Gravy Brown of Major League Eating (MLE): How does one decide to become a competitive eater?
I think I’ve always been at peace with my inner 3rd grade fat kid. So when the notion of stuffing my face with as much food as possible in ten minutes crossed my mind, I jumped at the opportunity. Finally I was going to get close to my childhood fantasy of bathing my naked body in a buffet filled with only my favorite deep-fried delicacies. No vegetables up in that motherfucker.
Joe Bastianich: Restaurateur, TV star, winemaker, author. In fifty words, give or take, how’d you get here?
I thought I was being smart and securing a good life for myself by initially entering into finance, but I was miserable. I made the choice to pursue what truly interested me, worked like a dog to open Becco twenty years ago, and I guess the rest is history.
The internet uproar over pink slime seems to have started as a low rumble stemming from a less-than-accurate folk horror narrative that made the email and Facebook rounds many months ago. That particular story, which included a laundry list of titillating, ghastly assertions, including one that mechanically separated meat contained, for lack of a better description, chicken lips and assholes, could be debunked in large part with a simple search at snopes.com.
I have killed my own dinner before, but always shellfish. Oysters and clams from a raw bar are alive until swallowed, about which my conscience troubles me not, and I have done terrible, terrible things to lobsters to prep them for grilling. I learned from the great Jeffrey Steingarten that the most humane way to kill lobsters is to guillotine them, lengthwise and abruptly, with a chef’s knife. It’s gruesome, but it gets easier with practice. I’m okay with the violence, not least because grilled lobsters are fucking delicious. If lobsters tasted like balsawood airplanes I would be more supportive of their right to life. But my previous exposure to guns has been limited to shooting the ones usually wielded by movie terrorists at a gun shop in Las Vegas, and my previous experience with hunting comes from thirty-five years of watching Bugs Bunny and from a deep admiration for Woody Allen’s standup routine about moose hunting. So I was a little trepidatious when my friend Jon suggested a handful of us go pheasant-hunting at his hunt club. But I’ve heard pheasant is delicious.
A lot of you have read this piece before, when it was inexplicably but wonderfully published in the 2011 edition of Perseus Books’ “Best Food Writing” anthology. I’m putting it here because this weekend is the 2012 event, and when I originally wrote the piece I declined to identify the charity under the assumption that no decent and reputable organization would want to be associated with me. This is still true, but fuck ‘em. That event and this piece is how I wound up here; and until now, it was only published on my portfolio site. So read it here and take the $6.77 you’d've spent buying a used copy of the book and send it to Safe Harbor of Sheboygan County instead.
I didn’t start to like beer until I was about 35. When I was growing up, you had pretty clear beer options. There was Miller, and Budweiser, and Coors, and that was basically it. I recall the occasional appearance of Heineken in fancy restaurants. Based on the occasional sip of Mom’s beer, I determined early on that I didn’t like any of them. I remember the first ads on TV touting Samuel Adams Boston Lager as better beer; something about winning a mess of gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival. Tried that, eventually. Miller Lite, but bitterer.
One of the publications I write for with some regularity occasionally throws me the bone of a restaurant review. The reviews for this particular periodical are only a hundred words at most, so there’s no pay for them; your compensation is that you get to expense the check. So a few weeks ago I went to Sunday brunch at (the place assigned), and Monday, I submitted this review:
After my attorney and I ran the Las Vegas Half Marathon, we needed a suitable celebratory dinner. This meant a steakhouse. No elaborate French twelve-course, no flown-in-from-the-Sea-of-Japan sushi, no carb replenishment. Nothing at all would do for the meal observing a thirteen-mile jog other than a couple of big slabs of meat, some serious sides, and a fat red wine.
I’m pro-excess, especially in the arena of vice. I think you should, at least occasionally, eat too much, smoke too much, drink too much, cheat, carouse, fuck, gamble, sleep, travel, spend, and overexert too much. Which is why I’m in Las Vegas this week, having done my first half-marathon (speaking of excess) here on Sunday night. I love Las Vegas. I love everything about it. I’ve probably been here fifteen times in the last ten years. I revel in the mayhem and bask in the excesses.
Post-Thanksgiving Notes:
* First Thanksgiving without a turkey. I don’t know why we skipped the big bird, but there was a leg of lamb and roast beef and a chicken instead, so who could complain? I had offered to make stuffing, which I had done already by the time the decision was made to omit turkey. For my part, the turkey went unmissed. I credit this entirely to the three quarts of turkey stock I made. I wouldn’t have expected to miss turkey, but Thanksgiving without stuffing and gravy is just a pain-in-the-ass dinner party. The stock, which had been reduced to the point of really being more of a turkey demiglace, became the drippings in the stuffing and the basis for a gravy so good several people were seen eating it with spoons. The flavor you can get out of five pounds of spare parts, some veggies, and two gallons of simmering water will never stop amazing me.
* When I was little, my mom used to shop for groceries in peace by plonking me in the seat of a Jewel shopping cart and handing me a tube of Oscar Meyer liver sausage and a spoon. The cashier would just ring-up the wrapper when we left. I adapted this system during the near-riot that was 530pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving at Meijer. So does family tradition pass down. And Tanisha didn’t even flinch when she rang up a six-pack of Fat Tire with one empty.
* I went to Costco to buy a few bottles of wine for dinner. I have a system for wine buying that’s based on the Venn Diagram – I put in a few parameters, and walk away with my criteria. In this case, the parameters were “Special Occasion” and “Costco”. The first means I can spend up to $25 a bottle, and the second means I lean heavily on the little one-graf descriptions of the vino that’re festooned all about the display case, describing the wine after inevitably giving it a numeric score in the high 90s. (I ignore numeric scores. I feel about numeric scores on wine the way I feel about Ivy League grades: I’m gonna need to see something below “B+” before I believe all the A’s.)
So what I look for, in those little reviews, are the words that I know tend to signify something I’ll like. Those words are “earthy,” “mushroomy,” “tobacco,” “smoky,” “chocolate,” “tannin,” “black dirt,” “tar,” and “truffles.” And there was, in three aisles plus the Platinum Club Rack, NO MENTION OF ANY OF THOSE AT ALL. Even the reliably dirty-funky varietals like Malbec and Bordeaux were tagged with things like “juicy” and “blackberry” and “cassis.” I was confused: Is my taste that uncommon, or is Costco just in the business of selling Sno-Cone syrup?
I’m fairly accustomed to the former. For example, I’m also usually the only one at Scores ignoring the pigtailed plaid-clads in favor of the thirtyish bartender with the pink hair and tattoos. so, standing in Costco, I called a friend who is Into Wine. His explanation is that the vast majority of Costco customers are turned off by the very words I’m looking for, so the reviews are written for them. He also pointed me at the Kirkland Chateau Neuf-de-Pape, which he correctly described using the traditional French idiom, “world fucking class.”
I threw in the towel and bought a bottle of Kirkland Anejo instead. (Peppery, with caramel notes and a nice smoky bite at the finish.)
* Fucking Lions.
* Went to a pie-themed party on Saturday. I made Pecan Pie Shooters, the second go-round of which was delicious. The ingredients: Vodka, dark Karo syrup, bourbon, maple syrup, brown sugar, 4-4-2-1-1, shaken, and served in shotglasses (okay, Dixie cups) rimmed with pecan chips and Karo syrup. When testing that recipe, I had used room temperature ingredients, and it was great, but a little bruised by the ice. I don’t like watery drinks. So before the party, I stuck the vodka and the bourbon in the freezer.
The first round was not well-received. Couldn’t figure out why, til I opened the shaker and saw the huge frozen mass of syrups and sugar in the bottom. The first round was, in retrospect, a round of frozen vodka-bourbon shots. Apparently Karo congeals faster than vodka warms. Lesson learned.
* For those of you who thought I was exaggerating last week, especially about the hundred-pound dog who spends the entire day sleeping in the exact center of the kitchen floor, I present you without further comment Roxy, ninety minutes before dinner:
The Ideal:
The alarm goes off at six on Thanksgiving morning. The cook rises and goes to the local greenmarket’s special session, hand-selecting the freshest produce for dinner. There is coffee upon returning, and the work begins. Sweet potatoes are peeled and chunked. The mise is gotten in place. The (home-made) bread is cubed and the (home-made) stock is heated, filling the kitchen with the aromas of stuffing. There is more coffee, light music – Vivaldi – and a very light snack. The best of the wine is decanted, to breathe. Someone laboriously yet lovingly assembles the pan of Grandma’s sweet rolls that are the family’s longest-standing holiday tradition. Dessert work is under way, too — perfect wedges of Granny Smith apples are sprinkled with lemon juice, and the ice cream maker is spinning. The heirloom turkey, which was brined yesterday and air-dried overnight in the fridge, goes into the oven. Family arrives. The children express delight at the smells from the kitchen, and show off the construction-paper turkeys they made yesterday at school. The pans of sweet potatoes and herb stuffing go into the oven. The adults open Champagne and talk about politics (everyone is in agreement), Christmas (everyone is well-prepared) and plans to remodel the kitchen (everyone loves the new island). The turkey comes out, and is moved to the carving-board to rest while the pan drippings become gravy. The sweet potatoes are glazed and returned to the oven, to caramelize, and the foil comes off the pan of stuffing, to crisp the top. The sweet rolls go in. The turkey gravy is lush with bits of fond and shreds of meat. The rolls slip cleanly from the pan, the sides are transferred effortlessly from baking pan to serving dishes, the children eagerly take seats at the table, and someone pours five glasses of wine and two of milk. The cooks change into fresh clothes for dinner. The turkey is expertly carved. Dinner is served promptly at two, and ingested in a leisurely manner. Everyone is delighted by the presentation. There is good hot coffee, and dessert, and a nip of apple brandy to go with the pie and ice cream. The adults team up to do the dishes while the children nap, and then all spend a peaceful afternoon and evening together. There might be a board game, or a walk to look at Christmas lights, or even a small game of touch football. There are turkey sandwiches as a very late snack, and the clamor for the leftovers leads to careful division of all that remains.
That’s how it’s supposed to go.
This is how it does go:
The alarm goes off at six on Thanksgiving morning. I shut it off because my brother is working today, so Thanksgiving is tomorrow for us. Which is good, because we were drinking down the street at the ‘Duck kinda late last night.
The alarm goes off at six on Friday. We snooze it til about eight-thirty, and then leap from bed in a panic. I make coffee and start packing. We’re cooking, but at Mom’s. (This apartment is not suitable for eight people.) We pack a box of kitchen gear and a cooler of ingredients and goodies. We get over to Mom’s, and unload. It’s freezing. I make some coffee, put on some music – Eminem – and eat the Egg McMuffin we got at the drive-thru on the way. The frenzy begins. The turkey, which I got at a Mexican poultry market on the west side where they kill them to order, is still slightly feathered and a skosh bloody. I have to get this stupid turkey presentable before the guests get here or several of them will not eat a single bite. I get to work with cold water and pliers while Emily opens the first bottle of wine and decants it into two big tumblers. She’s chopping apples for pie and when I ask her if she can chop sweet potatoes too says “Sure” in a tone of voice that makes it clear that that is an Annoying Request. I don’t have time to argue, though – I have to get going on the pan of sweet rolls that are the family’s longest-standing holiday tradition besides refusing to be the one to answer the phone when Grandma calls to tell long rambling stories about how much better everyone else’s grandchildren are than us.
The turkey goes into the oven just in time, as my brother arrives with his wife, their three children, and a hundred-pound dog. No one looks like they enjoyed the forty-five minute drive to Mom’s. My sister-in-law goes upstairs to change and feed the baby. The dog lies down in the exact center of the kitchen and will not move again until it is time to leave. One of the children is crying, and the other comes into the kitchen and asks what we are having for dinner. This is a loaded question; every possible answer will be met with a grimace and gagging noises. Including “Cupcakes!”
My brother turns on the TV, but there’s no football. Which is good, because that means this year I won’t throw a beer at the TV when the fucking Lions fucking fail to fucking cover a fucking THIRTEEN POINT SPREAD at fucking home on fucking Thanksgiving. The pans of sweet potatoes and stuffing go into the oven, two hours later than planned. Mom begins the process of clearing eight months’ worth of mail and other accumulated paper off the dining room table, which we use for two meals a year and is her desk the rest of the time. (The process begins with careful sorting and ends with a cardboard box and a snow-shovel.) The adults open more drinks and express dismay over the proximity of Christmas while the children sit on the dog’s head and argue over what channel to watch.
The turkey comes out, and is put on the carving-board to rest while we disguise the ingredients of the gravy. The children are dismayed by gravy with “stuff floating in it”, so I zap it with the stick blender until they are old enough to understand flavor. Speaking of flavor, I add a little sherry to the gravy, in hopes the children will nap after dinner. The sweet rolls are peeled from the pan with the help of a heated chisel, and the baking dishes are doubled as serving dishes because “it’s stupid to dirty another dish.” The good china is out, which means dinner is extra-stressful on whoever is sitting next to the four-year-old and the six-year-old, since those seated in those positions are the Breakage Goalies. We pour five glasses of wine and two glasses of milk. Then we pour a glass of apple juice. Then a glass of orange juice. Then water. The kids sure do change their minds a lot. They wind up drinking the original milks. I run upstairs to change into a clean shirt. The only one that fits is from Señor Frog’s. I elect not to wear a dinner jacket over it, since there are bikinis and innuendo but no actual obscenity. Someone carved the turkey, to “help speed things up.” It looks like it was carved with forks. By the dog. Why does no one ever do the dishes to “help speed things up”? Only the glam jobs are ever deemed helpful.
Dinner is at five, three hours later than planned. Three of us are finished eating by the time Mom sits down after helping the grandchildren compose their plates. The children each take two recalcitrant bites and ask about dessert. They won’t eat the sweet potatoes until their mom gives them each a half-dozen marshmallows. Then they each eat all the marshmallows and four atoms of sweet potato. I consider making pizzas next year – onion-sage crust, topped with turkey and cranberries and gravy. It’s unclear if this is an interesting foray into deconstruction and fusion, or the result of way, way too much red wine. We clear the table, adding to the towering stack in the kitchen sink, and I attempt to make coffee. I have to fend off the argument that we can just nuke what’s left in the carafe from the morning. It may not poison me, but that doesn’t mean that it is “still good.” We snarf up the pie and ice cream in eleven seconds. I look in the liquor cabinet, and come up with a bottle of banana liqueur from a fad dessert in 1976 and a bottle of gin that makes me tear up because is smells like my other grandmother, who died years ago. Thank god there’s that bottle of amontillado I brought to put in the gravy. The adults are either too tired or too tipsy to handle the dishes, so we unanimously elect to leave them for tomorrow. The children are tired past sleep and into the screaming crankies, so we pack them into the car, with multiple hugs all around. No one even wants to think about food, which is awkward because there are enough leftovers to feed Somalia.
Y’know what? I’m thankful not to be one of those tiresome people at the first dinner. God, how dull.
“The Northwest chapters of the Slow Food organization want you to help save the heirloom turkey. Similar to the ubiquitous heirloom tomatoes, there are old-fashioned varieties of the turkey still raised in the United States. If you are interested in an American Bronze turkey for Thanksgiving this year, you have to place your order with Slow Food by April 1.”
This put anybody besides me in mind of the old Sally Struthers TV spots urging you to adopt a Third-World child? The ones that promised “a photo and a letter once a month,” detailing progress and thanking you for your support?
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Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
May 7, 2011
Dear Family,
Thank you for adopting me! I have received extra corn already, and they tell me that I’ll get to meet you when I’m big enough. I’m very excited. It’s a very proud day for me, to be sponsored by a real family. I hope you’re savoring thoughts of our first meeting as much as I am!
Gratefully,
Basty
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Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
June 18, 2011
Dear Family,
Soon I’ll be starting my exercise program, so that should help me grow up big faster. Lot of chest flies for the pecs, and I have to run some of this fat off my thighs. I’m up to 3.57 pounds! Look out Big Bird, here I come, ha-ha!
(My trainer tells me if I don’t work hard enough, he’ll put me in the stocks! I know he’s joking, but I’m still motivated.)
Growing,
Basty
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Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
July 24, 2005
Dear Family:
Happy summer! The weather here is beautiful; sunny every day, lots of bugs to eat — I know, I know, TMI! — and the gentle perfume of the neighbor’s barbecue on the breeze — hardwood charcoal and something buttery and succulent that I can’t quite put my finger on. I swear, if I God forbid died right now, heaven’d smell like hickory smoke. (But don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere for a long time, thanks to your generosity!)
Love,
Basty
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Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
August 14, 2011
Dear Family:
I’m at camp!
Well, sorta. They let us spend all out time outside these days, ’cause it’s sooooooo nice out. All the fresh air and exercise, I’m really growing up fast — 9.84 pounds as of this morning! My wattle’s starting to fill out, too! (One of the counselors told me that nothing is as important to my future as strong bones and big muscles, and the rest is just gravy, but still, I’m excited.)
Love,
Basty
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Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
September 20, 2011
Dear Family,
I got sunburned at camp, so I have to stay inside for a while. Don’t worry, It’s not serious. My skin got a little crispy, is all. It’ll turn tan in a day or two. My family’s always had good skin — my Uncle Tom used to say everybody thought it was our best feature!
Next time, I’ll remember to put some of that oil on so I don’t burn!
Love,
Basty
(10.98 pounds!)
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Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
October 5, 2011
Dear Family,
Another major step for Basty! I have a girlfriend! She’s beautiful and exotic — her family’s name is Tetrazzito or something like that — and when I asked her to the end-of-summer dance she said yes! We had a great time at the Budder Ball, and hung out in the loft with a bunch of friends for hours afterwards.
High Point: My buddy Bryne slipped at one point, and fell out of the loft, and landed upside-down at the bottom of the ladder, half-buried in the straw. Funniest thing I ever saw.
Love,
Basty
(12.62 pounds!)
____________________________________________________
Lou & Marie’s Turkey Farm
November 19, 2011
Dear Family,
I GOT THE NEWS TODAY! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! I GET TO COME TO YOUR HOUSE! I’m very excited to finally meet you and to be a part of your (our!) holiday!
I’m sorry for my sloppy handwriting on this, but I’m just so excited I had to knock out a quick note before I go to my first appointment with the chiropractor. (Nothing serious, my regular doctor is just sending me for a neck adjustment. He said it would be quick and painless, and that’s all I needed to hear.)
I’ve always wanted to have a big old-fashioned family Thanksgiving! I’ll bring the wine, but I need to match it with the food.
What are we going to have?
Love,
Basty
PS- See you soon!
As an incoming high-school freshman, I weighed 170 pounds. Sixteen years later, I weighed somewhere slightly north of 315. That’s a gain of 145. So, with much respect to the late great Allan Sherman, I would like to explain how it came to pass that I got fat:
Pounds 1-3: Freshman year lunch: Pizza, chocolate milk, and a greasylicious cookie in the cafeteria. Every day.
Pounds 4 & 5: Constant access to vending machines featuring chocolate milk.
Pounds 6-10: Discovery of ability to occasionally order, fund, and consume delivered pizza all by myself.
Pounds 11-13: Standing summertime Tasty Dog lunch: Nachos, cheese fries, extra-large Pepsi
Pound 14: Fridays in the OPRF high school cafeteria: Taco salad.
Pounds 15-18: Sophomore year, for making-out reasons, I spend several months with two lunch periods.
Pounds 19 & 20: I discover that coming home after everyone else has gone to sleep means that I can have a snack unpestered.
Pounds 21 & 22: Tasty Dog begins carrying deep-fried cheese.
Pounds 23-50: Driver’s license obtained. Walking and bicycling are immediately cut by 80%. Regular errand runs for maternal parent are broken up by lavish snacking.
Pounds 51-56: Especially the $1.99 two-slices-and-a-pop deal at Little Caesar’s.
Pounds 57-59: Months of testing are completed as I perfect my order at Mickey’s Gyros — “One skirt steak sandwich, one large fries, cup of cheese on the side, order a mozzarella sticks, and an extra-large Dr. Pepper for here.” I eat this at least once a week for twelve years.
Pounds 60-62: Granny’s restaurant, site of Family Sunday Breakfast, puts chocolate éclairs on the menu. As a “side dish.”
Pounds 63-65: Extracurricular obligations force me to eat dinner after nine p.m. on a fairly regular basis. As of this writing, I have not shaken this habit. It is probably radically underestimated as a fat factor.
Pounds 65-68: 24-hour dining establishments discovered. A fourth meal is added to Friday and Saturday.
Pounds 69 & 70: Employment at a summer camp two hours north of home leads to the discovery that a large pizza is a perfect way to pass the drive.
Pounds 71-73: Move-in weekend at Northern Illinois University leads to the discovery of Burritoville, the best greasy filthy cheap-ass late-night drunkfood Mexican restaurant that ever there was.
Pounds 74-79: NIU dorm cafeterias are all-you-can-eat. I am, in retrospect, amazed this didn’t go worse for me. If I’d stayed four years I’d be supersized. Rag-on-a-stick huge.
Pounds 79-81: You know what a “beer nugget” is? A chunk of deep-fried pizza dough. You know how much a big bag of them cost in 1993? Nearly nothing. You know what was a terrible thing to learn? That.
Pounds 82-90: Turns out Burritoville delivers. ’Til 3am.
Pounds 91-100: Pagliai’s Pizza advertised a standing special: “All You Can Eat Pizza & Pop, $3.95″ Pagliai’s no longer exists. I am in no small part responsible.
Pound 101: There’s a restaurant chain in Chicago, Leona’s, that has cheese sticks the size of Twinkies. They’re unbelievably delicious.
Pounds 102 & 103: Dorm suite! Entirely responsible for feeding self. Budget items include frozen pizza, Tater Tots, and lots and lots of Pillsbury canned biscuits.
Pounds 104-106: Discovery of ability to regularly order, fund, and consume delivered pizza all by myself.
Pound 107: Ben & Jerry’s Mint Cookie Orgy (or whatever it’s called) found in small convenience store forty yards from residential entrance.
Pounds 108-110: Leona’s delivers to Lincoln Park.
Pound 111: Which is the neighborhood where my pastry-chef girlfriend lives.
Pounds 112-114: As does Philly’s Best, which makes subs with garlic bread if you ask them to.
Pounds 115 & 116: Finances improve, allowing for the purchase of real groceries. The quality of the food going in goes up. So does the quanitity.
Pounds 117-121: I purchase the Pitmaster barbecue I mentioned in the last column.
Pound 122: Moved. New neighborhood’s hole-in-the-wall hot dog joint’s specialty? Fried pork chop sandwiches.
Pounds 123-125: Personal pasta sauce recipe and garlic bread construction perfected in same weekend.
Pounds 126-128: Discovery of ability to constantly order, fund, and consume delivered pizza all by myself.
Pounds 129 & 130: Realization strikes that I can eat the family special-occasion breakfast of Pillsbury “Orange Danish Rolls” any damn time I want. I do.
Pounds 131-134: With the addition of fresh garlic, the last piece falls in place for stuffed pizza’s takeover from thin crust in the Pizza Pantheon. Not good. (Pizza perfection: “Stuffed sausage and pepperoni with fresh garlic, well done with extra sauce”. Now appears only on special occasions like birthdays or New Year’s Eve.)
Pounds 135-137: I discover that I can order heretofore-unavailable food components from the Internet.
Pounds 138-140: In a romantic gesture gone horribly awry, I finally perfect the (much-missed) Mashed Potato Club’s formula for mashed potatoes and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse’s formula for Cajun-style shrimp with bacon and combine them.
Pounds 140-141: Commercial availability of “Heath Bar Crunch” triples, possibly in response to calls from the Big & Tall Industry
Pounds 142-145: During a trip to Paris Las Vegas, I am introduced to real pain au chocolat.
(Postscript: Proofreading this list makes me wonder if this odd sensation, combining pride, awe, nostalgia, and shame, is a tiny taste of what it feels like to be Keith Richards.)
I’m in Kansas City this week, and have spent most of my time here thinking about barbecue. I’ve been an evangelist for barbecue about twelve years, and I should probably explain how this came to be.
I and some friends went to a wedding in Columbia, Missouri, in 1999. This was back in the glory days of road trips, when we could eat gas station snacks without repercussion and smoke without concern and a hotel room was affordable only if there were at least four people in it.
I knew about Calvin Trillin’s famous declaration that Arthur Bryant’s was “the best restaurant in the world,” and I was growing increasingly devoted to a copy of “Roadfood” I picked up for a quarter at a rummage sale, and so the Sunday after the wedding we packed our clothes and hangovers early and lit out for Kansas City. Two of the four of us had a 5 pm flight out of KCI, so we figured we had six hours to eat real barbecue – including some from “the best restaurant in the world” – before we had to drop half our merry band at the airport. We’d spent days planning a route that would allow us to hit eight barbecue restaurants in those six hours.
We made it to five. (We were full and hung-over, and Stroud’s was closed.)
Arthur Bryant’s: Let’s get this out of the way: I did not like Arthur Bryant’s, that trip. I especially didn’t like the sauce. I didn’t like it so much that that I tried a bottle from another table, to see if someone had amused themselves by pouring extra spices into my bottle. The atmosphere is cool, and the work going on behind the bulletproof glass is a pleasure to watch, but Bryant’s brisket sandwich and burnt ends were soaked in sauce and such a letdown that I was worried I had been misled about barbecue.
Ollie Gates’: Good ribs, certainly as good as the best I could get on the south side of Chicago, but nothing worth five hundred miles and so much rapturous prose. I also remember still being boggled over Bryant’s. Seriously, THIS is Kansas City barbecue? Big deal.
Snead’s: Here, twentyish miles south of Kansas City, I finally got it. For this rural little joint is the place where I first had burnt ends. Burnt ends are the parts of the meat that is normally sold sliced that are left over once that meat has been sliced. It’s concentrated barbecue, like a reduction. Brisket, ham, pork, or sausage…they’re blackened and crunchy and irregular and soft and luscious and just f—– absurdly delicious. And with the exception of one tiny joint in, of all places, Milwaukee, I have never, ever found them outside the gravity well of Kansas City. Don’t understand why. These are the best part of barbecue. They are maybe the best part of anything.
Jack Stack: This was challengingly close to Snead’s for another meal, so we all split a big sandwich. Still jacked by the discovery of burnt ends, we ordered the “Chopped Burnt Ends” sandwich. And wow. My God. Easily one of the top five sandwiches of my eating life, and the unchallenged titleholder for quite a while. Imagine a pile of meat with the flavor of smoke and the texture of a fresh Krispy Kreme. Staggering. We ate it on the hood of the car, with the girls taking turns holding one another’s hair so it wouldn’t be blown into the sandwich by the wind.
K.C. Masterpiece: The final stop. We split the barbecue sampler. The meat was okay and one of the sauces was great. I asked what the name of it was if you bought it in the store, and the waitress said that was the restaurant’s sauce, and wasn’t sold in grocery stores. The four of us assuaged our grief with a piece of peanut butter ice cream pie big enough that we assumed there was a t-shirt and a plaque in it for the person who ate the whole thing unaided, and headed for the airport.
Three days later I got home and bought my first real offset smoker, a Brinkmann Pitmaster. I started smoking for friends, and I refer to the thirteen subsequent purchases of backyard smokers as “my grandpits.” I’ve been to Memphis, St. Louis, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama in search of barbecue. I even gave Arthur Bryant’s another chance. (I still don’t like the sauce. The meat is good, though, and the fries are world-class.) I drove bales of wood back to Chicago. And every October, I smoke and freeze enough ribs and pork and brisket to hold me til April, and everything that comes out of my pit is better than anything I can get in Chicago.
And I spread the Word.
