Memphis Que

In other parts of the country people have careers and people have hobbies. In Memphis people have hustles, and true Memphians generally have more than one. When I'm not riding around town wholesaling automotive parts I sometimes sell comic books on ebay. And of course there is the barbecue blog and my work building custom classic cars, although I haven't quite figured out how to make a profitable hustle out of either of those yet.

While peddling parts a few weeks ago I noticed a grill in front of Goldie's Hand Car Wash on S. Third just north of Shelby Drive. So I swung by to ask if there was any barbecue for sale. Asking someone if they are selling barbecue just because you see a barrel cooker set up in front of a business is probably uniquely Memphis as well. I've had some good barbecue doing that around here, and never had anyone act surprised I was asking. But Goldie told me he didn't have any barbecue that day. Besides cooking and detailing cars he has another side hustle selling and installing carpet, and that hustle had kept him busy all morning so he didn't get any food on the grill.

He told me to stop back by the next time I was in the neighborhood and sure enough, a couple weeks later I noticed him standing in a cloud of smoke tending the cooker.

He had chicken wings, steaks, spare ribs and baby back ribs all cooking in a cloud of smoke.

Grilled over direct heat, the ribs weren't technically barbecue. They were flavorfully seasoned, tender and juicy, so they were skillfully grilled and I happily devoured half a slab while Goldie and a friend sat at a table next to mine chatting with me while playing dominoes.

I know I've been pretty harsh towards the Rendezvous for serving chargrilled ribs. At the Rendezvous there is usually a long wait for relatively pricey ribs that are frequently touted as the best Memphis has to offer. So I feel perfectly fine with criticizing the ribs I had there while saying I enjoyed the $7 grilled half-slab I ate in a lawn chair next to a card table at Goldie's car detail place while sitting in the shade next to his front bay door.

The next day I was in Raleigh when I noticed a man in an American flag apron posted up across the street from the Raleigh Springs Mall listening to soul music and enjoying a tallboy of beer while hawking hot tamales from under a tent in the middle of a rainstorm. So naturally I immediately turned around to buy some. They ended up being appropriately spicy, packed with Angus beef and delicious.

Being a Memphian means having a hustle. The term hustle in Memphis doesn't automatically imply anything shady or underhanded the way it does in other areas. Here your hustle is what you do when you are out on your grind. And if you want to make it, you grind hard while you hustle. Hustle and grind are both nouns. Hustle and grind are both verbs. And hustle and grind are as much of a part of our way of life as ribs and Delta-style hot tamales.

My fellow middle class Americans, we need to have a serious talk about the meat you are eating. A hectic schedule has kept me away from any of the area farmer's markets for several weeks now, causing me to rely on area grocery stores for the all meats I've been cooking at home.

This isn't a rant about the very real evils of the government-subsidized agricultural industrial complex or the superior flavor and health benefits of grass-pastured meats. This is a rant about the cuts of meat available, presumably based on customer demand.

A couple weeks ago I needed shanks for making Osso Buco. I couldn't find any in the sea of 90/10 ground beef, beef fillets, ground turkey and boneless skinless chicken breasts at the fancy new Kroger at Poplar and Highland. I asked the butcher; Cow, pig or lamb; it didn't matter. I just needed crosscut shanks from a four-legged mammal to braise with vegetables in chicken stock and wine in a Dutch oven.

I ended up stopping at the Union Avenue Kroger and the Cash Saver on Madison before I finally found them at the oft-maligned Kroger at Poplar and Cleveland. Laugh and call it "Kroghetto" all you want. At least it had shanks, right alongside the oxtails and neckbones.

Today my shopping list included beef short ribs for yet another braise. The Poplar and Cleveland Kroger failed me this time. The Union Avenue Kroger only had boneless short ribs. Let me repeat that again -- boneless short ribs. Seriously, I'm starting to think the average American shopper doesn't even deserve meat anymore. Luckily Cash Saver had what I needed this time around.

The sad part is, this is mainly due to peoples' earnest but misinformed attempts to eat healthy. The American public's relationship with the food it eats has become so warped that grocery stores are full of overweight people pushing around carts full of whole-wheat breads, margarine, skim milk and boneless skinless chicken breasts. They are trying their best, eating this garbage in the mistaken belief that it will improve their health, not realizing it is the source of their problems. Even worse, many of them are also taking statin drugs to lower their cholesterol levels, never realizing the drugs are greatly increasing their future odds of cancer and Alzheimer's disease while doing nothing to reduce their risk of heart disease.

Unlike whole grains and vegetable oils, which are total junk foods, there is nothing wrong with a boneless skinless chicken breast. You should be eating the entire animal. After you roast a whole chicken and eat the most delicious parts like the legs, thighs, and wings while saving the leftover skin and bones for making stock you will be left with plenty of breast meat that is great for making soups and chicken salad.

But a lot of people are trying to subsist on bland cuts like the boneless skinless chicken breast out of needless fear of animal fats. Or worse, some bizarre phobia of meat that looks like meat keeping them from enjoying the healthy culinary wonders of meat on the bone, much less delightful cuts like tongue and heart.

The real food movement should be about eating real food. Yuppies buying ultra-high-priced steaks, chicken breasts and artisan breads at the farmer's markets are missing the point entirely. There is real food at the supermarket. But while the general rule is to stick to the outer walls where the least processed products like fresh produce and meat are found, even the outer edges contain foods that reflect the confusion the food industry has created in the public mind with its misuse of the word "healthy."

This is a product called "fat free cream cheese." It is on the shelves next to the real thing. Obviously there is no way to make actual fat free cream cheese, since cream cheese IS fat. The only way a consumer would buy this chemical-laden imitation is if they were hoodwinked into thinking it was somehow superior to natural dairy fat.

Winter is coming. If your diet has been dominated by boneless skinless chicken breast now is the perfect time to roast a chicken, make stock with the leftovers, and break out the Crock Pot to start exploring all the fatty cuts of meat on the bone you've been missing.

The biggest problem with trying A&R Bar-B-Q restaurants around Memphis is that the South Memphis location on Elvis Presley Blvd is so damn good that the other locations suffer in comparison. The other locations are good at what they do; serving up fast food-style barbecue similar to Tops. Meanwhile the South Memphis location has some of the absolute best ribs in the city.

I hadn't tried the Hickory Hill location across the street from Big Daddy's Pawn Shop until fairly recently. It is only half a block from the only remaining Southern Hands restaurant and I try to never miss an opportunity to enjoy the Southern Hands meatloaf.

But when my friends Rob and Dan from the Manic American blog visited Memphis a few months ago they declared the ribs from the Hickory Hill A&R were the best they encountered during their time here. These guys know their barbecue so I decided it was time to give the restaurant a try.

Then I got hit by another major distraction. My beloved Emerald Thai Restaurant decided to move from its location nearby on Mt. Moriah out to Lakeland. So for the last couple months it was on Mt. Moriah I was eating there every time I was in the area.

A couple weeks ago, with Emerald Thai finally gone, I was ready to try the Hickory Hill A&R, which was also the only location I hadn't been to yet. Rob and Dan had mentioned the intense smoke flavor of the ribs there and when I pulled into the lot the first thing I noticed was the cloud of smoke pouring from the chimney at the back of the restaurant.

With a similar set up to Big Bill Bar-B-Que in Whitehaven, the Hickory Hill A&R doesn't let a strip mall setting keep it from embracing real smoke cooking. There was no question what I was going to order. I got a rib dinner with beans and slaw. I requested the spicy sauce and when I saw the restaurant also offered Delta-style hot tamales for a buck I added one of them to my order as well.

The beans and slaw were great, which I've come to expect from any A&R. The tamale was also excellent with a perfect balance of texture and spice. A great tamale can't be too soggy or too dry and this one was just right. The ribs were indeed packing a good smoke flavor but the meat was also tough. Thankfully it wasn't as tough as the ribs I tried at the Wolfchase location, which has since closed and reopened as Ty's Bar-B-Q.

I remembered the Wolfchase location having good pulled pork despite the tough ribs so I made a follow-up visit to the Hickory Hill store to try a pork plate. It was solidly good in the Tops-style Memphis average sense. I also got another tamale on my second visit and it was just as good the second time around.

I noticed that Full Custom Gospel Barbecue Blogger Daniel Vaughn made a stop at the Hickory Hill A&R on a trip to Memphis. Vaughn is one the ultimate blogging authorities on barbecue, eventually parlaying his blog into a full-time gig as the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly magazine. His post echoed my sentiment of the ribs carrying good smoke flavor while being overly tough.

Vaughn eats so much incredible barbecue from across the nation that he is an understandably tough critic. For me it had more to do with my mental association of the A&R name with the ribs from the South Memphis location, which packs a not-so-secret weapon that gives it a serious advantage over most urban barbecue joints.

While all the other A&Rs are cooking inside buildings they share with other tenants, the one on Elvis Presley Blvd is the only restaurant cooking in an old-school, rural-style detached smokehouse I know of within the city limits.

Yesterday I stopped back by the South Memphis A&R. I was curious if the ribs were really that much better there or if the image of the smokehouse behind the restaurant was clouding my judgement.

It wasn't a trick of imagination or memory. The ribs at the South Memphis location have the kind perfect texture combined with pink-to-the-bone smoke penetration you normally have to travel to rural places like Latham's Meat Company in Jackson, TN, to find. I applaud the other A&R locations for their devotion to smoke, but the in-store cookers they are using make it much harder to get that smoke into the meat without drying it out.

Keep in mind that real barbecue varies from batch to batch and what Dan and Rob enjoyed could have come out far more tender than what I had at the Hickory Hill store. Consistency is one of the main reasons people go to the trouble and expense of building a smokehouse. Steady, consistent low heat and smoke provide consistent great results in the right hands. In other words, I'm certainly not saying Dan and Rob were wrong to love the Hickory Hill A&R. I'm saying that the next time they pass through Memphis a trip to Elvis Presley Blvd has to be included on their agenda.

Since I started blogging about Memphis-area soul food I've had readers telling me that I had to try Alcenia's, located Downtown on Main Street. The problem was that I am rarely anywhere near the Pinch District at lunch time. A few month's ago I finally tried to visit, but that was on a Monday. I discovered that Alcenia's is one of the many soul food places that stays closed on Mondays, so that day I ended up at the Downtown location of A&R Bar-B-Q.

Alcenia's is in the Pinch District near the Pyramid, the former home of the Memphis Tigers and Grizzlies basketball teams before the Fedexforum opened. Alcenia's is one of the many Pinch District businesses hoping that the Pyramid's redevelopment as a gigantic Bass Pro Shops location will replace a lot of the foot traffic the area lost when the the building was shuttered.

Last Thursday I tried again and finally got to experience first-hand what all the fuss was about. I talk about the friendly service at a most of the restaurants I write about. That Southern hospitality is something I've come to expect from local barbecue, country cooking and soul food joints. But Alcenia's takes that Southern charm to the next level. As soon as I walked in the door to the brightly decorated dining room the owner welcomed me with a giant hug and assured me all the food she served was "fixed with a lot of love."

Keep in mind that I never identify myself as a blogger when I initially visit a restaurant. I was just a stranger in work clothes stopping in for lunch.

When my server came out and gave me a menu I was about to order the grilled tilapia I saw listed with the regular Thursday options since the excellent version of that dish offered by Dindie's Soul Food in Raleigh has become a regular staple of my diet. Then the server mentioned that meatloaf was available as well, although it wasn't listed on the menu.

I've heard incredible things about the Alcenia's meatloaf, with one friend saying he'll call the restaurant a day or two ahead of times he plans to eat there specifically to request that they have it available. Apparently the grandmotherly treatment from the owner extends to being able to call before visits to ask for a favorite meal to be waiting for you. As soon as I heard there was meatloaf in the kitchen I ordered it with greens and black-eyed peas.

I've also come to expect the duo of Louisiana Hot Sauce and Bruce's Green Hot Pepper Sauce to be sitting on the table at any soul food restaurant. I didn't see either on any table at Alcenia's. I didn't see any condiments at all. And I didn't ask if any were available. Everything came out perfectly seasoned.

The delicious meatloaf was packed with peppers and onions. As much as I love the meatloaf from Southern Hands, I think Alcenia's may top it in flavor. My sides of greens and peas came in comically large plastic bowls. As big as all the portions were, everything was so good I ate all the meatloaf, all the greens, about half the peas and most of the two hot-water cornbread cakes before tossing my napkin on the plate completely satisfied.

While I was eating I got to witness another moment of Southern hospitality. The Main Street Trolley stopped to let off an older woman who came into the restaurant. A few minutes later the trolley suddenly stopped again, after only moving a few feet, and the trolley driver trotted into the restaurant to give the woman a package she had accidentally left in her seat. She barely had time to thank him before he was back in the trolley rolling down the street.

According to the menu Alcenia's also offers an epic Saturday brunch for anyone who wakes up Saturday morning, or afternoon depending on your Friday night, craving a giant Southern breakfast feast.

If you frequent barbecue joints throughout Memphis you come to recognize elements that indicate the type of establishment you are visiting. Table service with well-dressed waiters and waitresses tell you that you are at a place at the fancier end of the spectrum. Meanwhile a handgun permit class qualification target taped to a wall of bullet-proof glass encasing the order counter signals that you might not be in one of the city's nicest neighborhoods. That is what I encountered when I walked into Papa Chuck's on Airways in between Lamar and the airport.

I'd noticed the spot, tucked behind a liquor store, during taxi rides home from the Memphis airport. The way it sits back from the street makes it hard to spot when you are heading south on Airways. And even headed north it is easy to miss if you are driving and paying attention to the road. But during cab rides home after trips away from the city I am always extra attentive to soaking in the sights of home and I had been meaning to try the little restaurant since I first noticed it over a year ago.

Unfortunately I'd always forget about it on days when I was actually working nearby in the area around Airways and Lamar. But a few days ago I was driving down Park and stopped to photograph the old Big Bluff BBQ building in nearby Orange Mound with its iconic "The Mound" graffiti. That put me in the mood from some Dirty South barbecue, which caused me to remember Papa Chuck's and make a quick detour for lunch.

If anyone knows any of the history of Big Bluff Bar-B-Q I'd love to hear it.

Despite the ominous bullet-proof glass I never felt threatened in any way during my visit to Papa Chuck's. In fact, the homeless woman who greeted me outside the restaurant and attempted to sell me batteries, socks and candy held my hand and prayed for God to bless me back with $2,000 after I gave her $1.

The inside of the restaurant was fairly spartan, with just a handful of tables and chairs in the dining area beside the glass-enclosed kitchen. I asked the woman behind the counter if she thought the rib plate or the pulled pork plate was a better option. She said the ribs, so that is what I ordered. The $8.99 price tag made it one of the cheapest rib plates I've found.

The beans and the slaw were both store-bought. I saw the tubs. The ribs were ulta-tender to the point of falling apart. I prefer a firmer texture to my rib meat, but these were still plenty enjoyable. They were also swimming in a sweet barbecue sauce. Once again, not my preference, but for $8.99 I was still happy with my lunch. Anyone who likes fall-off-the-bone ribs with a lot of sauce would consider them exceptional. And while it wasn't what I usually prefer, it was exactly what I was in the mood for at the time.

At one time, when I would encounter fall-apart ribs like the ones at Papa Chuck's I'd wonder if they'd been boiled before cooking. After some experimenting with cooking ribs on my own I now suspect that ribs like this have been inadvertently boiled at the end of the cooking process. It is common in the barbecue world to wrap meat in foil when it is nearly done and let it cook for some additional time to continue breaking down the fat in them. Since meat is most receptive to smoke when it is raw, by the end of the cooking process it is hard to get much additional smoke into it. So wrapping meat at the end of a cook doesn't really sacrifice smoke flavor while it does allow it to keep breaking down, and becoming tenderer, without drying out.

A lot of cooks also add a generous amount of sauce to meat at the same time that they wrap it. Keep in mind that barbecue is typically cooked between 225 and 250 degrees while water boils at 212. If meat is sealed up and immersed in liquid while it cooks, it is being boiled. Even without sauce, if fatty cuts like ribs are cooked for too long wrapped in foil the steam and rendered fat in the foil is enough to effectively boil them.

The are different opinions on the best way to cook barbecue because their are so many different opinions on what constitutes great results. Whether or not to wrap, how long to cook in foil if you do, and whether or not to use liquid sauce while you cook are all topics that can inspire huge debate among even the oldest and most experienced of pitmasters. The best way to determine what you think is best is to simply eat barbecue from as many places as possible.

The Silky O' Sullivan's on Beale Street is a monument to just how bad the street's decay got before its revitalization began in the early '80s. The indoor restaurant and bar area sits at the corner of Third and Beale in the old Gallina building but beside it there is a large outdoor patio area sitting behind the heavily-reinforced remaining facade of a collapsed building.

In John Elkington's book Beale Street: Resurrecting the Home of the Blues he describes the terrible condition of the buildings on Beale when he began spearheading the early revitalization effort in the early '80s. During the '70s, as the city began acquiring all the property on Beale it was steadily boarding up vacant buildings as it took possession of them. Sealing up the empty structures meant they couldn't breathe during the boiling heat and humidity of Memphis summers. This filled them with steaming stagnant water that rotted away wood, plaster and masonry with shocking speed.

The '70s was also when Thomas "Silky" Sullivan owned one of the most popular bars in Overton Square, in an era when the Square was the city's dominate night spot. In the early '90s he relocated to Beale as it was experiencing a rebirth at the same time the Square, which has seen its own period of rapid rebirth over the past two years, was entering a period of decline.

I normally sample restaurants for the blog while I am at work, and my work routine normally only takes me around Beale Street on Monday when Silky's is closed during lunch hours. But every time I walk past the establishment I'm taunted by a bold challenge posted next to the front door. "There is no question I have the BEST RIBS in Memphis and the world and the fact is after you taste mine the rest will taste like Spam!" That is a serious proclamation, and as someone who has sampled my share of ribs I decided last Saturday that it was finally time to make a special trip to judge for myself.

Although I'd never eaten at Silky's before I always enjoyed it as a fun bar. The signature Divers are large buckets filled with a mix of assorted booze and straws that I've shared with friends before events at Fedexforum and the large patio is like a playground for grown-ups complete with a climbing tower for the resident goats.

The patio also features an impressive collection of celebrity autographs in its concrete like this section signed by Johnny and June Carter Cash.

Beale Street is a fun place to walk around, drink, socialize and enjoy music. And it has plenty of food that is good enough to satisfy a case of alcohol-induced munchies. But I've already learned to dismiss all the claims of "Memphis best" and "world championship" barbecue on restaurant signs there as empty marketing hype. Even if an establishment has sponsored a team that won a Memphis in May championship, that team would have competed with a charcoal and wood competition cooker, not one of the electric or gas-fired ovens used throughout the restaurant kitchens on Beale.

Silky's offered ribs dinners in an assortment of sizes. This is common on Beale, although restaurants anywhere else in the city largely just stick to full or half-slab options. I ordered the six-bone meal since it was equivalent to the half-slab combos I usually order for lunch. The presentation was great. It arrived looking like the kind of dry-rub ribs I love from places like Leonard's, Memphis Barbecue Company and the Bar-B-Q Shop.

But as I've come to expect on Beale, as soon as I began pulling them apart there was no evidence of smoke in the taste or appearance of the meat. the rub had a really good flavor, but the oven-cooked meat had some unrendered chunks of fat I had to pull off. The slaw was good but the beans tasted like they were straight from a can. For a pleasant Saturday afternoon strolling around Beale it was still a pleasant lunch experience. The patio where we ate is heated in the winter and our server was friendly and helpful. But when a place is boasting its ribs will make everywhere else's "taste like Spam!" it should be serving better ribs than the ones I can grab from the drive-thru at the Tops near my house. Silky's doesn't.

Barbecue isn't the only thing on the menu. My wife ordered an oyster po boy with fries and a cup of gumbo that was served with a cornbread cake, all of which she enjoyed.

If you want to have a good time in Memphis, Beale Street has plenty of great options. But if you are searching for some of the best barbecue in Memphis I'll leave you with one last bit of information. Most of the real, old-fashioned barbecue pits in Memphis restaurants are fueled by deliveries from the Charcoal Warehouse on Florida Street. That business goes through a 42,000-pound truckload of charcoal every week. During a recent visit there I asked the owner if he has ANY sales accounts on Beale Street these days. His answer was "no."

While doing some research going through old microfilm at the Memphis Library's main branch on Poplar I ran across this old piece of dietary advice from the Memphis Press Scimitar newspaper in 1964.

The paper was recommending a diet full of fatty organ meats while dismissing plant-based foods like beans and peas as lesser quality proteins. Going through the old microfilm it is also jarring to notice how fit and slim almost everybody looked back then. Young, old, rich people, working-class people, men, women, black, white; I mean almost everybody.

I was an era in the South where almost every vegetable consumed was cooked with animal fat and when breakfast meant eggs cooked in real butter with bacon or sausage. When "whole milk" was simply called milk and the skimmed milk leftover from making cream and butter was used to fatten pigs. It was nearly 30 years before the release of the USDA Food Pyramid in 1992. It was before people started following advice from the government, processed food companies and the medical industrial complex to cut animal fats from their diets. When you look at a picture of slim middle-aged men in suits at a Rotary Club meeting in the early '60s it is safe to assume that most of them had desk jobs and they weren't attending spin classes or running on treadmills after work.

Since then Americans have cut back on their consumption of animal fats. They've cut back on pork and beef and embraced boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They've dramatically increased their consumption of whole grains. They've cut fat from their diets and most of the fat they do consume comes from seed oils full of polyunsaturated fats instead of old staples like butter, beef tallow and pork lard.

The result has been a steady increase in rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, cancer and heart disease. The only area where people have ignored the food pyramid has been sugar, which has seen consumption rates increase dramatically. Of course, when you demonize dietary fat people have to find some way to get some flavor with their food. And government subsidies for corn have turned sugars like high fructose corn syrup into incredibly cheap calories sources.

I was reading today's Commercial Appeal when I ran across a column by Deborah Cohen, a physician and researcher at the Rand Corp., decrying the "food swamp" that we live in today. No argument there. Visit a modern grocery store and you'll find shelves lined with what food writer Michael Pollan has termed "edible food-like substances" instead of the fresh foods humans evolved eating.

But where Collen lost me entirely was her conclusion that, "Today, the harms associated with overeating in America are at least as great as the harms from drinking. Just as we needed policies to protect people from having alcohol thrust in their faces everywhere they went, we need to develop and implement policies that protect people from food cues and triggers designed to make them eat when they're not hungry and over-consume. It's time to drain the food swamp."

She is calling for government policy to dictate the availability of food. What would the basis for those policies be? In a previous column for the Healthcare Blog she wrote that, "The FDA should take a disease prevention approach — as it is currently doing with trans fat — in promoting standards that address how all foods are prepared and served away from home. Such regulations could be based on existing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) dietary guidelines that limit exposure to foods that increase health risks and optimize exposure to foods that protect against chronic disease."

The USDA dietary guidelines call for a grain-based diet with severely limited saturated fat. It's a diet that is responsible for our current epidemic of high blood sugar and all the other medical problems that stem from it like obesity, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's. It isn't a diet based on science. It is a diet based on a government agency being charged with selling the agricultural products our government subsidizes.

Subsidies make foods like corn, wheat and soy appear cheap. They make farmers replace grazing land for animals with fields of monocrops that get harvested, shipped to high-density feedlots and fed to animals there instead. They turn unhealthy junk like flour, high fructose corn syrup and corn and soybean oil into ultra-cheap ingredients for the processed food industry, which makes those empty calories a huge part of the modern American diet.

People following government dietary guidelines have been a huge boon for a medical industry that absorbs 17 percent of the U.S. economy largely treating symptoms instead of making people healthy.

Cohen is correct that the obesity epidemic isn't a simple matter of lack of willpower in the general population. People are being manipulated and mislead. But she places all the blame on the food industry while calling for the government to help. Our modern food system is already the result of an unholy marriage of government and industry. The military industrial complex created a blueprint for making vast fortunes tying business to government policy. Our current agricultural industrial complex, like our current prison industrial complex and medical industrial complex, is just copying a successful formula.

As soon as the massive new Whole Foods on Poplar near Mendenhall opened up I started getting messages about the barbecue restaurant inside the store. Everyone spoke highly about the quality of the food there so I stopped in a little after 1 p.m. on Monday, hoping the catch the store at a time when it wouldn't be completely overrun with customers.

I used to dread visiting the old Whole Foods store that was located a little further back in the same parking lot. It had a lot of quality products you couldn't find anywhere else in Memphis, which drew crowds that could make it a pain to navigate. Luckily the company responded to the obvious consumer demand with a far roomier new store that offers an even wider range of goods. Even at an off time on a Monday afternoon the parking lot was packed and there were a lot of people in the store, but it didn't feel cramped or crowded. Rather than ask someone where the barbecue restaurant was I simply spent some time wandering around checking out the impressive assortment of merchandise until I came across it.

The BBQ Shack restaurant operates as a separate entity from the rest of the grocery. Once you go inside it you pay for anything you get there before exiting. This allows it to serve beer for on-premises consumption, you just can't take any beer you purchase in the BBQ Shack out into the grocery store area.

Once I arrived at the order counter inside the BBQ Shack I was impressed by the appearance of the meat on display, which included pulled pork, pork ribs, beef brisket, chicken and duck. I chatted with supervisor Jacob Dries about the impressive bark and smoke penetration on the meat and he ended up letting me sample a few bites of everything, along with all the house-made sauces, before I ordered.

The most delicious meat I sampled was the duck, but there wasn't enough of it for me to get a full order. Apparently word has gotten around about how good it is and it sells out quickly whenever it comes out of the pit. The Shack uses a gas-assisted Ole Hickory cooker loaded with enough hickory wood to get some good smoke into the meat.

The quality of barbecue cooked on a gas-assisted smoker depends on the technique being used to cook. Since they are controlled by a thermostat, if they are fired up with no added wood they will simply cook with gas and create the kind of oven-cooked pork with no smoke flavor common on Beale Street. But the cookers can create great barbecue with a real wood fire going in them. Local restaurants like Leonard's and Jim Neely's Interstate cook shoulders in gas-fired pits loaded with a mix of charcoal and wood. Gas is lighting the fire, but the flavor is coming from the smoke.

I ended up talking to marketing manager Emily Lux on my way out of the store and she told me the BBQ Shack sources its hickory wood from Pert Whitehead at the Charcoal Warehouse on Florida Street. That speaks well for Whole Foods' commitment to offering real Memphis barbecue. She said a lot of the bigger locations have area-specific restaurants inside them, so barbecue was an obvious choice for Memphis. All the meats used in the restaurant meet the same standards for humane animal treatment as the ones sold in the Whole Foods grocery for a refreshing alternative to all the commodity pork common in the restaurant industry.

Despite the higher animal welfare standards and the chain's "Whole Paycheck" reputation, lunch from the BBQ Shack was surprisingly affordable. I paid $9 for a two meat, two side combo that provided generous portions of brisket, pulled pork, beans and slaw.

The brisket and pulled pork both had a good enough flavor from the smoke and rub they were seasoned with to be eaten without sauce, but Dries had given me samples of six different sauces; Kansas City, Memphis, South Carolina Mustard, chipotle, North Carolina vinegar, and Au Jus. The Kansas City sauce was too sweet for my taste but I enjoyed the tangier Memphis sauce on my pulled pork with a little of the chipotle added for an extra bit of kick. The mustard tasted like it would have paired great with the duck if there had been enough for me to get a full order. The Au Jus was a perfect match for the brisket. I think the vinegar would go well with the ribs based on my experiences with the vinegar sauce at Central BBQ, although the single bone I tried had a good enough dry rub flavor that it didn't require any accompaniment.

The slaw was overly creamy and had too much carrot in it. A little carrot is nice for some adding a little sweetness and variety to a slaw's flavor and texture but this was like a half-and-half mix of carrot and cabbage. On the other hand I give a hearty thumbs up to the beans for having a half-and-half mix of beans and brisket meat.

It was refreshing to see Whole Foods embracing traditionally prepared meats full of rendered fat since the company has been criticized in the past for promoting a fat-phobic plant-based diet. Ironically, even one of the workers in the BBQ Shack was wearing a button saying "take the Engine 2 challenge." The Engine 2 Diet is a popular book, sold at Whole foods, largely based on the bad science and tortured data found in The China Study, another book sold at Whole Foods.

The Engine 2 Diet and China Study both promote a plant-based diet while vilifying animal products and processed foods. There is no question that processed junk foods are bad for you. Removing sugars, flour, and vegetable oils from your diet will make you much healthier. It certainly did for me. That is why the diets are initially helpful for a lot of people. But there is no reason to shun animal fats, which are also a healthy whole food.

Most modern chronic health problems are caused by inflammation and high blood sugar, which are caused by processed foods containing refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils. Avoiding those foods is the easiest way to lose harmful extra weight. The human body does a great job regulating hunger and the storage of fat when its hormones aren't messed up by foods it didn't evolve to handle. Natural animal products aren't one of those foods. In fact, archaeological evidence strongly suggests we evolved the big brains, made almost entirely of fat and cholesterol, that make us human specifically because we where eating so much animal fat, and steadily developing tools to get more of it.

If you watch a documentary like Forks Over Knives where formerly obese people talk about how much weight they quickly lost while not eating processed foods and animal products do a little simple math. There are 1,500 calories in a pound of fat. Take the amount of weight they lost, divide it by the number of days it took to lose it, then multiply by 1,500 to get the amount of fat they were burning each day. They felt so good because by avoiding vegetable oils and most carbohydrates they were getting most of their calories from natural animal fats; their own.

While working in the Oakland, TN, area east of Memphis today I enjoyed a great barbecue plate from the Macon Country Store at the rural three-way intersection of Highway 193, Macon Drive and Oakland Road.

It is a little, easy to overlook building and I was unfamiliar with the business but I was already certain the food would be good when I ordered it. So consider this your short guide to spotting good rural West Tennessee barbecue.

The sign identified it as a "country store." That term means you can usually count on some sort of barbecue or other fresh-made plate lunches.

There was a large barrel cooker in front of the store on a trailer. Also important to note, the cooker had a firebox separate from the main cooking chamber for indirect heat. That means real barbecue.

When I got out to investigate I took a look behind the store where I saw several large piles of hardwood.

Sure enough, all the food was great. The vinegar-based slaw matched well with the homemade sauce on the hardwood-smoked pork. I talked to owner Emmet Kimble, who runs the place with his wife, and he told me he avoids charcoal and cooks with pure wood. The store didn't have baked beans so I got some of the excellently-seasoned fries instead.

I also noticed a book titled How to Clean Your Smokers and Grills For Dummies on the counter, so naturally I inquired about it. It was a one page book that read, "1. Make sure your fire is out! 2. Make sure your fire is out! 3. See first two!"

Kimble explained that he cleans the cooker by using a large quantity of lighter fluid to burn out all the accumulated grease. About a year ago he tried to clean it not realizing that there were still embers in the firebox. The fluid drained down into the firebox creating a blast that knocked him 12 feet through the air. He was proud of his new eyebrows, which had finally grown back in shortly before my visit.

Another recent find for me occurred Monday during a visit to Kroger. Since the recent passing of Newman Farm patriarch Mark Newman I've had to largely rely grocery stores for the bacon I eat most mornings for breakfast since the family is no longer a common fixture of the local farmer's markets. Of the brands available in grocery stores the Wright Brand is usually the best option.

So when I saw Wright had a new "Memphis BBQ Flavored Bacon" it went straight into the shopping basket. I was happy to see that it was standard Wright bacon seasoned with a handful of Memphis standards like vinegar and paprika. When I cooked some the next morning the extra seasoning added a nice little Memphis touch to the already-wonderful smokey bacon flavor with none of the funky artificial taste common in many "barbecue flavored" packaged goods. And surveying the cast iron skillet after I finished breakfast I realized I had an additional new kitchen staple for future cooking -- Memphis barbecue flavored bacon grease.

A friend who works for the Church Health Center recently invited my wife and I to take a tour of the old Crosstown Sears building before it undergoes its major renovation. I've always been fascinated by the building, which I hadn't been inside of since I was a kid, so I naturally jumped at the opportunity. I had my camera with me so follow along on a photo tour from the ground floor to the roof of the main tower.

I got a bad surprise while driving down Elvis Presley Boulevard today when I noticed the smokehouse behind the south Memphis location of A&R Bar-B-Q was gone. Well, not completely gone. The steel pits and chimneys were still there, along with the foundation. But the rest of the building was missing.

I've posted about my love for the old smokehouse in previous posts, so while I was upset to see it demolished I was happy to hear from longtime pitmaster Damon Briggs who told me it is being rebuilt following a major fire.

Before the fire I'd taken a lot of photos inside the smokehouse and interviewed Briggs for my recently-completed book Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce and Soul, which will be coming out June 24 from the History Press. The book uses barbecue to tell the story of the Memphis area and is packed with photos and interviews. It isn't just a rehashing of material from the blog, it is almost all new material combined with historic photos.

Briggs at his new temporary work station.

Briggs has worked for A&R for 30 years, since he was a teenage student at nearby Hamilton High School. He was out of town recently when another employee "decided to teach himself to cook" in the smokehouse, he said. The results underlined one of the major advantages of a detached smokehouse. The restaurant was unharmed. Briggs is currently cooking out of several large barrel cookers while the smokehouse is rebuilt.

I went inside the restaurant to try the ribs he was creating on the temporary set up. They were still pink to the bone with a great flavor, but they did have some unrendered fat and tough spots. A lot of people obsess over wanting fancy, high-priced gear for producing barbecue so let that be a lesson. The custom smokehouse makes noticeably better ribs than the barrel cookers in the right hands. But a talented pitmaster with three decades of experience can still wing it with a newly-improvised cooking rig and turn out pretty good ribs. On the other hand, a novice working with a well-seasoned, custom-built smokehouse can literally burn everything to the ground.

I recently spotted a bunch of barbecue cookers in front of the Vantage Point Golf Center on Macon in Cordova along with a banner announcing the arrival of the PC BBQ restaurant inside the center, which is down the street from the Morris Grocery that has been offering up massive, delicious barbecue sandwiches for decades.

Before I got a chance to stop in I got a message from owner Robert Jason Wiggs inviting me by. My first visit was about a month ago.

Wiggs competes in the Kansas City Barbeque Society circuit with his Pork Choppers team, which the restaurant was named after. After looking over the cookers in the parking lot I went inside to check out the menu. I ended up ordering a creation called the Monster Sandwich that packed pulled pork, sauce and slaw on top of a thick slice of barbecue bologna. The slaw was a really good, vinegar-based rendition that went well with the meat and sauce.

With no sides, the giant sandwich was enough food for a complete meal. If it doesn't look filling enough for you, the restaurant offers a bigger version called Eat the Pig. It has two of the thick bologna slices with three pounds of pulled pork and a serving of slaw. It sells for $29.99, but eat it in less than 30 minutes and it is free.

After being impressed by the sandwich I went for the dry rub ribs on my second visit, ordered with sauce on the side and side orders of beans and slaw. It was a perfect spring day so I took my order of food out to the outdoor tables on the patio behind the golf center to enjoy a lunch next to the driving range.

The slaw was just as good the second time around and the beans were a solid representation. The dry rub added some great flavor to the ribs, although they didn't have the smoke flavor I was expecting based on the barrel cookers outside. They had a good meaty but tender texture and the fat was well-rendered, I was just hoping for more of a smoke presence based on the outdoor competition cookers. I tend to use sauce sparingly with ribs, preferring to enjoy the natural flavors of the meat, but the sauce on the side was still good enough for me to dip several of my ribs in it before eating them.

Around the corner from PC BBQ there is an empty barbecue restaurant that seems to be a bit of a cursed location. In the nearly three nears I have been writing this blog it has been home to a Reggi's franchise and places called Pure Glaze and Southern Smoke. I'm pretty sure a big part of the problem has been owners who went in underestimating the competition they would face from the humble-looking Morris Grocery up the street.

PC BBQ has a much more visible location and offers enough unique items and setting to make me hope it can enjoy its own niche despite its proximity to the Morris Grocery. I don't golf, but I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch in the sun next to the driving range. For an avid golfer, the chance to hit a bucket of golf balls and then enjoy some barbecue on a lunch break would be even more of a treat.

On Tuesday I stopped in for a tour of the new Memphis Barbeque supply store at 7124 Stage Road in the same shopping center as Ty's Bar-B-Q Smokehouse following an invitation from owner Jimmy Shotwell. The store's grand opening will be Friday May 2 and there will be vendors providing cooker and sauce demonstrations all day Saturday.

Shotwell worked as a distribution manager for Lowe's hardware for a decade. Lowe's sells cookers and grilling supplies along with a small but fairly nice selection of sauces and rubs. But Shotwell was aiming to create a store that offered everything a barbecue cook would need, except for the meat itself, under one roof.

The store offers an impressive selection of lump charcoal and natural, all-hardwood briquettes. One of his suppliers is the Charcoal Store on Florida Street in South Memphis, so customers can purchase any of the quality charcoal varieties found at the Charcoal store without having to venture out to the locally infamous "part of South Memphis where the streets are named after states."

If you frequent Memphis-area barbecue restaurants like Payne's, A&R and Tops you may have noticed the stacks of Chef's Delight charcoal. The brand is specially made by the Royal Oak charcoal company for the Charcoal Store and is used by most of the restaurants in Memphis with old-fashioned charcoal pits. It is also available locally at Charlie's Meat Market on Summer and in Easy Way produce stores.

Memphis Barbeque Supply also offers a huge selection of locally-sourced hardwoods and fruit woods.

You can purchase loose wood by the pound if you are wanting to experiment with new flavor profiles.

Shotwell offers a wide variety of cookers, both upright and horizontal. Whatever your fuel preference, from charcoal to wood to hardwood pellets, he can take care of you. Along with his career at Lowe's he has competed in both the Memphis and Kansas City barbecue circuits and he knows his cookers. He is passionate about barbecue and his store reflects it.

The store offers a huge variety of sauces and rubs, many of them from well-known local names like Jim Neely, the Rendezvous, the Bar-B-Q Shop, Hog Wild Catering, and the two-time Memphis in May grand champion Sweet Swine O' Mine team.

If you prefer crawfish or catfish to barbecue, Memphis Barbeque Supply also has a large selection of fryers and low country cookers.

There is also an entire wall devoted to all the miscellaneous accessories needed for any type of outdoor cooking.

The cooking accessories offered include spatulas emblazoned with the logos of local sports teams like the Tigers, Grizzlies, Titans, Saints, and some other team that shall remain nameless.

From the cookers to the charcoal to the seasonings, everything I saw for sale at Memphis Barbeque Supply was top quality and competitively priced. Browsing around made my wallet burn to upgrade from my own cheapo Brinkmann cooker. The store offers a unique opportunity to pick any equipment or fuel you need for creating your own barbecue while supporting a locally-owned small business with an owner who genuinely cares about helping you cook the best barbecue possible within your budget.

I posted a month ago about the pit fire that devastated the smokehouse behind the South Memphis location of A&R Bar-B-Q on Elvis Presley Boulevard. At the time I was pleased to see that work had already started to rebuild around the foundation and old steel pits salvaged from the fire. When I stopped by yesterday I was impressed by the dramatic amount of progress the construction crew had made in just four weeks. It looks like the old pits will be back in action in no time.

While waiting for the pits in the smokehouse to be back up and running the restaurant has been relying on an assortment of outdoor barrel cookers. Last month I mentioned that while the barbecue coming from the improvised set up was still okay, it wasn't as good as what generally came from the smokehouse. Over the past month it seems like the A&R folks have gotten the barrel cookers completely figured out. I got a pulled pork plate with beans, slaw and a hot tamale for lunch yesterday. The shoulder meat was superb, with a smoke ring that looked two inches deep. I'm glad to see the restaurant bouncing back so quickly from initially looked like a major setback. Having a rural-style smokehouse a few miles south of downtown inside a major city is something truly special.

On a final note, my soon-to-be-released book that I mentioned in the post about the smokehouse fire, Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce and Soul, will be out earlier than expected. It will be released June 10. I will be reading from the book and signing copies at the Booksellers at Laurelwood at 6 p.m. June 12. And on Friday, June 27 there will be a release party at the Hi-Tone where pitmaster Richard Forrest will cook a whole hog and local musicians the Dead Soldiers, Switchblade Kid and Clay Otis will all be performing.

Thursday night my wife and I stopped by the old Tennessee Brewery for the six-week Untapped event. Like the Crosstown Sears building I recently toured, Memphians have been hoping for decades that someone could come up with a viable plan to bring the old brewery building back to life.

The Untapped pop-up event features a creative redecoration of the space using found materials along with vendors selling craft beers, food trucks and portable toilets for restrooms. After enjoying a few beers at the brewery building along with some tacos at one of the food trucks present we moved on to Overton Square, where I ran into my old friend, chef David Scott Walker, who is in the process of opening a pork and beer-centered German restaurant called Schweinehaus on the Square in the old Paulette's building.

My wife and I live a short bike ride away from the Square and have immensely enjoyed its ongoing revitalization. And like most people who spend time there, we have been very excited about the new restaurant. Walker gave me a tour of the space Thursday night, which will include a communal beer hall and an outdoor beer garden. It will be a great space, where I can't wait to kick back with a sausage and a nice lager.

But touring the Schweinehaus space also made it apparent how difficult it will be to redevelop the old brewery building. The grandiose old building is an incredible space with a lot of history, but it is also a huge space that has been empty since 1954. Schweinehaus is opening in the building that housed Paulette's until it relocated to Harbor Town in 2011 after 37 years on the Square. Because Paulette's had been grandfathered on so many code issues while it was open, Walker has had to completely gut the space; digging up all the plumbing and building a new kitchen and bathrooms from scratch to get everything up to code.

So as you look through the photos below, the pics from the brewery will make you hope it can be filled with permanent tenants. Meanwhile, the pics from Schweinehaus will give you an idea of just how much work it can take to get a relatively small building, which was still a fully operational restaurant three years ago, up to code and reopened. It really puts the amount of money it would take to bring the brewery building back to life into perspective.

Also, one final thought to go with this photo series. A recent post on the Strong Town's blog addressed some of the concerns I've had driving around the city over the years. The design of the old Tennessee Brewery and Paulette's buildings, and the design of the neighborhoods around them, makes us value them and want to see them preserved. Suburban sprawl has brought blight to a lot of older Memphis neighborhoods like North Memphis, South Memphis, Binghampton and Orange Mound. But the design of those neighborhoods has allowed them to maintain their functionality, character and sense of community despite their struggles with poverty and blight. And all those communities have seen some positive turnaround in recent years.

As blight spreads to more recently-developed neighborhoods like Fox Meadows and Hickory Hill along Winchester, things look much more bleak. They were developed around a model of cul de sac neighborhoods that require residents to drive to large commercial developments on main roads to do anything. As modern large commercial developments go empty, and as houses go vacant in coves that don't connect to anything, there is no underlying sense of utility or style that will make future generations want to roll up their sleeves and put in the work to bring them back to life. No one looks at the rectangle, cinder block shell of a former big box retailer sitting behind a sea of cracked asphalt and daydreams possible uses for it the way they do the old brewery building sitting on the edge of the street in a historic neighborhood.

Every writer has a handful of books they consider truly life changing. I've been greatly inspired by books on a lot of subjects, but in the world of food there are two titles that truly stand out to me as the most important modern works on the subject. Those books are Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. On Tuesday night Pollan was a guest speaker at Crosstown Arts in Midtown, where he discussed and signed copies of his newest book Cooked.

Pollan's new book includes an in-depth discussion of whole hog barbecue and the event included a tremendous spread of locally-sourced barbecue and sides created by St. Jude chef Miles McMath. It was a truly remarkable meal.

Tickets to the meal portion of the event were only $20, which was an incredible bargain for a selection of locally-sourced barbecue that included all-you-can eat barbecue from sources that included a Newman Farm pig and a wild Mississippi hog.

Despite the array of outstanding food, meeting with Pollan was the obvious highlight of the evening. His writing provides a captivating look at the history, philosophy, morals and culture behind the food choices we make. I got the chance to thank him firsthand for his inspiration. Reading The Omnivore's Dilemma started me on the path to creating this blog and writing my own book; Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce and Soul.

The always-entertaining Deering and Down provided music during the dinner.

After discussing and reading from his new book, Pollan (left) sat for a question and answer session with McMath before answering questions from the audience. Along with Cooked and The Omnivore's Dilemma Pollan also wrote the excellent books In Defense of Food and A Botany of Desire. In Defense of Food is a much shorter, easier to read follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma. Meanwhile Gary Taubes, who I mentioned earlier in the post, also followed-up his fascinating door-stopper of a masterwork, Good Calories, Bad Calories, with a much shorter and easier to read book titled Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. It is interesting that both men ultimately followed extremely in-depth and groundbreaking works with books that revisited the same subject in a simplified manner aimed at a broader audience. While both of the later books are more accessible, neither should be considered "dumbed down" in a negative sense if someone is looking for a good starting point with either author without diving straight into the deep end of the pool.

During the months I was working on my soon-to-be-released book I built up a backlog of new restaurants I need to post about. Two new barbecue joints have popped up in Jackson, TN, recently -- West Alley Bar-B-Q & Smokehouse and Diddy's Bar-B-Que. I've already been impressed by the abundance of good barbecue in Jackson, which makes deciding where to eat a difficult decision when I am working there.

I first noticed West Alley Bar-B-Q a few months ago on the same section of Main Street in downtown Jackson where the short-lived Heavenly Diner was located. The Heavenly Diner didn't just close; it seemingly disappeared, building and all. I was driving down the street looking for it, wondering if I'd lost my mind, when I noticed the banners for West Alley Bar-B-Q near the gravel lot where the Diner had been.

When I pulled up to park beside the building I immediately noticed a man cooking pork shoulders in a couple of barrel cookers appropriately located in the alley beside the restaurant. The building obviously served as a garage in a previous life and since the weather was nice the front bay doors were open, creating an open-air open air juke joint vibe.

The restaurant has a stage and a bar and obviously serves as a nightclub/music venue at night. The daytime atmosphere was relaxed and inviting, making it a pleasant place to grab lunch. The menu also includes other Southern foods like catfish, but I'd already smelled shoulder cooking in the parking lot so I ordered a shoulder plate with beans and slaw.

Everything on the plate was good, although nothing was spectacular. the sauce was a little sweeter than I prefer, but it was used sparingly enough that it wasn't a problem. It was a solid enough meal that combined with the friendly service and sunlight coming through the open bay doors I'll gladly stop back by for another shoulder plate anytime I'm nearby at lunchtime on a pleasant day.

I won't order a rib plate from West Alley again, which is what I tried on my second visit. The cheap cut of spare ribs was tough and relatively flavorless other than the overly sweet sauce it was drenched in. The restaurant is just west of Highway 45, and anytime I'm in Jackson for work I travel the section of highway that takes me north from the area around West Alley past Back Yard Bar-Be-cue and Latham's Meat Company, both of which offer far superior ribs.

Further south of West Alley on Highway 45 I discovered another source of outstanding ribs when I stopped in at the newly-opened Diddy's Bar-B-Que. I had been familiar with the Diddy's name for years due to an intriguing sign I'd noticed for years in an empty lot next to a supermarket on Highway 45 just south of South Side High School.

The sign had always announced that barbecue was available in the lot on Friday and Saturday nights, weather permitting. Naturally I'd always been curious about the set up, but I was never in Jackson on a weekend night to check it out. Then about a month ago I saw that the sign had been changed to announce that Diddy's was moving into a permanent restaurant location a little further down the street just south of the Super Wal-Mart.

The restaurant wasn't open yet on that day, but on Wednesday I checked back and saw a parking lot full of cars so I pulled in to sample the food at the humble-looking little metal building. I was already confident the food would be pretty good, since the owner wouldn't be opening a restaurant unless he had built up a solid base of customers willing to go to an empty lot on weekend nights to eat his food.

I decided to skip the easier-to-cook shoulder meat and go straight for my ultimate test of a barbecue joint, a dry rib plate with beans and slaw. When I ordered I got hit with a question that threw me off for a minute -- "Ketchup or mayo slaw?" Ketchup slaw? In all my life of Southern eating I'd never heard of ketchup slaw. I ordered the mayo-based with my meal, then thought about it for a second and asked if I could get a small sample of the ketchup slaw.

I normally prefer vinegar or mustard based slaws to ones dominated by mayo. The ketchup slaw had a nice vinegar bite to it, but the sweet ketchup taste that accompanied it made it a little off-putting when eaten by itself while waiting for the rest of my food. I'm not a big fan of ketchup other than using a little of it on foods like French fries and burgers so I wasn't surprised that a serving of cabbage coated with it just seemed wrong to me. But I have friends who love piling ketchup on everything, to the extent of seeking out Canadian ketchup-flavored potato chips, so I could see where some people would love it.

The rib plate with the mayo slaw looked much more like what I was used to. And the beans and slaw on it were pretty standard renditions. The ribs didn't look like they were anything fancy either, until I tore into them. They were incredibly juicy with a deep smoke ring. The meat pulled clean from the bones but still maintained a nice, meaty texture. The outer bark had a delicious pepper flavor. They were everything I look for in great ribs, meaning my dilemma of deciding where to eat ribs when I'm in Jackson just got even more difficult.

Coleman's Bar-B-Q was one of the biggest names in Memphis-area barbecue in the '60s and '70s with locations throughout the Mid-south. You can still eat a great Coleman's sandwich at their locations on Millbranch and in Hernando. And you can read about the chain's rise and fall in my new book on Memphis barbecue. A good number of the former Coleman's locations still survive today, cooking with the old brick and steel charcoal pits at places like Captain John's in Collierville and Showboat in Hickory Hill.

I recently revisited two former Coleman's locations that reopened in what became longtime home's to other barbecue joints. Moma's B-B-Q in Bartlett suffered a devastating last year that forced a major renovation while the former Barb-A-Rosa in Millington, which also started life as a Coleman's, reopened as Smokin D's Pit Stop.

The old Barb-A-Rosa building on Highway 51 went through a major renovation to get it up to code after Barb-A-Rosa's closed, thus ending the grandfathered status the building had enjoyed on numerous code issues. I have posted a couple times about the disappointing experiences I've had when I've eaten at Barb-A-Rosa. And I've had several readers argue that their experiences with the restaurant had always been great.

I recently got some clarification on the differences in opinions from some friends who work near the restaurant. Apparently Barb-A-Rosa served quality barbecue for a couple decades, before the woman who owned it was sadly diagnosed with cancer. After that multiple people tried running the place for short periods of time, but none of them lasted very long. All my experiences eating there were in the building's final period under the Barb-A-Rosa name, but I never ate there when the original owner was in charge, serving what I have been told was top-notch barbecue.

The new owner, who rebranded the place Smokin D's, spent months updating the building while I kept an eye on it every time I was in Millington, waiting for a chance to give the new place a try. I finally saw the open sign in the window a couple weeks ago and stopped in to order a shoulder plate with beans and slaw.

Everything was impressive. The beans had huge pieces of meat in them. The chunky mayo slaw paired well the charcoal-cooked Boston butt meat that had a nice mix of textures from the outer bark and inner meat. I ordered the hot barbecue sauce on the side and while the meat was good enough to eat without it, I still enjoyed dipping bites in it.

One thing I noticed on the menu that intrigued me was the Chicago-style hot dog. My same friends who told me about the original Barb-A-Rosa's owner happened to be having lunch when I stopped in and they informed me the Smokin D's owner was related to the owner of the old Jimmy's Hot Dogs in Bartlett. I could see tubs of homemade vegetable-heavy hot dog dressing on the counter, so I stopped back in later the same day for a hobbit-style "second lunch." There are two dressings -- a mild and a hot. I ordered the jalapeno-heavy hot and it was an impressive dog for a little over $3. It was a large dog served on a massive bun, although I discarded the bun to eat the hot dog and dressing with a fork.

The next time I stopped in I ordered ribs, which are served wet. Some of my favorite wet ribs come from a former Coleman's location in Collierville called Captain John's so I had high hopes. These looked great and the taste and texture wasn't bad, but they didn't measure up against the ribs at Old Timers and Pig-N-Whistle*, so when I am in Millington wanting ribs I'll stick to those places. But I will be a repeat customer for the pork shoulder plate.

Like Barb-A-Rosa, Moma's is another place I've knocked in the past. But after their recent fire and rebuild I decided to give them another chance. I'm glad I did. It is interesting to note that, despite the old charcoal-only pit, the fire was caused by a fryer, not the barbecue pit.

Since Moma's, like the Coleman's that preceded it, is primarily a "sandwich shop" I basically ordered a deconstructed sandwich meal by getting shoulder plate with slaw and fries, which came with a toasted bun. The pulled pork was completely different than the disappointing finely chopped, somewhat tough, meat I'd had in the past. The mix of textures was fantastic. Along with the inner meat and bark there was a nice ratio of smoked skin. Smoked and charred skin adds an amazing extra element to barbecue and is something you don't find in many Memphis-area barbecue joints.

There was one large piece of unrendered fat that was easy to avoid while eating a pile of meat with a fork. I can see where it could catch someone eating a sandwich off guard, but it would be well-worth the few seconds it would take to discreetly spit it out for the otherwise perfect mixture of shoulder meat served on my plate. The sauce was offered in hot and mild. I'd ordered the hot and on this trip it was a perfect accompaniment. The fries and slaw were also solid. I ended up scooping most of the slaw on top of the meat to eat them together.

This was good barbecue. I've had plenty of not good barbecue from Moma's in the past, so I'm not sure what changed after the fire, but I know I'm not imagining things. I noticed that ribs had been dropped from the menu. I've had some really bad ribs from Moma's in the past. In fact, I specifically went to Moma's because my dad wasn't able to join me for lunch. I'd been meaning to retry Moma's and the nearby Baby Jack's for months, since Moma's had rebuilt and I noticed Baby Jack's recently added a real barbecue pit to the side of its building. But I usually take my dad to lunch when I am in that part of town and both places have served him bad barbecue a couple of times. He still talks about his memories of some terrible ribs he had from Moma's years ago. My dad is a firm believer that if your restaurant has served him bad barbecue more than once you are dead to him, while I am more willing to offer a later chance.

Basically, I don't know if rebuilding after a fire caused some big change in cooking philosophy at Moma's. I just know the meal I ate Tuesday was way better than anything I've had there in the past. It was fairly perfect shoulder meat. So if you've ever had a bad experience there, go give the place a second chance.

*Since my initial post about the Millington Pig-N-Whistle I've since tried their ribs "muddy" and highly recommend a trip there to try their ribs in this uniquely Memphis sauce-with-dry-rub style.

While my wife and I were sharing a barbecue pizza at the Coletta's on South Parkway last night I realized I have somehow neglected to post about this signature Memphis dish. When Coletta's began offering barbecue pizza in the 1950s it made Memphis one of the first cities in the U.S., following New York and Chicago, where pizza was served.

I tell the full history of this delicious dish in my new book about Memphis barbecue. While I was interviewing owner Jerry Coletta a few months ago for my book he took me into his restaurant's kitchen to follow the process that goes into making one of his barbecue pies. While I was there I took way more photos than I had room for in the book, so I decided to share some of the outtakes here so people can see why the original barbecue pizza is so superior to the countless "barbecue pizza" offerings that now appear on restaurant menus across the country.

Shoulders cooking in the barbecue pit in the Coletta's basement. A lot of places offering "barbecue pizza" today are topping their pies with grilled chicken, then calling it barbecue because they also toss on some barbecue sauce. The Coletta's recipe for a barbecue pizza dates back to the 1950's, when anyone in Memphis understood that "barbecue" was supposed to mean barbecue.

A pizza oven uses extremely high temperatures to quickly cook the pies, which is the opposite of the slow and low approach used to make barbecue. If you put barbecue meat in a pizza oven you will quickly overcook it and dry it out. So how does Coletta's combine this two opposing cooking styles? By starting with a perfect, plain cheese and sauce pizza.

When the piping hot cheese pizza comes out of the oven it immediately gets a thick layer of fresh, hot pulled pork from the basement pit.

Then the pizza gets a good dose of the restaurant's homemade tomato-based barbecue sauce before heading out to the customer.It isn't a pizza with a little barbecue added as a topping. It is a cheese pizza completely covered with several inches of pulled pork.

Elvis Presley was a huge fan of the Coletta's barbecue pizzas. The back room he always requested is still designated the Elvis room and is full of Elvis memorabilia.

It has been just over three months since I posted pictures from inside the then-completely gutted former Paulette's space in Overton Square that is being reborn as Schweinehaus. In that short period of time the building has completely transformed into a German restaurant/beer hall with an outdoor beer garden.

The restaurant's grand opening will be in two weeks on September 1. But owner David Scott Walker is a longtime friend who I met my first day living on the University of Memphis campus as a college freshman back in 1997. So yesterday he invited me over to take a look inside, drink a few lagers and sample some menu items.

Walker isn't going to just put some sausages and sauerkraut on a menu and call his place a German restaurant. Sausages and sauerkraut will definitely be available, but he and chef David Todd are crafting a fairly extensive menu of well-executed German foods with enough options to make sure everyone from vegetarians to hardcore carnivores can enjoy themselves.

The restaurant is a true family business. I met Walker's brother, Andy Walker, that same day I arrived at the U of M in '97. Andy is a longtime bartender who will be running the bar at Schweinehaus while helping with the restaurant's operation. Andy and father Stan Walker also handbuilt all the restaurant's tables and benches.

When I posted pictures from inside the building three months ago there was nothing but dirt and trenches where old plumbing had been dug out where the brand new kitchen is now.

One of the dishes chef David Todd was experimenting with was a sauerbraten made with braised beef brisket.

Todd was also working on perfecting the restaurant's vegetarian Spätzle.

Both the dishes I tried yesterday were superb. I also sampled some pork shoulder, sausages, meatballs and fresh pretzels a few weeks earlier at the Walker household where the two chef Davids were working on menu items and getting familiar with the new smoker they purchased at Memphis Barbeque Supply for use at the restaurant.As someone who lives a short bicycle ride from Overton Square I've immensely enjoyed its recent resurgence. Schweinehaus is a great addition to the Square that fits in perfectly with the area's atmosphere while offering a unique experience from any of the other establishments there.

Hustle and Grind - Memphis

Grocery Shoppers, Stop With all the Damn Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast

Smoking at a Hickory Hill Strip Mall - More A&R

Pinich District Soul Food - Alcenia's

Dirty South Barbecue - Papa Chuck's

More Beale Street - Silky O' Sullivan's

Government Food Policies - Demanding Foxes Guard the Henhouse

A Barbecue Restaurant Inside Whole Foods - BBQ Shack

Spotting Good Barbecue in the Country - Macon Country Store

Photo Tour of the Crosstown Sears Building

Pit Fire at the A&R Smokehouse

Barbecue Joint on a Driving Range - PC BBQ

One-Stop Shopping at Memphis Barbeque Supply

Rising From the Ashes - A&R Smokehouse Update

Reviving Old Landmarks - Tennessee Brewery and Schweinehaus

Barbecue with Michael Pollan at Crosstown Arts

Two New Jackson, TN, Barbecue Joints - West Alley and Diddy's

Former Coleman's Locations Re-reborn - Smokin D's and Moma's

The Original Barbecue Pizza - Coletta's

Germany in Overton Square - Schweinehaus