Barbecue E&S

Easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain equipment is allowing this emerging segment to feed consumers' appetites with smoky goodness.

By Amelia Levin, Sr. Associate Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 4/1/2008

Barbecue styles differ from coast to coast, carrying with them different tastes and histories. Many Texans place emphasis on oak-smoked beef. Southerners, like those in Memphis, Tenn., and Kentucky, prefer dry rubs and hickory wood for pulled pork and ribs. Georgians favor sweet, tomato-based sauces and many Carolinians opt for the vinegar-based ones. Then there's St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., barbecue in the Midwest, with its sweeter sauces used to caramelize the meats.

But despite these differences in barbecue styles throughout the country, the food has one common thread. Barbecue is soul food. And “smoke-masters,” often the word for barbecue restaurant owners, are known to get just as excited about their slow-roasted meats as they are about the equipment that produces their food. Truth be told, without a competent, durable and traditional-style smoker, you can forget about sinking your teeth in the perfect meat.

“People judge their ribs and barbecue by its tenderness,” says Josh Rutherford, part owner and “smoke-master” at The Smoke Daddy in Chicago. “You want that meat to pull away from the bone. You have to watch the meat in the smoker and when you see the meat pull away a little, then you know it's done.”

Time-Honored Tradition
Rutherford makes smoking meats sound easy, for certain, and most smokers tend to be just that in use and maintenance. But in truth, good barbecuing doesn't just happen. It must be learned and practiced and, most of all, there's love that's got to go into it.

“I've been smoking meat my whole life,” Rutherford says. An Indiana native, Rutherford grew up on a farm where he first learned the slow-cooking skill. Rutherford's business partner Doug Dunlay grew up in Kansas City, Mo., known for its pulled pork and sweeter sauce that's basted on ribs as the final step and then caramelized for extra flavor. The city also hosts the annual American Royal BBQ Competition each year, when barbecue lovers come from all parts of the country to compete in what many consider the most prestigious barbecue competition in the world.

Dunlay, also co-owner with cousin Mike Dunlay of the popular Chicago destinations Dunlay's on Clark and Dunlay's on the Square, paired up with Rutherford, and two others three years ago to buy out The Smoke Daddy, a mainstay on the city's North Side for barbecued ribs, pulled pork sandwiches and live music in a cozy, 1,700-square-foot space. First thing's first, the team cleaned up the place, expanded the seating area to 45 seats, refurbished the bar and, most importantly, brought in the smoker. But just last December, they expanded that, too, upgrading from a convection-style smoker to a bigger and better, nine-foot-long, six-foot-tall, and five-foot-deep hickory wood smoker, that now takes up most of the kitchen, Rutherford says.

“We had to cut a hole in an outside wall and assemble ramps just to roll it in,” he says. “It's really massive.”

More than just its huge size, the gas-ignited smoker features two doors — one for the holding area for the logs and the other for the self-rotating, self-basting racks that function like a rotisserie operation where meat from one rack drips down on meat from the next, adding more flavor and intensity to the menu items, Rutherford says.

Although the computer-based programming makes the smoker relatively easy to operate and maintain, it's in the timing of the barbecuing where good staff training becomes a factor. “I taught the guys here how to smoke using this old-fashioned model,” Rutherford says. “We have one staff member who takes care of all the smoking and I oversee and coach.” It's not extremely hard, he says, but does take some accuracy and good judgment.

The smoker unit runs 24 hours a day, with only four hours of unsupervised operation, since the manager leaves at 2 a.m. and the staffer comes in around 6 a.m. for lunch service preparation. Typically, ribs and chicken smoke for six-to-eight hours, with baby-backs smoking for shorter periods of time, and pulled pork taking longer, according to Rutherford.

The smoker is not easy to miss, sitting right at the doorway of the kitchen and taking up most of the room. To the left sits a small sauté station with a six-burner stove, broiler and one fryer for preparing appetizer items like pulled meat nachos, and chicken wings, plus a small prep area with refrigeration at the other end of the kitchen for sandwiches and salads. Because the eatery goes through 25-to-35 gallons of barbecue sauce a week, according to Rutherford, The Smoke Daddy uses an off-site proprietor to prepare it based on the specified recipe. Staff use the broiler for caramelizing the ribs after they've been in the smoker “to get them nice and hot before they're sent out,” Rutherford adds.

Like Rutherford, there's certainly a sense of passion that all barbecue operators know and feel. Talk to any Texan and there's also a certain sense of pride, honor and tradition that goes into slow-roasting meats. Austin, Texas, is home to one of the most famous barbecue joints in the country, The Salt Lick Restaurant, nestled on a ranch in the Hill Country where founder Thurman Roberts Sr. was born.

“The open fire pit was the very first thing on the property,” says Salt Lick General Manager Mariam Wilson. “Roberts first built the pit, and later, the structure went up around it for the restaurant.”

The fire pit, resembling a circular, stone-encased hearth you would find outdoors, greets guests at the front as they enter the restaurant, outfitted with wooden floors, walls, beams and picnic tables that create a log cabin feel. Smoke emitted from the wood-burning fire pit travels through a stack to the outside air, creating only a pleasing, not overwhelming, barbecue smell indoors. While other barbecue restaurants use hickory and mesquite wood, The Salt Lick uses oak wood logs to smoke the meat, which includes the popular beef brisket, mildly spicy smoked sausage, and pork ribs with a tangy, vinegary sauce on the side, all created from barbecue recipes handed down from generation to generation since the Civil War, according to Wilson.

The pit is the last place where The Salt Lick meat goes, however. Everything starts off in two smokers, resembling eight-foot-tall cast-iron boxes, and then the food finishes cooking in the fire pit at the front of the house where the barbecue master adds the sauce that “crystallizes” on the meats above the open flames, Wilson says. Sausages hang from the top of the fire pit to complete their smoking process.

The back-of-the-house smokers typically smoke the brisket for 16-to-18 hours, with ribs at much shorter times (2½ hours plus another hour on the fire pit). “The difference is the slow process of cooking the meat, plus the open pit,” Wilson says. “In Texas, we tend to smoke the meat in larger quantities and use bigger pieces of meat.”

That could be true for the South and Carolinas, too. Such is the case for Little Dooey's Barbeque & Blues restaurant, a now-franchised chain that originated in eastern Mississippi, founded by Barry and Margaret Ann Wood. Just as “Salt Lick” has a meaning (a gathering of animals around a salt deposit that they lick for nutrients), “little dooey” means a fun gathering of friends and family, according to the restaurant's web site.

Little Dooey's opened in 1985 when the Woods were serving their homemade barbecue and sauce at a local service station and customer demand led to the establishment of a restaurant in Starkville, Miss., and years later, a second location in that state. On April 1, 2006, the first-ever franchised Little Dooey's opened in Concord, N.C., through franchisee Parker Neely Jr., founder and principal of North-Carolina-based Centurion Partners LLC, and another franchise company created by the Woods called LDQ (Little Dooey's Q) LLC.

Going “Upscale”
The Concord restaurant is certainly a step up from the original Little Dooey's. The newer location features an 80-seat main dining room, a 20-seat bar and lounge area, an elevated mezzanine with 20 seats for private parties, and a bi-level, outdoor terrace that holds 20 on each level plus 10 indoor bar seats. According to Denise Cascardi, director of franchise relations for Centurion Partners, the full-service restaurant resembles a finer-dining barbecue restaurant, compared to your typical, picnic tables and plastic plate-style barbecue joint.

“It sounds ridiculous, but if you can imagine an upscale barbecue that's what we are,” Cascardi says.

In actuality, this description isn't so ridiculous anymore, thanks to the “mainstreaming” of barbecue restaurants that seem to resemble traditional operations that happen to serve barbecue, rather than those aforementioned barbecue joints.

Even The Salt Lick has opened its version of an upscale barbecue restaurant, The Salt Lick Three Sixty, in downtown Austin with more gourmet adaptations to the meat-on-a-plate concept, catering to an urban setting.

At Little Dooey's, even the smoker has gone upscale, similar to The Smoke Daddy. Installed two years ago, the restaurant uses self-automated smokers that cook for several hours and then go into a holding pattern to store the meat overnight at safe temperatures without overcooking it until it is removed the next day, according to Cascardi.

“We cook our meats for hours overnight in our two smokers here using mainly hickory logs and some white oak,” Cascardi says. “The units are really large, so we can cook cases upon cases at the same time and cook them overnight, and they are really well-temperature-controlled and easy-to-maintain.”

A full-time staff member opens the restaurant at 9 a.m. to prepare for lunch service, but overnight the smoker holds its own. “It really is a self-sufficient operation,” Cascardi says. “All the smoker has to do in the morning is pull the meat out.”

The meat that's ready to serve within a short time goes to the line where it's held. However, Cascardi says, “We keep the appropriate amount of food on the line for the average shift so nothing sits out.” To further maintain freshness of the product, the restaurant gets regular deliveries to avoid holding meats in coolers for long periods of time before they go into the smokers.

The Little Dooey's smoker is even fairly energy-efficient. “They run all day and night at about the same power, rather than going up and down in heat and energy, which reduces energy,” Cascardi says. In addition, smoke is ventilated directly outside through an exhaust so it doesn't overheat the kitchen.

Whereas some barbecue restaurants use oak, cherry or other woods, Little Dooey's uses hickory wood. Cascardi says the choice of wood can denote the geographical region of the barbecue restaurant because, oftentimes, hickory might not be as accessible in certain areas, or it's more expensive. “Hickory has a definite smoke flavor, creating a really distinctive taste,” Cascardi says.

In addition, the meat slow-smokes for several hours, with the pulled pork smoking up to 20 hours at a time untouched, to prevent from toughening or drying out. Beef brisket and ribs generally smoke for six or seven hours, with less time for chicken, she says.

The pulled pork and ribs are definitely Little Dooey's biggest sellers, according to Cascardi. The sauce also makes the difference — traditionally the barbecue restaurant uses a tomato-based sauce, originally created by the Woods, common to the Mississippi/Delta region, while the North Carolina location has added a more vinegar-based sauce to its lineup to appease the taste preferences of diners in that state. The restaurant uses a proprietary company to produce and bottle the sauce based on these recipes.

As a result, the kitchen at Little Dooey's looks pretty traditional, if not simple, with just a flat-top grill, fryer, steam table, ovens and other equipment for preparing fried ribs, chicken tenders, sides, sandwiches and other non-smoked dishes.

With simple menus, and easy-to-use and -maintain smokers that do most of the cooking without the need for a lot of extra kitchen equipment, barbecue restaurants can seem to be a cash cow at first glance. Add to that a more upscale motif with a full-bar to rake in sales from alcohol and, yep it sure could be just that. In just the past two years, operators have capitalized on this growing segment in the foodservice industry. The numbers have surely grown, both in unit size and in sales.