barbecue sauce that was, well, pretty basic.  None of the sauces really jumped out at me as being significant in taste. 

The brisket probably didn't need much sauce to help enhance their taste.  It came with both sliced and chopped beef.  The beef brisket was moist, flavorful and had a hint of a smoky taste and it was very good.  Possibly not the best I've had, but admirable for a place like Indianapolis that really isn't known as a hot bed of barbecue. 

But the French fries with the bone marrow butter and jalapeno peppers were just outstanding.  The overall taste of the fries were heavenly combined with a spicy kick from the jalapeno slices.  I like to put barbecue sauce on my fries, but I didn't have to with these fries.  They were simply some of the best French fries I've ever had. 

About the only thing that went wrong with the meal was that it was supposed to come with fresh dill pickles and white bread - the proper way to serve Southern style barbecue.  Bobby came over to check on me and said, "Oh, my gosh!  I forgot to get your bread and pickles!"  I was nearly done with the brisket and I was filling up pretty quickly.  I told him not to worry about that.  It definitely wasn't a deal breaker. 

The North End Barbecue and Moonshine was an interesting place.  The brisket was good - not the best I've had - but good.  The chili was also very good with the brisket and house-made bacon chunks.  The baked beans were just all right, but the bone marrow butter French fries with jalapeno slices were simply excellent.  With a good variety of craft brews to choose from and Bobby's efficient service (even with forgetting the bread and pickles), The North End Barbecue and Moonshine was a wonderful find in my travels.  My only wish is that I could have had a sampler platter to try something else with my meal.  I guess I'm going to have to go back to try the ribs or pulled pork at some point.

Sol Irlande's - Dallas, TX

After a long day at the annual CEDIA Expo in Dallas last year, we didn't really want to venture anywhere far away from the hotel in downtown Dallas.  We had seen a restaurant that billed itself as a Mexican chop house that was a block away from the hotel on Main St. - Sol Irlande's.  (see map) There were six of us from our company with a couple of stragllers that joined us that particular evening.  

It's sort interesting how an Irish guy from Long Island ended up in Dallas running a unique Mexican restaurant.  Tom McGill grew up on the South Shore in Nassau County who knew that he wanted to get into the restaurant business when he was working for a small family-owned Italian restaurant in his teens.  After graduating from St. John's University, McGill started to work as an accountant in Manhattan.  Realizing that he didn't care much for a behind the desk job, he quit commuting and turned instead to bartending.  He eventually became a restaurant manager, then a maitre d' at a high-end banquet hall.  

When the restaurant business turned sour in New York in the mid-90's, the then 30-something McGill was talking with some friends who were living in Dallas.  They were telling him about how the restaurant business was booming in the Big D.  He moved to Dallas and was immediately hired by Nick Galanos, the owner of Tia's Tex-Mex restaurant chain.  

What McGill eventually wanted to do was to open an Irish bar in Dallas.  But working at Tia's for Galanos, he found that Texans really did like their Mexican food.  But if he was going to do a Mexican restaurant, he wanted it to be unique.  With the mentoring and blessing of Galanos, McGill struck out on his own and opened the downtown Dallas location for Sol Irlande's in 2006.  His wife actually came up with the name - which roughly means Irish Sun - because of two factors, 1) The McGill's daughter was named Ireland; and 2) His wife knew that he really wanted to open an Irish bar due to his love for the old Irish bars in his native New York.  (McGill also had a short-lived Sol Irlande's in suburban Richardson, TX.)

Sol Irlande's is located next to an urban park with a walkway along the side.  In the park is a sculpture of a large human eye made by Chicago artist Tony Tasset.  The "eye" is part of an exhibition brought to Dallas by the Joule Hotel, a boutique hotel (with a unique swimming pool that hangs out away from the building) just across from the gated park where the sculpture is on display.  It's been in Dallas for a little over two years after being on display in Chicago as part of that city's Loop Alliance Public Art program since 2010.  As a friend of mine who was at the trade show remarked earlier in the week, "There's something that you just don't see every day."

The building that Sol Irlande's is in dates back to the late 19th century and is one of the oldest buildings in downtown Dallas.  For years it was a drug store, then it was taken over as part of an expansion by the F.W. Woolworth Five and Dime store next door.  The original Italian-style facade that was popular with Dallas builders in the late 19th century and the early 20th century still graces the front of the building. 

We had to wait for a table to be set up on the patio for our group and we passed the time in the bar area that also doubled as an indoor dining area.  My colleague John and I both got a Herradura silver/Cointreau/lime juice margarita while we waited and it was outstanding.   Sol Irlande's had a lot of flat screen televisions hanging around the bar area and out in the patio.  It was sort of like a Mexican restaurant/sports bar.  

It was unseasonably warm in Dallas while we were there and sitting on the patio on a warm evening was rather pleasant considering we were deep into fall.  Our server for the evening, a young guy by the name of Gino, came over to greet us while we looked over the menu.  

The food at Sol Irlande's is an interesting mix of Tex-Mex favorites such as mesquite-smoked ribs; fajitas with a choice of steak, chicken, shrimp or veggies; mesquite-grilled shrimp; chicken, ground beef or smoked brisket chimichangas; and something called Tommy's Bowl that featured a mixture of Spanish rice, Borracho beans, sliced avocado and grilled vegetables with a choice of a grilled chicken breast, grilled sirloin, blackened tilapia, blackened shrimp or grilled shrimp on top.  They also feature a number mesquite grilled steaks, enchiladas, and good ol' Texas chicken fried steak.  

I got the brisket tacos - 4 small tacos with pulled smoked brisket inside.  A sliced avocado, jack cheese, onions and cilantro was folded in with the tacos.  A side of the Borracho beans and Spanish rice came on the side along with a jalapeno salsa relish.  The brisket tacos were scrumptious as there were a lot of flavors going on with each bite.  The brisket was full of flavor and moist to the bite.  

For good measure, I got a beef enchilada with a green tomatillo sauce that was served warm on the enchilada.  It was topped with some jack cheese and served on a single plate.  It was good, but not as good as the tacos.  

My colleague John went with the mesquite-smoked baby back ribs.  They were slathered with a housemade sweet and smoky barbecue sauce.  They pulled off the bone rather easily and he made a mess while eating them.  He offered me a bone to try, but I declined.  He said, "Fine with me.  More for me to eat."  

 
One of our straggler guests that evening - I can't even remember his name - got the fish taco wraps.  The flour taco shell wraps were filled with grilled tilapia, chopped cabbage, sliced carrots, avocado slices, and pico de gallo, and a housemade cream sauce came in a small tortilla shell.  I thought about those for a moment, but I was more than happy with my brisket tacos and the beef enchilada.   

My colleague Matt got the chicken mole.  It featured a couple of grilled chicken breasts covered with Sol Irlande's housemade mole sauce that features 20 different spices and has to literally sit for days before it's served to allow all the flavors to co-mingle.  Matt said it was an excellent tasting dish.    

Another one of the guys seated at my end of the table got the El Jefe burrito - a large burrito with ground beef, refried beans, Spanish rice, a cheese mixture, and sour cream mixed in.  A queso sauce was on the top of the burrito.  It looked like a mess, but it also looked like the quintessential Tex-Mex meal.  

One problem that we had was that Gino's service was a little less than desirable.  He fouled up a couple of orders, but was quick to get things rectified.  Where he was really having problems was with the drinks.  He was pretty slow to get drink orders and to get the drinks back to our table.  

John and I both ordered the same Herradura silver/Cointreau/lime juice margarita as we did at the bar from Gino.  When he finally brought them back, well, they tasted horrible.  We got his attention and told him that the margaritas were not the same ones that we had gotten before.  He asked again what it was and we told him.  "I swear, that's what I told him," Gino said.  He took the drinks away and came back about 10 minutes later - of course, our food was all gone by this time - with two more margaritas.  They were just as bad as the ones he served us before.  

We immediately got his attention and said, "Huh, uh.  No good."  We told him that the first ones we were served by the bartender when we were waiting for the table to open up were stellar.  These, well, they were just nasty tasting.  Gino had the manager come over and we told him the situation.  He was gracious and apologetic, claiming that he doesn't know how the first ones we got were so good and the ones we were served later on were not to our liking.  In any event, he didn't charge us for the ones we were served at the table.  

Some of our guys weren't happy with the service and if the 18 percent gratuity hadn't been included on the bill, our server probably wouldn't have gotten much more than a 10 percent tip from us.  I didn't think they were all that busy, but he seemed to be a little slow on the switch.  Other than the poor margaritas and the choppy service, I thought the food that I had at Sol Irlande's was very good.  The brisket tacos were great and the beef enchilada with the tomatillo sauce on top was very good.  Everyone seemed to like their food, but the somewhat poor service sort of bummed us out.  If you can get a good server, I'm sure that the experience at Sol Irlande's would be much better than what we experienced that particular evening.  

Sonny Bryan's - Dallas, TX

Well, of course we had to get barbecue when we were in Dallas for the CEDIA Expo last fall and the Godfather of Dallas barbecue joints is quite possibly Sonny Bryan's whose family has been doing barbecue in the Big D for over 100 years.  There happened to be a Sonny Bryan's in the historic West End entertainment district, about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.  Our group took off on foot on an unseasonably warm evening to go have barbecue at Sonny Bryan's.  

It was 1910 when Elias Bryan moved from Cincinnati to Dallas with his family and opened his barbecue place in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.  Elias Bryan had come up with a new way to smoke meats with sausage being his specialty.  He would place the meats in large pans and smoke them over a mesquite fire.   Bryan's oldest son, William Jennings - also known as Red - (and not the former Presidential candidate, but named for him) helped his father out in the barbecue business, but had dreams of doing something else with his life after he graduated from Oak Cliff High School in 1920.  The younger Bryan went to Southern Methodist University and studied botany in hopes of being a florist after college.  And he did just that, graduating in 1924 and opening his own floral shop.

Pictured right - Elias Bryan.  Photo courtesy Texas Monthly BBQ.

After Elias Bryan passed away in 1929, Red Bryan realized that the Oak Cliff area was growing and the residents had an insatiable appetite for his father's barbecued meats, Red Bryan decided it was time to get into the barbecue business to continue his father's legacy.  He sold his floral shop and bought an old tin street car that he set up on W. Jefferson St. as Red Bryan's Smokehouse in 1930.  "The Tin Shack" served all walks of life from captains of business to blue collar workers trying to make their way through the Great Depression.  Red Bryan sold burgers for 5 cents and barbecue sandwiches for a dime.  

As World War II raged, Red Bryan started to think that it was time to get out of the barbecue business.  He put this business up for sale in November of 1942 for just $1500.  His sales were averaging around $800 a month, so it was clear that Red wanted to sell and sell fast.  However, there were no takers for the business and the Bryan family barbecue legacy stayed intact.  

Pictured left - William Jennings "Red" Bryan.  Photo courtesy Texas Monthly BBQ. 

In 1946, Red decided that it was time to get out of the old street car and he commissioned famed Dallas architect Charles Dilbeck to come up with a new building that would seat up to 200 people.  The new Red Bryan's Smokehouse opened down the road on Jefferson at Llewellyn on February 13, 1947, the exact same date that his father had opened his barbecue place 37 years prior.  

The new building didn't come without a healthy cost.  Estimates are that it cost around $50,000 to build (that's around $535,000 to $550,000 in 2016 money) and because of that Red had to raise prices, but he also added items to the menu such as ribs, smoked chicken, steak sandwiches and - the most important item when it comes to barbecue (in my book) - cold beer.  The restaurant was open from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m. seven days a week.  It featured cowhide booth seats, table-top warmers for the barbecue sauce (can't have cold or even room temperature barbecue sauce on Texas barbecue), and had a huge stone fireplace near the entrance.  Much of the stone work on the outside of the ranch-style building was salvaged from an old East Texas courthouse.  

Red Bryan's son, William Jennings II - who was known as Sonny - worked for his father in the new building.  Sonny Bryan lived in the apartment above the restaurant and learned all the family secrets of barbecue.  But Sonny saw that the new place was zapping the life out of his father.  When Red was in the "Tin Shack", he was making the sandwiches and interacting with the customers.  In the new building, all the meals were made in the kitchen and sent out to customers via servers.  Sonny Bryan observed that his father wasn't happy in the new place, even though business was booming.   Red Bryan had literally handed the keys to the place over to his son and he began a career as a prominent member of the Dallas City Council.  

But it was beer that was possibly the cause of Red getting out of his eponymous restaurant.  In 1957, a temperance group headed by members of churches around the area voted to make Oak Cliff dry.  By this time, Red had had enough of the business and he ended up selling the place in 1958.   (The original building is still there - it houses a Mexican restaurant.)  

While all this was going on over a 10 year (or so) period, Red's younger brother, Fred Bryan, had moved to the West Coast in the early 50's and began selling barbecue sandwiches - made with the Bryan family barbecue sauce recipe - out of a stall at the Los Angeles Farmers Market.   (Even though Fred Bryan's family sold the spot in 2011 after 60 years of ownership, Bryan's Pit Barbecue is still located at Stall 740 in the market.)  

After Red sold the restaurant in Dallas, he got into the frozen meat business where he made a line of pre-cooked frozen barbecued meats and sold them in grocery stores.  The Bryan brothers must not have gotten along very well because Red Bryan began to send frozen packages of barbecue to Los Angeles to sell against his brother at the L.A. Farmers Market.  That only lasted for a couple three years up to the time that Red sold the frozen meat business to another company.  

To carry on the Bryan family name in barbecue, Sonny Bryan decided to strike out on his own.  In 1958, Sonny convinced his wife Joanne that they needed to open their own barbecue place.  But they needed to raise capital to do so.  Sonny and Joanne sold their house, sold their beloved 1955 Ford Thunderbird car, and sold a collection of antique Colt rifles and pistols to get the money to open the business.  They had only been able to put $6500 into the new place which was located at Inwood Road and Harry Hines Blvd, not far from Parkland Hospital.  The Bryan's opened their barbecue place on - yep, that's right - February 13, 1958.  They were on such a tight budget that they didn't even have the electricity turned on for their opening day.  

Pictured right - William Jennings "Sonny" Bryan II.  Photo courtesy Texas Monthly BBQ.

Five years after Sonny opened his smokehouse, he found himself in direct competition with his father who was flush with money from the frozen barbecue meat business he had just sold.  Red Bryan - who also doubled as a distributor for rotisserie smokers - opened up what became four locations of a new rendition of Red Bryan's Smokehouse.  But he also had a franchise idea that he tried to get off the ground - literally.  He devised a complete barbecue restaurant on a trailer and called it The Bar-B-Q House.  The "pop-up" barbecue smokehouse wasn't like the food trucks of today - they actually had seating in a dining area, they were air-conditioned, and they were outfitted with an Oyler rotisserie smoker - the same ones that Red was the distributor for.  He tried to franchise the concept, but it never really caught on. 

A Dallas Cowboys fan since they came to town in 1960, Red Bryan was enjoying a Cowboys game in his plush seats at the then new Texas Stadium in 1973 when he suffered a stroke and died not long after.  But his barbecue legacy continued with Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse.  

Sonny had two sons, William Jennings III - known as Bill - and Burt.  They both began to work in the restaurant as 10-year-olds starting out as dish washers.  Bill and Burt learned enough about the restaurant business that they decided that they didn't want to follow in the family tradition.  Both became doctors - Bill is now Dr. Bill Bryan, the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Southern Methodist, while Dr. Burt Bryan is on the faculty at Texas A&M's Health Science Center's Baylor College of Dentistry as an assistant professor in the school's Department of Restorative Sciences.    

Sonny Bryan once said the smartest thing he ever did was not expand or franchise out his restaurant.  He continued to run his smokehouse until his health began to deteriorate.  In 1989, he ended up selling the Sonny Bryan's business, complete with the family recipes, to a group of four long-time customers to carry on the Sonny Bryan's name.  Sonny Bryan died of cancer at the age of 63 just a few months after selling the business.  (Joanne Bryan passed away in 2005.)  

Even though Sonny Bryan never wanted to expand his business, the group of investors did just that.  In addition to the original Sonny Bryan's on Inwood Rd, there are six other locations in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.   The group of investors - headed by CEO Brent Harman - continues to run the Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse restaurants.  

(For those of you worried about the legacy of the Bryan family in the barbecue business, there's actually another Bryan family member that is involved in making barbecue.  David Bryan Harris - the son of Red Bryan's youngest of two sisters, Mildred - opened David's Barbecue in Arlington, TX in 1988 using the same family recipes and smoking methods that were started by his grandfather, Elias Bryan.  Today, David Bryan Harris' son, Jimmy Harris, is the owner and pitmaster of David's Barbecue.)  

The Sonny Bryan's location in the West End is located on N. Market Street at the corner of Elm.  (see map)  Being from the Quad Cities, I saw the name "Moline" above the front door of the entrance to Sonny Bryan's.  It turns out that this Sonny Bryan's location is housed in what was the old Moline Machinery office building that was used for the Dallas operations in the early 1900's.  

Inside the restaurant, it featured a long and narrow dining area with an open kitchen in the middle.  Our hostess took us toward the back part of the restaurant and sat us at a large table that was entirely too close to other large tables.  Getting up to go to the bathroom was sort of a hassle - you had to sort of zig-zag around tables and then had to push in a code to activate an elevator that took you to the restrooms on the lower level of the building. 

The menu at Sonny Bryan's is your typical barbecue fare - there isn't a lot of things to choose from and that was fine with me.  Ribs, barbecue sandwiches, pulled pork, brisket and chicken entrees were available.  Of course, we had to get a couple large orders of Sonny Bryan's huge and thick onion rings to start out.  The onion rings were big and delicious.  You almost needed a knife and a fork to eat them. 

For my meal, I got a combo plate that consisted of two pork ribs, pulled pork, sliced brisket (I could have also gotten chopped brisket - East Texas-style) and a side of baked beans and green bean casserole.  I had ordered a Deep Ellum IPA, a locally brewed India Pale Ale when I first sat down.  Then I pulled my head out of my butt and ordered a Lone Star - the National Beer of Texas - to go along with my Texas barbecue. 

The ribs were good - not the best I've had, but good for where we were.  They had a nice smoke ring along the edge and were easy to chew off the bone.  With the warm barbecue sauce - naturally - served in a Corona beer bottle, the ribs were pretty tasty. 

I got about three slices of the brisket.  The brisket was yummy.  It, too, had a nice smoke ring around the outer edge of the meat.  It was easy to cut with a fork and tasted good with the rather basic sweet and tangy Sonny Bryan's sauce. 

But the best thing on the plate was the pulled pork.  Moist and flavorful with a good smoky taste, I didn't put much of the barbecue sauce on the pulled pork because it was good on its own.  In fact, there was a lot of meat on the plate and I didn't eat much of the baked beans - which were good - and the green bean casserole - which was, basically, just green bean casserole.  

Our marketing guy who hails from Montreal was seated next to me and he got the rib dinner.  It consisted of 7 or 8 meat pork ribs with a couple of sides of his choosing.  He didn't really know what fried okra was and a couple of us talked him into getting the okra along with the mac & cheese side.  He sort of chuckled that mac & cheese was considered a side at a barbecue restaurant.  But he seemed to like the ribs just fine.  He pretty much devoured them and still had room to eat some of the okra - which he discovered that he liked - and the mac & cheese. 

I believe everyone was happy with their meals at Sonny Bryan's.  For the first stab at real Texas barbecue I think it's probably best to go to Sonny Bryan's and then go out from there.  My barbecue was good - not the best I've had considering I've had some great barbecue in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Memphis in my travels over the past few years.  But there's something sort of religious about Texas barbecue and while the West End Sonny Bryan's isn't quite like worshiping at the barbecue alter at the original location, this was good enough barbecue on its own. 

Sun Wah BBQ - Chicago

During our Asian cultural and culinary tour of the Argyle Street area in Chicago last fall (click here to see that entry), our guide - Judith Dunbar-Hines - took us to a Chinese barbecue place that specialized in roasted barbecued duck.  It was actually a "breakfast" for us at 10:30 at the start of our tour.  After meeting up at the corner of N. Broadway and Argyle, we walked down the street to Sun Wah BBQ.  (see map)

When we got to Sun Wah BBQ, Judith told us a story of how the founder of the restaurant, Eric Cheng, came from China to the U.S. to open his restaurant.  Getting there was a harrowing experience.  Cheng grew up in southeastern China near Hong Kong and as a student he was sent to work on a collective farm.  Fearing that he would be sentenced to working on the farm the rest of his life, Cheng and a friend decided to make a run for the freedom of Hong Kong and beyond.  

The two set out on a journey that promised them freedom at the end.  However, the two came to a mountainous region.  Over the mountains was Hong Kong.  Or they could go around the mountain, but it would mean a long swim through a shark-infested channel.  It was there where Cheng and his friend split up - the friend went up the mountain while Cheng took off toward the channel to swim.  It took him 8 hours of being in the water - sometimes clinging onto a discarded tire - before he made it to Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, Cheng worked in some restaurants, cooking many foods that he was taught to make by his father.  It was in Hong Kong when he started to learn the art of Chinese barbecued duck.  He ended up marrying a Hong Kong girl, Lynda, and his biggest hope was to eventually move to the U.S. to have his own restaurant there.  

In the mid-70's, the Cheng's moved to New York City and Eric found work in a Chinese restaurant.  When Lynda gave birth to the couple's first child (a daughter, Kelly), Cheng asked his boss for time off to help his wife.  When the boss refused, Cheng quit on the spot.  

Cheng eventually did open his own restaurant and named it "Sun Wah", which means "New China" in Mandarin.  It was a small space - only nine feet wide - but to Cheng it was a huge space for him.  After a few years in business at this location, the landlord tried to raise his rent.  Knowing that he couldn't sustain his business by raising prices for such a small space, he decided to look elsewhere to put a new restaurant.

Elsewhere was Chicago.  He knew people in Chicago and he took his family - now with three kids - to the Windy City to start a new life.  Lynda was pregnant with her fourth child and Eric knew he needed to get some income going until he was able to start his restaurant.  

He walked into a Chinese restaurant in the Argyle neighborhood of Chicago and told someone that he was a barbecue master and he was looking for a job.  The person called for the owner to come out from the back and when he did, Eric couldn't believe his eyes.  It was his friend - the same guy with whom he ran away from the collective farm years before, and who went up the mountain while Eric went around the mountain and swam to freedom.  It was an unbelievable reunion.  

With the help of the Asian American Business Association, Cheng was able to finally open his Sun Wah BBQ on Argyle Street in 1987.  It was much larger than his place in New York City - about 1500 square feet.  But the restaurant immediately became popular with all different types of people for his barbecued entrees, especially the barbecued duck.  

In 2009, an old auto repair shop around the corner on Broadway became available and the Cheng's jumped on the chance to grow their business.  Eric Cheng was in his late 50's and three of his children - Kelly, Mike (fresh out of a 3-year stint in the U.S. Army), and Laura (who took culinary classes before joining the restaurant) - were now involved in the business.  Only Cindy Cheng, who is a marketing executive, was not involved in the business.  They moved to their present space on N. Broadway in October of 2009 giving the family nearly three times the space they had at their old Argyle Street location.  

Today, Eric and Lynda Cheng are effectively retired from the business.  Kelly - being the oldest child - is the de facto "face" of the restaurant, Mike is learning to become a Chinese barbecue master with help from his father, and Laura is the one who runs the kitchen.  I understand the family arguments in the kitchen between siblings can be highly entertaining to the staff and patrons alike.   

Along with Cindy's good friend from Indianapolis, Pam, and her husband, Jay, we got into Sun Wah BBQ around 10:45 a.m.  Jay and Pam are much more in-tune with authentic Asian cuisine, we were not.  That's one of the big reasons why we wanted to take the Argyle tour with Judith.  The five of us took a seat in the main dining area.  I understand there is an upstairs part to Sun Wah where they hold private dinners and receptions.  

Judith didn't even bother with a menu.  She had pre-ordered the food for us, knowing exactly what to get.  This flustered our server who was out of sorts with the procedure.  Judith explained to us that we were there a little early and the two Cheng sisters - Kelly and Laura - weren't there to handle the order.  But once the waiter figured it out, everything was fine.  

There is a lot to choose on the menu if we had gone in that direction.  They had pork, chicken and duck barbecue specialties.  You could get them plain or over rice.  They also had traditional Hong Kong-style lo mein on the menu, as well as beef, pork, and chicken entrees.  They also had an abundance of seafood entrees including Chilean sea bass, steamed white fish, sweet & sour shrimp, a blue crabs in a black bean sauce.  

Mike Cheng came up with something that is one of the more popular items at Sun Wah - Mike's Chicken - which consists of a roasted chicken with a combination of spices and a honey-glaze sauce, then fried until the skin is a deep brown color.   And they're also famous for the table-side carved Beijing duck dinners at Sun Wah.  They estimate on weekends that they serve a Beijing duck about once every five minutes.  

The most interesting thing about Mike's Chicken or the Beijing duck at Sun Wah BBQ - they aren't even on the menu.  And you have to make plans well in advance to get Mike's Chicken, usually when you make a reservation for dinner.  

They do a thriving "to-go" business at Sun Wah BBQ.  Duck, pork and chicken meat by the pound is available.  The carry-out menu offers many of the same things that people can have in the restaurant.  Already at 10:45 in the morning there were people coming in to get barbecued duck.  

There are two kitchens at Sun Wah BBQ.  The back kitchen is full of woks, ovens and stoves, while the front kitchen is where they smoke and cure their meats.   This is the kind of place where they hang the ducks in the front window after they have been barbecued - head, neck and all.  It's quite the process to barbecue the ducks.  After the internal organs have been removed and the duck has been seasoned, the lower opening of the duck gets sewn up to keep the juices from escaping.  The duck is dipped into a mixture of boiling water, vinegar and more seasonings.  The duck then gets hung for several hours in a well-ventaliated area before it's hung in a smoker for several more hours.  Once the duck is finished, the lower opening is cut open and the dark brown-skinned duck is hung in the window up front on display until it's served.   

Chinese-style barbecued duck is prepared from whole ducks in which the neck and head are left intact. The internal organs of the duck are removed and the lower opening is sewed or pinned closed to hold in the juices and seasoning. Air is pumped underneath the duck‟s skin to separate the skin and flesh, allowing the fat to render out during roasting. The duck is seasoned and then dipped in or basted with a boiling water mixture containing vinegar and other ingredients. The duck is hung to dry for several hours in a well ventilated space or in front of electric fans. The whole duck is then roasted suspended in an oven until the skin is golden brown and crispy. Once the duck is finished roasting, bungs or pins are removed from the lower opening of the duck and the final product is hung on display until served. 

The first thing we got was some seafood congee.  Judith explained to us that food doesn't get wasted in Asia.  "There's no such thing as leftovers," she said. "They simply recycle any additional food from the previous evening into breakfast the next day."  Congee is basically a porridge that is made with any combination of things - oats, cornmeal, buckwheat or rice - then foods from the previous evening are added to the broth along with chopped onions, ginger, salt and some good ol' Monosodium Glutamate - or MSG.  (I usually don't like MSG on my Chinese food and ask - when I can - that my dish is made without it.)  

The porridge looks creamy, but then Judith told us something that I didn't know - most Asians are lactose intolerant.  Their diet makes it so they can't process dairy items.  So the cooking process for the porridge - or "jook" as it's known in China - is somewhat of a painstaking procedure.  Sun Wah BBQ's congee recipe is one that is followed to the letter by the Cheng siblings.  Eric Cheng impressed upon his children the importance of how the rice is cooked and how to properly make the porridge.  Sun Wah gently simmers the "jook" for three hours and only three hours before they deem it ready to serve.  

From there you can add whatever to the porridge.  Judith had ordered up the seafood congee for us - filets of white fish chopped and added to the porridge.  The fish was fresh and the overall taste was very good.  The rice was almost fluffy in its consistency.  One of the more popular congee's at Sun Wah BBQ is the pork and egg congee.  The pork is smoked (they smoke whole hogs at Sun Wah) and the egg they used in the congee is preserved - cured with smoked ash.  I understand the combination of the fresh smoked pork and the cured egg in the congee is an unbelievable taste sensation.  

The other thing that I was introduced to is Hoisin sauce.  Now, I've seen Hoisin sauce on the table at many Chinese or Thai restaurants in the past, but I've never had it before.  At Sun Wah BBQ, Laura and Kelly Cheng make their own.  "It's out of this world," Judith described to us before we put some into the seafood congee.  Jay was very familiar with hoisin sauce and he said that he'd never had hoisin so good before.  I tried it and - to me - it was a combination of the thick, soy/teriyaki taste with a hint of garlic in it and kind of sweet at the same time.  I instantly liked it and wondered out loud why I had never tried hoisin sauce before.  

From there, we got one of their roasted duck breasts cut into strips.  They came with fresh shredded carrots, pickled radish strips and steamed buns - also known as gwa bao.  (The waiter, when we first got there, was thoroughly confused when Judith asked for five of the buns.  But, as I said, once he figured out what she was trying to do for us, he knew exactly what to bring.)  

Judith showed us how to split open the bun, take a slice of the roasted duck breast and top it off with the pickled veggie strips.  It was absolutely heavenly.  The duck was moist and tender and - OH! - so flavorful with the combination of spices on the skin of the duck.  I'm usually not big on duck, but this was fantastic.  The soft steamed bun was pliable and chewy and held together very well with the duck, the shredded carrots and the pickled radish strips.  Jay put a little of the housemade Hoisin sauce on his and I followed suit.  It made the taste even better.  I didn't know how this small meal could have been topped.  

We had to continue on to other stops of our Asian cultural and culinary tour, and I immediately told my wife that I wanted to go back to Sun Wah BBQ at some other time.  There were many interesting things on the menu that would make me want to go back at some time.  This thoroughly authentic Chinese food, as in "artisan" Chinese cuisine.  I can very easily see why you would need a reservation to the place - especially on weekends.  The seafood congee and the roasted duck in the steam buns were just heavenly.  But they have so many interesting items on the menu that you could probably go 20 times and not have the same thing once.  Once again, our guide turned us onto a phenomenal restaurant that we would have had no idea was this good.  Words alone can't express how much we enjoyed our first visit to Sun Wah BBQ.  It definitely won't be our last.  

Lester's Restaurant and Sports Bar - Ladue, MO

During our annual baseball trip to St. Louis earlier this summer, our group (my wife, our friends Scott and Marcia, and myself) met up for lunch with my friend who works for the St. Louis Rams.  We decided to try a place that I learned about after writing the entry on Dave and Tony's Premium Burger Joint in the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur, MO (click here to see that entry).  One of the owners of Dave and Tony's is the grandson of St. Louis entrepreneur/restaurateur Lester Miller, the man who owns Lester's Restaurant and Sports Bar in the Ladue area of St. Louis.  I was sort of intrigued reading about Lester's that I suggested we all go there for lunch.  

Lester Miller's back story is pretty amazing.  He rose from the dirty streets of New York where he sold papers for a 2 cents, to becoming a caterer at the age of 14, at the age of 17 he landed a job as a sales rep for a company selling cleaning and sanitation products.  

Miller's company sent him to St. Louis on sales calls in his early 20's and he immediately fell in love with the city.  He fell in love with a St. Louis girl and was married when he was 23.  He and his first wife had seven kids - a boy, then six girls - and Miller started a business - supplying condoms in gas station restroom vending machines.  He eventually started a company that made the condoms, but he also had a restroom cleaning service on the side.

His big break in business came when a friend introduced him to someone from a plastics company that was in the process of developing a thin-walled plastic bottle. Miller found that the new bottle design could hold toilet-bowl cleaner without shattering and splashing cleaning acid everywhere.  He and his friend partnered to make cleaning products contained in the new plastic bottles. 

Recognizing the low cost of production in Japan, Miller had the products made overseas.  The company eventually became Contico Plastics and developed the first trigger sprayer for household cleaners.  He imported cleaning bottles from Japan, then Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan changing factories whenever he could get a better deal.  

Miller found out that Union Carbide was wanting to sell its plastics division.  He made a cursory offer of $800,000 and they countered with $1,000,000.  Miller didn't have a million dollars, let alone $800,000.  But he scraped up enough money from banks and investors and bought the plastics division.  For years, Contico was undercapitalized, but they eventually began to make money.  Miller eventually sold Contico and related companies in 1999 and 2000 for $350,000,000.

In 2000, Miller was approached by four men looking to buy land that Miller owned in Springfield, MO to build a plant to make high-industrial batteries for cellphone towers.  Miller took a look at the deal and instead of selling the property, he invested $35,000,000 in the company.  In 2007, Miller and the minor partners sold NorthStar Batteries to an equity firm for an estimated $250,000,000.

Miller was also a land developer and owned tracts of lands in Florida and Georgia, as well as in and around the St. Louis area.  He got into the restaurant business in 2005 when one of his favorite restaurants - Busch's Grove - had closed, fallen into disrepair and was scheduled to be demolished for a boutique shopping center.  He bought the building, spent millions of dollars on the renovations and reopened in December of 2005.  (Miller sold Busch's Grove and it is now closed.) 

In 2007, Lester Miller opened his eponymous restaurant - an upscale sports bar that featured New York-style deli sandwiches and barbecue - on Clayton Road in Ladue.  He outfitted the place with memorabilia and commissioned a six and a half foot statue of his good friend and former St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial in front of the place.  

Pictured right - Lester Miller in front of the original Lester's Restaurant and Sports Bar in Ladue with the statue of Stan Musial over his left shoulder.

Miller opened a second location in west suburban Chesterfield in 2008 and a third Lester's location opened in the Central West End in 2011.  However, he closed the Chesterfield location in the fall of 2014 and the Central West End location closed just a few weeks after.  But the Ladue location is still going strong.    

We met up with my friend around 1:00 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon at Lester's on Clayton Road in a small shopping mall that abutted up to I-64/40 Highway.  (see map)  I'd been by the place, well, dozens of times over the past few years and never knew it was there.  We found our friend in the bar area just inside the front door of Lester's waiting on us.  The bar area was rather large and featured a number of flat panel televisions.  The place sort of looked classy for a sports bar.  

The hostess took us into the main dining area that featured a number of tables in the middle with booths along the outer walls.  An open kitchen was situated in the back of the dining area.  Sports memorabilia hung on the walls along with flat screen televisions hanging high throughout the room.  We were given menus to check out and ordered up some drinks.  

Lester Miller wanted authenticity when it came to his meats at his restaurant.  His head chef was sent to New York City to learn the art of smoking and preparing meats from the person who once ran the famous Carnegie Deli.   The meat is brined and smoked in-house daily over applewood chips.  They make everything from scratch at Lester's from the bread used in their sandwiches, to the salad dressings, to the sides, and to the baby back ribs that are smoked nearly 5 hours daily.  It was no wonder I was having a lot of trouble figuring out what to get.  

I really wanted to try a deli sandwich, but the barbecue offerings on the menu were calling my name, as well.  It's not that I didn't think that I'd ever be back to Lester's.  It's just that everything sounded pretty damned good and I wanted to try a couple of things.  

We let everyone order up before I ordered a pastrami on rye with Swiss cheese.  They have two sizes of sandwiches - a regular and a colossal.  I went with the regular sized and by looking at the picture below left one can almost imagine what a colossal sized sandwich would look like.  I also asked the server if I could try some of the beef brisket that they had as part of their barbecue menu.  He said that he could come up with a 3 ounce plate of brisket.  That would be perfect!  I just wanted a taste of the brisket, not a whole meal.  

Cindy was as much in a quandary about what to get.  She wasn't overly hungry, but she knew she needed to get something.  She saw something on the appetizer menu - the deli slider combo - that was a sampling of the corned beef and pastrami sandwiches.  When the server set the plate down in front of her, she realized that may have been a mistake.  They were four small sandwiches - two each of the pastrami and corned beef.  We could have easily gotten this for ourselves.  She was a tad embarrassed when she realized what it really was that she ordered and I told her that we could get what she didn't get to go and take it back to put in the fridge in our hotel room.  

I have to say that my sandwich was very good.  I'm a sucker for good pastrami and this was some of the finest pastrami that I've ever had.  It was tender and had a great beef taste with a hint of pepper and not a lot of salt.  The beef had some good marbling, but it was overly fatty or greasy.  The rye bread was equally impressive with the laste of fresh caraway seeds throughout.  

The brisket was equally as good as the pastrami.  It was lean and tender with a small smoke ring around the edge.  The spices they use as a rub on the brisket helped enhance the overall taste of the beef.  This was some excellent brisket.  

The other thing that was pretty good on my plate was the cole slaw.  It had a good creamy and vinegary taste and the cabbage was crunchy and fresh.  It was some of the better cole slaw that I've ever had.  

We spent a good portion of the afternoon at Lester's catching up with what had been going on with my friend.  The staff was very accommodating, allowing us to sit there for nearly two and a half hours before we realized how much time had passed and we needed to get going to the ball game.  The pastrami sandwich and the brisket at Lester's was surprisingly very good to excellent.  I'm worried about restaurants that have an extensive menu, but what I had at Lester's was all good.  I can't believe that I haven't tried Lester's before this visit and it certainly won't be the last time I go there.  

Real Urban Barbecue - Oak Brook, IL

I had an early morning meeting in Oak Brook, a suburb on the west side of the Chicago metro area, and I ended up staying the night at a hotel that I hadn't been to in years and years.  I did some scouting around the area to see if there was something that I might like to get and I found a barbecue place that sounded sort of interesting - and a name that I remembered later on for seeing one of their locations in the far northern suburbs of Chicago - Real Urban Barbecue.  I headed over there to try some barbecue that particular evening.  

Like most barbecue places, Real Urban Barbecue came out of what was an award winning team on the competition barbecue front.  Jeff Shapiro was a native of the north shore Chicago suburb of Highland Park who loved barbecue.  He started to enter competition barbecue events with the team name of Dr. Deckle and Mr. Hide.  Shapiro also expanded his knowledge of barbecue as visited famous barbecue places in Kansas City, Memphis, Texas, the Carolinas and St. Louis.  After winning some events, he did what the majority of other barbecue circuit winners do - he opened his own barbecue place.  The only difference between Shapiro and many of the same barbecue competitors who opened their own places is that he actually had extensive restaurant experience prior to opening his own barbecue joint.

Pictured right - Jeff Shapiro.  Photo courtesy Illinois Restaurant Association.

As a young man Shapiro started in the restaurant business working for the Lettuce Entertain You conglomeration of restaurants in the Chicago area that included stops along the way at R.J. Grunts, Bub City, P.J. Clarke's and the now closed Papagus and Bones (now known as L. Woods) restaurants.  After leaving Lettuce Entertain You, Shapiro became the operations manager at Carmichael's Steakhouse that was located near the United Center which was a popular destination for people going to or coming from a Chicago Bulls or Blackhawks game.  (Carmichael's was open for 18 years before closing earlier this year.)

Shapiro sensed that an urban barbecue place was something that people were clamoring for and he opened his first Real Urban Barbecue location in Highland Park in November of 2010.  He opened his second Real Urban Barbecue in far north suburban Vernon Park in July of 2012.  (I actually saw that location not long after it opened up and it sort of piqued my interest.)  And in November of last year, he opened a third location in Oak Brook.

The Oak Brook location is on Clearwater Drive near the corner of York Road and 22nd St., about a half mile east of the Oakbrook Center shopping and entertainment complex.  (see map)  It's located on the west end of a strip mall that's visible from 22nd St.  

It was around 8 p.m. when I got into Real Urban Barbecue.  It's a cafeteria-style place where you place your order with a guy who cuts the ribs, slices the brisket, dollops the pulled pork and dishes out the sides and plops everything down on a tray.  The menu is located along the wall above the counter and their main feature are the pork ribs that you can get either wet - with the barbecue sauce served on them; dry - with nothing on them; rubbed - a Memphis-style dry rub blend of spices; or "perfection" - which is basically Memphis-style and wet together.  As I said, they also feature brisket and pulled pork along with smoked turkey, burnt ends, chicken and sausage.  

I went with a combo plate of ribs - I got them wet, but I should have just gone for the Memphis-style rubbed - pulled pork and brisket.  I had the guy put some barbecue sauce on the brisket and pork, too.  But I found that was a mistake.  They had barbecue sauce on the table and I wanted to try the different styles that they had on the meats.  They had a number of sides in steamers along the cook line that included mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, a walnut/sweet potato souffle, and a sort of scalloped corn side.  I ended up going with the dirty rice (something I don't think I've encountered at a barbecue place in the Midwest) and, of course, the baked beans.  I also got a couple cans of the Revolution Brewing Company Anti-Hero IPA.  Finally, a big handful of dill pickles came with the barbecue.  I love dill pickles with my barbecue.  

I sat down on a long community table in the main dining area.  There are two rooms to dine in at the Real Urban Barbecue location in Oak Brook.  On the walls there's corrugated metal wainscoting and above that are signs and pictures of places that Jeff Shapiro visited on his barbecue pilgrimages.  I recognized many of the ones from Kansas City and Memphis that he visited.  Seated at the end of the same table I was at was a guy working on his computer.  I recognize him now from the picture above - it was Jeff Shapiro.  Wish I would have known it was him.  I would have loved to have talked to him about his trips to barbecue places.  

The sauces they had on the table were sort of interesting.  The Original sauce is a Kansas City-style sweet sauce.  The Texas Roadhouse sauce had a nice spicy bite to it.  There was a Carolina vinegar sauce called Piedmont.  The Mustard sauce featured a blend of 3 different types of mustard.  And something that they just happened to have on the table along with their four regular sauces was a Bloody Mary sauce that had elements of a bloody mary mix with some horseradish mixed in.  

First of all, this was a lot of food.  The ribs were big and meaty, the slabs of the brisket were thick, and there was a good helping of the pulled pork.  The pulled pork had some of the burnt outer side of the pork butt mixed in that gave the pork a nice smoky caramelized taste.  It was a shame that I got the barbecue sauce on it at the counter because I would have loved for the full taste of the pork to shine through before I put barbecue sauce on it on my own.  

The ribs were all right - they were a little tough and dried out.  They probably had been lying there a good portion of the day in a holding oven.  They were pretty disappointing.  

But the brisket and the pulled pork more than made up for the ribs.  The brisket was tender and had a great taste.  The pulled pork - in addition to the smoky caramelized chunks - was moist, tender and scrumptious.  I couldn't make up my mind what I liked more - the pulled pork or the brisket.  If I had to say, I'd go 1) brisket; 1A) pulled pork; 3) ribs.  

Trying the different barbecue sauces, I determined that I liked the spicy Texas roadhouse sauce the best, followed closely by the Original sauce.  The vinegary Piedmont sauce had a nice peppery taste and I liked it better than the Bloody Mary sauce that would have been a nice addition to, well, a bloody Mary.  Finally, the mustard sauce was down on my list only because I don't care for mustard-based barbecue sauces.  But each of them were a unique taste in their own right.  

I almost forgot to comment on the sides I got - the dirty rice was a nice surprise that they had it as a side, but it was sort of bland and sort of "meh!"  It, too, may have suffered from being in a steam bin a good portion of the day.  And the baked beans featured five different types of beans (by my count) and all had a distinctive flavor.  A flavor that I didn't care for, but some people may.  

The brisket and the pulled pork were the stars at Real Urban Barbecue.  Next time I'll get them served dry and put my own barbecue sauce on them.  The Texas Roadhouse and the Original sauces were my favorite, but I was disappointed in the ribs and somewhat in the sides, as well.  Overall, this was a good barbecue experience - not as good as some I've encountered in the St. Louis/Memphis/Kansas City triangle of great barbecue places.  But Real Urban Barbecue acquitted themselves very well compared to others in the Chicago area.