Kansas City BBQ Gets Its Due… In Chicago

Susie and I have made a bit of a name for ourselves among our friends here in Brooklyn for being BBQ nerds. Which is fine—I make some great ribs; she has a killer pulled pork recipe. But we often try to explain to our friends as they cram meat down their gullets why BBQ is so important to us, having both grown up in Kansas City.

Next time, I’ll just link them this great piece about KC BBQ by Donna Pierce for the Chicago Tribune. It’s worth the time to read, but here are a couple early highlights:

Located midway between two barbecue bastions — Memphis and Texas — the city borrows from those destinations: slow-cooking pork ribs seasoned with a dry rub, a la Memphis, and the beef brisket, hot links and ham from Texas. But it also adds pulled pork topped with coleslaw in the Carolina-style and trimmed lamb ribs in the Denver tradition.

That’s such an important factor in Kansas City’s BBQ culture. It isn’t so much that KC has a particular style—although the obsession about sauces, including the common spicy-sweet hybrids, may be unique—but that BBQ in all its forms is lauded and embraced.

And it’s not just all styles that are welcomed, but BBQ both low and high. Kansas City is the only town I know that has a chain of fast-food BBQ restaurants (”Gates”; HimayIhepyou?!) as well as fine-dining BBQ establishments (including my favorite, to much disagreement, Fiorella’s “Jack Stack”). BBQ isn’t an occasional treat in KC. It is seriously, no-foolin’ a way of life.

When Susie and I run across a fellow KC native here in New York, the topic almost always turns to BBQ. “Found any good BBQ places yet?” There’s some decent BBQ in New York, but nothing sublime. It’s hard to match the best output of a town engaged in a hundred-year-old BBQ arms race.

Kansas City is barbecue bountiful, but it wasn’t always that way. A century ago, records indicate the presence of only one commercial barbecue venture. According to barbecue historian Doug Worgul, smoked meats did not become a commodity in Kansas City until 1907, when Henry Perry, from Shelby County, Tenn., opened the city’s first barbecue stand. He smoked pork, beef, possum and raccoon, sauced them and sold them like English fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper.

I’ve never heard of BBQ’d possum and racoon, but now I’ve got a new mission.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but KC is the only place I’ve been where BBQ sauce is a regular tabletop condiment for everything. In fact, the best thing about Gates isn’t the meat (which is good, but not spectacular), but the thick-cut fries, perfect for dipping in one of their three house sauces.

Arriving at the crossroads [ChicagoTribune.com] (Thanks, Ryan!)

Bonus link: Kansas City Rampage: 2 Chowists, 10 Hours, 7 Meals (PICS) [ITHForum.com] Including a stop at one of my all-time favorite KC BBQ joints, L.C.’s!