Ronnie Killen is competing in the “Come and Take It!” BBQ competition this weekend in Gonzales. In July, he cooked in the Moulton Jamboree Cook-off. His team is doing pretty good–they have taken a couple of overall medals. He bought a new pit from Klose which he is still breaking…
Barbecue Top 10 lists, BBQ restaurant ratings, rib rankings and all the rest of it are, as the Buddhists would say, illusion. There is no best barbecue, anymore than there is a best symphony or a best painting. This website is about the art, the culture and the Zen of…
At Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, I found a display on the subject of political barbecues. In the election of 1840, Whig candidate William Henry Harrison threw barbecues and held parades instead of debating such national problems as the expansion of slavery and the establishment of a national…
Shayne Carter was tending the pit at Kenney Hall when I got there on the morning of the 4th of July. This was his first year helping out at the Kenney community barbecue. Beef shoulder clods, mutton, and pork butts were the meats being cooked. I had recently seen Carter…
I took my family to the annual Father’s Day BBQ in Millheim, Texas yesterday. The event is a fundraiser for the old German dance hall built by the Millheim Harmonie Verien, a German music group founded in 1872. My daughter won a strawberry cake with cream cheese icing at the…
BBQ Summer Camp Counselers: From top left: Robb Walsh, Dr. Davey Griffin, Hoover Alexander, Dr. Jeff Savell, Dr. Elizabeth Englehardt, Mary Kimbrough, Ray Riley Kneeling: Thomas Larriviere, Daniel Vaughn, Marvin Bendele, bottom row: the hog. Saturday night’s dinner this year at Foodways Texas (FTX) BBQ Summer Camp was a traditional…
Corporate money and the cutthroat “do anything to win” attitude has ruined BBQ cook-offs. And artisan barbecue is becoming rare in restaurants. But cook-offs and restaurants aren’t where American barbecue came from anyway. The oldest barbecue tradition in America, the community barbecue, continues largely unnoticed in churches, clubs and lodge…
On Friday, March 23, Vencil Mares of Taylor Cafe in Taylor, Texas received the 2nd Annual Foodways Texas Lifetime Achievement Award at that organization’s symposium in Austin. In World War II, Vencil served as corpsman during the invasion of Normandy. When he got home, he took a job at Southside…
The Southern Foodways Alliance filmmaker, Joe York, has been working on a big project for the last few years. The feature length project formerly titled “Southern Food, The Movie” and now called “Pride & Joy” is nearing release. Looks like its going to be shown first on Public Television stations…
The “Brown Beef” (top), “Brown Pig” (center) and “Little Pig Ham” (bottom) are the three most popular sandwiches at Neely’s Sandwich Shop on East Grand Avenue in Marshall, Texas. The first is made with chopped barbecued brisket and sells for $2.85, the last is made with sliced barbecued ham and…
