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Published: December 26th 2008
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Suggested Listening for this Entry: Some Little Milton from his days on the Malaco Record Label in the 1990's and the early 2000's. Start with "The Blues is Alright", "Annie Mae's Cafe", "A Juke Joint in My House" and "She Know How to Wear a Hat". (A video clip from earlier in Little Milton's career is included at the end of this entry.)
Suggested Food and Drink for this Entry: Anything you can smoke and cover in barbecue sauce. You’ll soon discover why.
D.C. area blues guitarist Linwood Taylor once told me “it ain’t a party unless the cops come”. Well, my visit to Jim Neely’s Interstate Barbecue with Ips and the Player made me think of a twist on Linwood’s thought, “it ain’t a trip to a barbecue joint unless you leave covered in sauce”. Just ask Ips.
Our stop at the Interstate Barbecue was actually our last scheduled stop in Memphis. After a day of taking in all things Elvis with trips to Graceland and Sun Studios, I was ready to throw down on some ‘Q before taking the fellas to the airport and heading north in the Suzuki SUV. We pulled up in front of
Ips Studies the Menu
while thinking "what can I order that will cause me to get the most sauce stains on myself". the Interstate’s 2265 S. 3rd Street location around 4:00 p.m., not knowing the gluttony that awaited Ips and me.
Jim Neely opened the Interstate Barbecue, at its 3rd Street location, in 1979. Neely, who owned several successful insurance agencies throughout the south, opened the Interstate and an accompanying grocery store with his son who had recently been discharged from the army. At the time, the neighborhood around the Interstate was somewhat seedy and Neely often tells stories of using his .38 caliber pistol and a billy club to keep the undesirables away from the Interstate. The grocery store stayed open until 1989, when Neely decided to use the space occupied by the store as an extra dining room for the Interstate. In 1994, Neely added another room to the Interstate to bring its seating capacity up to 275 to meet a continually increasing demand.
Since it’s opening in 1979, the Interstate has used closed pits to cook its meats. In general, all the meats are smoked for five hours in one of the closed pits prior to being served. With this knowledge, it was time for us to order.
The Interstate’s menu includes pork ribs, beef ribs,
The BBQ Sampler
Beef ribs, pork ribs, pork shoulder, beef brisket, smoked sausage. Not pictured is the BBQ spaghetti, beans, slaw and bread included with the platter. pulled pork, beef brisket, smoked turkey, smoked sausage and barbecued chicken. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the barbecue salad and the barbecue spaghetti. So, with sauce on so many foods, we had plenty to choose from. I was thoroughly confused as to what to order until I spotted the menu item that would satisfy most all my curiosities about the Interstate, the Sampler Platter.
The Sampler Platter came with pork ribs, beef ribs, smoked sausage, pork shoulder, beef brisket, BBQ spaghetti, beans, slaw and bread. And, all for an affordable $16! Ips and I decided we should pull out all the stops for our last meal in Memphis and ordered the Sampler Platter, while the Player showed restraint and went with an ordinary sized menu item.
While we waited the short time for our meals to be served, we wandered around the dining rooms in the Interstate checking out the autographed pictures left by the many celebrities who have dined at the Interstate. The pictures cut a wide swath across American culture, but I paid close attention to two of the them, pro wrestling impresario Jimmy “the Mouth of the South” Hart and the aforementioned Memphis musical legend,
Jmmy Hart
If he ate at the Interstate more often, he'd be able to wrestle instead of being a big talking manager. Rufus Thomas. My thought upon seeing the Jimmy Hart picture was “I wonder if this ‘Q was good enough to get him to shut up for a while?”. My thoughts when I saw the Rufus Thomas photo were more along the lines of “this is a proper way to end my time in Memphis…BBQ and a final visit with a Memphis legend”.
I have to admit I was shocked when our meals arrived. I expected to Sampler Platter to be big, but in no way did I expect the food to be stacked several inches high on my plate (and that did not include the BBQ spaghetti, beans, slaw and bread that were served on the side!). With the plates in front of us, we dug in and the sauce started flying. I have no idea how The Player escaped being part of the collateral damage during the melee, but he walked out unscathed by the terror Ips and I inflicted on those Sampler Platters. After eating as much of my food as I could (yes, I left some on my plate), I headed to the restroom to try to get as much sauce off me as I could.
Rufus Thomas
I get one last visit the Memphis legend. Luckily, my sauce stains were on skin. Ips wasn’t as lucky. As we walked out to the SUV after finishing up in the Interstate, I noticed Ips had sauce all over him. His shirt and shorts really got the worst of it. A lot of jokes were made about him flying back to D.C. in such a condition as we headed to the airport. Hopefully, the airline folks wouldn’t think he was bleeding.
I liked Jim Neely’s Interstate Barbecue a lot and I definitely suggest having a meal (and a half) there if you're in Memphis, or even driving through on I-55 (it's not far from the interstate).
It’s hard to compare the Interstate to the other Memphis barbecue legend I visited, the Rendezvous. The two places had totally different vibes. The Rendezvous was definitely “downtown” while the Interstate was “down home”. At the Rendezvous, you get dry ribs and the use of sauce is up to you. At the Interstate, the sauce is everywhere, including all over you if you’re not careful. But, I can make one valid comparison. At the Interstate, I got over twice the amount of food I got at the Rendezvous for roughly
the same amount of money.
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