Bill's Barbeque Review

Sick Pigs, Sick Us?

Have you ever felt like you were caught between Scylla and Charybdis, those two islands in the Bermuda Triangle, where one has a volcano and the other's got a water park that's never been inspected?  I'm talking about my last post ("Healthier Pigs, Sicker Us?") and my point is, if making pigs healthy causes people to get FLESH-EATING BACTERIA!!!! and if au contraire you let the pigs be and they catch the flu which causes people to catch flu too and some of them (mostly here illegally anyway) sicken and die, what do you do?
I'll take my chances with the swine flu every time.  Besides, if you can trust the government, they say you can't catch the swine flu from pigs, even though pigs are swine (Google it if you don't believe me).
Unless-- (and I don't know how big an "unless" this is for you, in your personal situation, which I do not presume to judge) --unless you go doing something you shouldn't do with pigs.  Such as not using hand sanitizer after you load up your smoker, or things of that nature.

Healthier pigs, sicker us?

Pigs in this country get better health care than we do (up to a point, that is).  Nobody particularly wants to eat pork from a sick pig --but that's why you slow cook 'em.  (Anyhow, treyf is treyf, and all the antibiotics in the world ain't gonna change that.)

Feeding antibiotics to pigs is contributing bigtime to MRSA, which claims 18,000 human lives a year in the U.S. --more than AIDS does.  MRSA is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and it is spreading, according to the Union of Concerned Barbeque-fancying Scientists, as confirmed by a recent National Institute of Hog-eaters Heath study.  You've heard of super-bugs, and FLESH EATING BACTERIA!!!! --this is where they come from.  

Lord, have MRSA.  We don't want it.

Other BBQ lighters, step aside

Don't you hate it when you can't get your coals to light?  Bill does.  Finally, a product, built for this purpose, that commands respect.  Are you feeling lucky today, Chunk?  Are you?  (Child-resistant, too!)

Barbecue Explained

I thank my good buddy John Tanner for this link to a musical explanation of what's distinctive about the barbecue of the several states.  I think it is pretty good, though I'd never heard of much less tried Alabama mayonnaise-based barbecue sauce.  And I think these tarheel boys need to own up to their barbarous practice of plopping coleslaw on barbecue meat.  John responds:

There are a few places that have white sauce-- I've been to one in Cahaba Heights.  It isn't really bad -- has some vinegar and isn't cloyingly sweet. It goes better with French fries.

The cole slaw is a bad idea, but at least in NC the places I've been to make cole slaw with only chopped cabbage and vinegar-based sauce.  It ends up being mostly texture.  The real crime is that it has led others to put cole slaw made with mayonnaise, sugar, pickles, onions, celery salt and all sorts of other distractions -- usually on top of faux barbecue.  I do not favor the death penalty as a rule, but there are some things people just shouldn't do.

Readers should note that the death penalty is still applied in every bona fide barbecue jurisdiction in America.  Coincidence?

O Brothers, Where Art Thou?

Two Brothers Bar-B-Que
Near Ball Ground, Georgia
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
735-2900

Off the beaten path, and then another 200 yards.  Tucked away just off GA 5/372, one mile north of Ball Ground, on the way toward Jasper.   The meat is brisket, slightly smoked, dressed with a vinegar-based sauce, a bit too liberally applied.  The skin-on fries are cooked in peanut oil!  Decor of rural artifacts presented a la musee archeologique --what Cracker Barrel aspires to but does not achieve.  A huge mountain trout is mounted up over the cash register.  If you don't get why a restaurant that serves no seafood would have a fish on prominent display, you have no business eating barbecue.  An enigmatic, faded print of the Mona Lisa hangs amongst vintage firarms and farm tools.  The puddin'-filled chocolate pie and the trout put this reviewer in mind of Ollies, and those dear, dead days beyond recall.

Rating: 

Bob? That you?

Bad Bob's Barbecue Restaurant
2340 Atlanta Highway (Hy 9, in Pine Tree Village Shopping Center)
Cumming, GA 30040
678 519 9700
www.badbobs11.com

The name says it all.  Well, half the name.  Two guesses which.
Meat ("Boston Butt," as if "Boston" weren't bad enough) is on the dry side, unsauced, but nicely stringy with some almost burnt ends.  Don't like it dry?  Well, Bob has thought about that, and put out squeeze bottles of "Hot" and "Special" sauces, "made with jellies, honeys and other fine ingredients" like High Fructose Corn Syrup (listed #3 on the label), brown sugar, and molasses.   

 

The french  fries were dusted with some kind of powdered chili spice.  The thirsty will be glad to know that Bob's is fully licensed, the hurried that he has a drive-thru window.

Rating: P(assable) for the sweet-tooth, all others pass on by.

Bill's Barbeque Review World Map

How many times has it happened to you?  You get excited about a new barbeque place you've heard about and then get lost trying to find it.  Or, worse, you find a place you like but can't remember where it was.  Help is here, thanks to Google Maps.

Category Mistake

What's too silly to be said can be sung.  And what's too silly to sing can be sold.  Or at least offered for sale.  Check out the "BBQPIG Lil' Pig": 
a mere $1600.00, from Traeger Industries.  Traeger asks: "Is it 'Art Deco'" or is it a barbecue?"  And indeed the resemblance to the Chrysler Building is hard to mistake.   The maker's claim that "this grill is sure to raise a 'squeal' from your guests" need not be disputed.   All it seems to lack is a tow-bar for hauling behind our Nieman Marcus Edition Lincoln Blackwood pickup truck.  [Thanks to Gizmodo for the pointer.]

"The New Q"

Bill knows there is a fine line between righteous traditionalism (good) and ornery atavism (not quite as good).  He just isn't sure where it is.  Bill does know that he had some fine barbecue this afternoon at the Slow Food Atlanta and Heritage Foods USA first annual BBQ benefit  for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.  Bill did have to swivel his head more than a couple of times to get a close look at some of the "Twists on Old School BBQ" served up there.  For instance, it had never occurred to him that somebody could drink wine with barbecue, unless maybe it was a Sunday and they were out of beer, which it was not.  And who'd of thought you could wrap barbecue meat in a little pancake and serve it that way?  It put Bill in mind of the Moo Shoe Pork that Missus Bill had got for him the other night at the Chinese take-away.  Anyway, Bill is for anything and everything akin to slow cooked, open-pit pig's meat.  His favorite today was some Utah-style barbecue served up by 5 Seasons North chef David Larkworthy.  What it says on the menu is "Sequatchie Cove Farm Cracklin' Scallion Whole Ossabaw Hog Crepe," and it was good. 

  The meat was tender, moist, and well-smoked, and you had three different sauces you could try on it: Chip-olay which they said was Mexican, Carrot (I kid you not), and the third which was the favorite was vinegar-based with some orange juice in it.  Chef Larkworthy's crew obliged Bill by sitting for a picture portrait that he took with his new camera that works fine when he remembers not to grab it by the front of it.   They are looking proud because it was just announced that they had won the First Annual Bill's Barbecue Review Golden Pig's Foot Award for the best tasting whatever-it-was that Bill liked so much.  Bill will not call it "Q".  If you can't say nor write out "BBQ" or "barbecue" or "bar-b-que" he feels sorry for you.  It may take a little longer but it will sound a lot better.  Slow Food folks shouldn't have to be told that.

Harold's

Harold's Barbecue
171 McDonough Blvd
Atlanta, GA

Rating:

Can you say "authennick"?  That's what Harold's is in any language, and has been since 1947.  Within wafting distance of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Harold's delivers, if only in the figurative sense. A basic pork sandwich can be had sliced or chopped.  Buns are not served at  Harold's.  If the idea of untoasted sliced white bread doesn't get it for you, be warned --you're doing yourself out of a treat.  The  French fries are  salty crinkle-cut greasers which nonetheless  are indistinguishable from those anywhere else, just as fries should be.  Harold's is located in a neighborhood that has mercifully been spared the modish horrors of gentrification-- thanks in part to the closure of the GM plant next door.

It is a hangout of the Guardians: police, prosecutors, custodial officials, and nonPopperian philosophers.

12 7 06