Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) (18 page)

Inevitably, given the Italian connection, several skits celebrated the concept
of barbecue pizza, which I gather is actually served as a regular thing at one
Memphis restaurant. I ate some at the judges' reception, and it's not quite as
vile as it sounds.

Anyway, I'd been worried that I was out of my depth, but the orientation
session for the judges reassured me. Our instructor began with the basics ("If
you don't eat pork, please let us know"), and he moved on to matters of deportment ("Stay sober until after the judging") and ethics ("If your ex-wife's
boyfriend is on a team, you should disqualify yourself").

We were introduced to the rating scheme and told what to look for in the
meat and sauce. I was a rib judge, and "on-site" as opposed to "blind," and
there were so many of us judges because nearly two hundred teams were competing in three divisions (ribs, shoulder, and whole-hog). Each entry was to be
judged by six of us, and each of us was to judge only three to six entries.

When the pork finally met the palate, the best ribs I had were cooked by
those Mississippians from Kossuth. The smell made my mouth water. When I picked up a rib and examined it, I saw a crisp brown crust over moist, tender
meat, pink from smoking, the color even from end to end. The meat came
easily off the bone but kept its integrity (none of the mushiness that comes
from parboiling). This meat had been cooked with dry, cool smoke, and lots
of patience. A dry rub sealed in the juices, but most of the fat had long since
melted and dripped away.

The rib tasted as good as it smelled: sweet and smoky; crunchy, chewy, and
melt-in-your-mouth, all at the same time. As for the sauce.... Well, I can't describe it without sounding like an ad in Southern Living. "A symphony of
Southern flavors: tart Sea Island tomatoes, mellow onions from Vidalia,
sweet-and-sour molasses from Louisiana cane fields, and the Latin kick of
peppers from South Texas. A sauce the color of Tennessee clay, with the fiery
heat of an Alabama afternoon and the long, slow sweetness of a Kentucky evening." Or, worse, like a wine critic: "A sauce of great character and finesse.
Bright claret color, with a complex, peppery nose. Lusty full-bodied taste:
tomato catsup and chili the principal notes, with a definite garlic background
and hints of-could it be grape jelly? Balance sustained throughout. An assertive finish and a pronounced afterburn." (I made all that up, actually, except for the grape jelly, which I'll bet anything was the secret ingredient in one
sauce I tasted.)

In the end, none of the teams I judged even placed. The winners camewell, they came from Illinois, of all places, although they graciously pointed
out that their hometown is only thirty-five miles north of the Mason-Dixon
Line. Still, from Illinois! It just goes to show what Yankees can do when they
put their minds to it. But I'll bet my guys had more fun, and I was pleased to
find that I could discriminate intelligently among several first-rate plates of
ribs.

Speaking of sauces, and of competition, leads me to the matter of what is
another long-standing rivalry, as you're learning if you didn't already know:
that between eastern and western North Carolina.

Just last month a writer named Carroll Leggett set off a new battle in that
ancient conflict with a column in Raleigh's Metro magazine about the barbecue he was raised with: East Carolina-style chopped whole-hog, with a simple
vinegar and red pepper sauce. Not surprisingly, he likes it. He even likes the
surprises that chopped whole-hog offers. I'm going to quote him at length:

At Eastern [barbecue] shrines kids sit in wonderment every meal and
fish objects from their barbecue:

"Hey, Mom, what's this?" they ask.

"That's just gristle, Antoine.

"That's just skin, Ashley.

"That's just a piece that cooked too long, Latonya.

"That's just a li'l ole piece of bone, Puddin.

"I don't know what it is, Sean." Whap! "Just shut up and eat it."

Now, if Leggett had just extolled his native style of barbecue, no one would
have minded. No one would have noticed. But he went on to deprecate western, "Lexington-style" barbecue as mere "roasted pork shoulders chopped
and mixed with a thick tomato sauce that masks the meat's flavor and textural
sameness." He noted the absence of "ribs, tenderloin, and crispy skin" and
complained about the lack of these "special parts to vie for"-even with its
implication that there are ... other parts.

Well, that put the fat in the fire. Within days there was a website where Tar
Heels could vote their preferences for eastern or western barbecue, and I was
getting email from friends, acquaintances, and total strangers across the state
urging me to vote. (One pointed out that I was allowed to vote once a day, and
begged me to do so.) I found it interesting that all these lobbyists apparently
just assumed that I, like all reasonable people, share their preference.

In truth, I like both Tar Heel varieties-to paraphrase Will Rogers, I've
never met a smoked pig I didn't like. I've never said in public whether I like
eastern or western better. State employees are supposed to stay out of politics.
Besides, I live in Chapel Hill, right on the border between eastern and western,
and, anyway, even after thirty-three years I'm still a Tennessean, an outlander,
so I tend to keep my head down when these intrastate battles flare up.

After many years in Chapel Hill I've come to love simple vinegar and red
pepper. East Carolina minimalism. It respects the meat. But in Mississippi,
out of the cross fire, I will confess that I really do like sweet, red sauce on my
barbecue. Maybe this shouldn't be surprising, since East Tennessee, where I'm
from, used to be western North Carolina-far western North Carolina.

Let me close by discussing the kind of barbecue I grew up with, the barbecue from a joint in Piney Flats, Tennessee, called, simply, the Ridgewood.

Now, when you think of great barbecue towns, Piney Flats doesn't come to
mind. In fact, nowhere in East Tennessee comes to mind. But right outside
Bluff City, midway between Johnson City and Bristol, a stone's throw from
Kingsport (where Vince Staten and my wife and I grew up), is this modestlooking place that since 1948 has served what People magazine once called the
best barbecue in the country-and therefore, obviously, in the world.

OK (I hear you say), but what does People magazine know about barbecue? Well, try this: The Ridgewood is the only out-of-state establishment mentioned in Bob Garner's book, North Carolina Barbecue: Flavored by Time.
Given Tar Heels' largely justifiable chauvinism in these matters, that's a testimonial indeed-although, to be sure, Bluff City is only some twenty-five
miles from the North Carolina line.

When I was a lad, people drove a long way to eat at the Ridgewood, despite
notoriously capricious hours and service that ranged from brusque to surly.
That service was almost as legendary as the food. In Real Barbecue, Vince
quoted a devotee who said that going to the Ridgewood was like going to the
Don Rickles Restaurant.

Well, last month Dale and I went back there with Fred Sauceman, and the
place has changed a bit. We were almost disappointed to have a waitress who
was downright pleasant. We were also disappointed to find squeeze bottles of
sauce on the tables. In the old days, the management had definite ideas about
how much sauce to use: a lot. This nectar was poured over the thin-sliced pork
before it was served. You ate what was put before you.

So, the times they are a-changin' But so far the barbecue hasn't-good
pork, well smoked, served with a fabulous sauce-and that combination is
what has drawn folks to the Ridgewood for a half-century now. Like most
sauces west of Raleigh, it's sweet, thick, and red. But the flavor is marvelously
complex. Think of it as Overmountain Baroque. Think of it as what the catsup will taste like in heaven.

Today's national enthusiasm for barbecue and its associated foods is the culmination of a 150-year evolution. While tradition and climate combined to
help establish the barbecue as a Southern institution of long standing, the national adaptation of the food and the event were a bit longer in coming. It was
a progression shaped and molded by changes in technology and world events.

As America approached the twentieth century, an outdoor movement burgeoned. The restraint and decorum of the Gilded Age gave way to a more relaxed style of living and entertaining. While the warmer climate of the South
had made porches a necessity and outdoor dining a popular alternative, picnics and porches proliferated in places where they had been rarer before. People in the less temperate climates of the country began to reexamine their
relationship to nature.

In the North, picnics were the precursor to barbecues. On all-day outings,
perhaps to one of the facilities of the newly established National Park System,
the picnic eliminated a trip home for lunch and enabled people to enjoy the
outdoors for longer spans of time. It was a common-sense solution that was
destined to become chic. By the early i9oos, picnics became extremely elaborate. Women prepared and served traditional food at these affairs: cold sandwiches, deviled eggs, and chocolate cake. As Americans' affinity for the outdoors increased, they also sought to enjoy the outdoors during the work week.
The wide acceptance of sleeping porches at the turn of the century facilitated
the movement from the dining parlor to the porch. As Charles Aked, writing
for Colliers in i9io, put it, "Anyone who has not yet formed the habit of eating
on the porch in summer has not yet fathomed the delights of warm weather."

The porch by the end of the nineteenth century had become a firmly established part of an American home. It marked simultaneously the beginning
of the integration of the house and its surrounding environment and the differentiation of covered outdoor living spaces. The mass production of the car
and the development of the bungalow in the teens furthered America's love af fair with the country. Simultaneously, an informal and inexpensive home architecture that incorporated within it the natural environment sprang up in
California. It was to be the precursor of the suburban home of the 192os.

While developments in both architecture and automobile manufacture enhanced an American's independence, they sparked the demise of neighborliness and community. With these inventions life became more insular and
families turned inward, giving birth to the small-family hot picnic.

In 1913 Henry Ford opened his Highland Park Assembly Plant and with it a
new era of car manufacturing. Production rose and prices fell, both by more
than 50 percent. No longer locked into railroad schedules, a city family could
drive out to the country and have a picnic when they desired. By 1920, more
than four million Tin Lizzies zoomed around the country, driven by the large
new middle class that industrialization had created.

Auto-camps, which charged for the use of their grounds and cooking facilities, sprang up all over. There, people would fry bacon in a skillet over a fire
or eat a picnic brought from home. A fireless cooker provided hot food, if
needed. Heated and filled before leaving, this ceramic container cooked the
food as people traveled to their picnic spot.

Gertrude S. Mathews wrote in 1915 of a precursor to the backyard barbecue,
the bacon bat. Mathews perceived it as a campfire dinner of bacon, wieners,
and chips held in one's backyard. As similar as a bacon bat may be to many
people's conception of a barbecue, it lacked the emphasis on the process of
cooking the meat that characterizes a true barbecue. Other articles of the period often discussed broiling steak but made no mention of cooking it over
wood coals. Rather, they spoke at length about pan-broiling in the oven.

During World War I, the auto manufacturers Ford, Leland, and Durant, turned
their plants over to the war effort, producing aircraft engines, submarine
chasers, tanks, helmets, hand grenades, and trucks. The housing industry
ceased production as its supply of materials was redirected to the war effort.
The pent-up demand for new homes in the early 1920S led builders to experiment with a new and inexpensive housing type-the bungalow.