Bill's Barbeque Review

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.

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