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Published: November 30th 2015
Red Bridge's BBQ
Mmm that BBQ platter, chopped meat, baked beans, a red slaw and basket of the best, darn hushpuppies I've ever eaten. Washed down with some sweet tea, as is the Southern way!Barbeque. Barbecue. BBQ. No matter the spelling, like a number of other American heritage foods, it has re-emerged onto the food scene carrying along new wave of smoked meat connoisseurship. Regional variations have always existed and been hotly debated - the whole hog of the Carolinas, beef in Texas, dry rubs or tomato sauces or vinegar marinades - but I've often found the search for the superlative "best" to be a largely futile one. For what we imaginatively decided to dub the "BBQ Tour" the rules were simple: three days to make it round-trip, only eat at BBQ diners, try as many different styles and visit as many different iconic locations as possible. No judgements, only assessments. The impetus for the trip was largely just to get away, and after crowd-sourcing possible destinations, a quick loop through the mid-Appalachians was the winner.
First up, dinner at Ridgewood BBQ. After driving for hours through the hills, in and out of small towns, we finally see an unassuming sign pointing right off the Hwy. A slight mist had begun to fall, as we wound our way through the woods, and then, abruptly, we find ourselves in a veritable parking lot,
Cords of Wood
Stacks and leading up to the doorway of the smokehouse vehicles parked in any available space on both sides of the road. Ten minutes after opening and this place is already buzzing. Hickory smoke hangs heavy in the air from the roadside barbecue pits. Even the restaurant itself is constructed of hickory planks from the nearby forests. This is the real deal - no doubt about it.
We settle into a two-top near the back. Most of the diners are locals, regulars, and seem to know both the menu and the staff, so the service is brisk and to-the-point. Blue-cheese dip with crackers - I can't get enough, despite the odd feeling that I've just been instructed to dip packets of saltines into a bowl of salad dressing
as the actual dish, rather than out of hungry desperation while waiting for the main course. It's the pork platter for Andras and the pork sandwich for me, served with slaw on the bun as the default. Are we ready? Here we go. Taste. Chew. And .... it's smokey. And a little dry. Okay, it's pretty darn dry. But really smokey. Ridgewood hams are sliced, shaved almost, not pulled, then heated again on the griddle - I imagine this
Ridgewood BBQ
The aforementioned "blue cheese & crackers," baked beans in a crock and slaw. is where the dryness comes from. I'm accustom to pulled pork, so the texture is, again, distinct. Not in a bad way, just in an unfamiliar way. The baked beans are smokey too, served in a miniature crock. Really good. The verdict? It's unique - taking the term "smoked meat" to a new level, certainly. Another experience for the books, and a BBQ style we can honestly say we'd never had before. We buy a bottle of smokey sauce for the road.
Onward we drive through the Appalachians, down to the town of Marion for the night to start the next day in North Carolina, which - like Kansas or Texas - is one of the "barbecue states" known for it's signature regional style. As you move from the mountains to the coast, the sauce thins from thick tomato based to thin vinegars, and in the middle is Lexington style - a red vinegary, peppery sauce. Ever since we discovered this new (to us) barbeque sauce style in the
Outer Banks I have been yearning to try some of this this culinary masterpiece in its native habitat - the American Piedmont.
Next up, lunch at Red Bridge's Barbecue Lodge
The smokehouse
With smoke clearly visible, even in the rain in Shelby. The original 50's diner architecture and classic sign caught Andras' eye right away. The cords of stacked wood, leading up to the smokehouse, caught mine. But no time to linger and photograph as the parking lot is already packed; we need to get a table while we can. We decide to split a jumbo plate - chopped pork bbq, with slaw, bake beans, fries and hushpuppies. If you've never had a hushpuppy before, let me save you trouble of eating them anywhere else - just go here. For years, I thought hushpuppies were nothing more than brick-hard fried cornbread balls, dutifully accompanying any platter of fried fish but more useful as a weapon or jawbreaker. Not these - crisp on the outside, soft and light on the inside, packed with seasoned cornbread flavor. Hands down the show-stopper. But the barbecue and slaw are spot on as well. Not too sweet, with the right amount of spice and acidic kick. We end up buying several bottles to take back. The meat itself just falls apart. What it lacks in smokiness it makes up for with a tender texture. You can request just the "outside brown" - where the more
The menu at Red Bridge's
Such reasonable prices! proximate exposure to the high heat of the wood caramelizes the sugars in the meat and concentrates the rich-smoky-pork flavor - so we opt for half and half, which makes for the perfect ratio.
This is twice, now, that we've been served coleslaw with the meat, a combination I was previously unaware of. To my mind, coleslaw is this thick, gloppy side dish best avoided, but lately here - like the barbeque - it's acidic and tangy, replacing tomato, sugar and vinegar for the mayonnaise. Don't mind if I do! We order another kilo of meat to go, convincing ourselves that it will most definitely make it back home and that we won't instead snack on the meaty goodness all the way down the interstate, which of course is exactly what we do.
We're entering into a bit of a bbq coma by the time we hit Nashville, but, champions that we are, head out for an encore at Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint. We chose Martin's for its proximity to where we were when we got tired of driving for the day, to be honest, but it also added some diversity to our itinerary. Both Ridgewood and Bridge's were
what you might call "the classics" - passed down through generations and generating a following through longevity and word-of-mouth. Martin's is a 21st century BBQ chain, situated in a commercial strip-mall and made popular by cable-tv. Still, each day they slowly pit-roast a whole hog. Martin's definitely had that fast-casual feel, right down to offering a wide variety of "regional" sauces, as opposed to just the one perfected. Andras ordered the ribs and I had the "redneck" taco - pulled pork barbecue, with slaw served atop a hoecake (corn griddle cake - like a pancake, made of corn). Everything was fine, though somewhat indistinguishable from other city barbecues.
We have planned to hit up some mutton barbeque in Owensboro Kentucky, but turns out it doesn't take long of living off a diet of smoked meat and cabbage to really appreciate all the other pleasures of mid-summer (like fresh tomatoes, corn and watermelon), so instead we drove straight back to Lexington for a little R&R before the work-week started back up. So there it is - a quick sampling of the regional BBQ styles closer to home. Most importantly, it's our first blog posted in a little under two years!
That's right, folks, we're back!
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Welcome back...
I understand that you now live in Kentucky. We hope to hear much more from you, catching up to the present!