This week’s list us sort of for a specific set of people: People who are opening barbecue restaurants. I love barbecue. Some people will eat fried anything, and I will eat barbecue anything. If I had to eat human flesh, get mine over the charcoal…unless maybe it’s wise to make it so you don’t really like it. In that case, make it like chicken parmesan. But not only is this for the owners of these establishments, it’s for you, my fine friends. Maybe you’re eating shitty barbecue and you don’t even know it. So put down that pulled pork sandwich and read on.
1. Let’s Cap the Number of Sauces at, I Don’t Know, ONE!
Something that lots of these restaurants do to trick you is to have about eight different sauces on the table. Your reptile brain says, “Wow, a choice! This is great!” which is true, but when you think, “I don’t know which one to pick…well, I’m sure they are all equally good” you’re getting into dangerous territory here.
No barbecue restaurant has eight great sauces. None of them have three. I’m assuming that each restaurant has one, because if you don’t I’m not really sure why you started a barbecue joint. Love of western decor? If anyone has ever not known you very well and purchased for you a sauce variety pack, you know what I’m talking about. One is decent, two are shit, and the fourth is inexplicably yellow, the “cheese corn” of this variety pack.
Listen, stick to one. Make it your best, your absolute best. Any work you would put into making eight sauces, put that into making the perfect sauce, then walk away. Nobody’s eating your shit every day, and I’ll come back eight times for one amazing sauce. I won’t come back twice for mediocre.
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2. It’s a Smoker, Not a Towering Inferno
Okay, let’s take it easy with the smoke. You overdo it and that’s the surest sign that there ain’t no smoker back there. If you have a smoker, fine, do it. But food is better with no extra flavor than it is with fake smoke added, so leave it alone. It should have hints of smoke, like jerky or whiskey, not taste like it was cooked on a stick over a campfire.
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3. Chips!?
Don’t serve me an awesome brisket sandwich and ask me if I want chips on the side. That’s like building a perfect car and making the floormats out of cardboard. Chips are good, I’m a fan of chips, and I think they have their place. Their place is in my sad apartment where I eat my dinners alone on a coffee table because I don’t have a dining situation that’s adult. But that’s because I don’t have a full professional kitchen with frying equipment. Get off your ass and make me some fucking fries, cornbread, beans, or just about anything that requires at least the opening of a can instead of a bag.
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4. Forget the Burgers
Are you doing barbecue? Because your burgers sure as hell don’t taste like it.
You can’t serve delicious smoked ribs and put them on the same menu with a shitburger that comes in patty form when you get it. And don’t waste your menu time telling me what grade the meet is because Wendy’s is grade shit but it’s 99-cents and still tastes better.
I know you’re trying to please everybody, but let’s change that motto: Fuck everybody! If they want a burger they can go everywhere else. You do barbecue. There are a couple restaurants that make great burgers. You know how? It’s all they do. They just make burgers. They don’t fuck around with lettuce wraps and soups and all kinds of weird shit.
If you make an amazing burger, if your burgers take the same time and effort as your ribs, then keep on truckin’. But if you’re just throwing it on the menu to fill another column, just simplify.
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5. Chicken Needs Skin
What do you think is holding the flavor on the skin? Better question: Why are you serving boneless, skinless chicken patties at all?
The skin is where the flavor lives. Yeah, it’s weird to eat another creatures skin. But it’s not a lot weirder than eating the meat off a pig’s ribs, so just get over it. Why do you think fried chicken is so good? It needs that skin on there.
And if you’re buying your chicken without skin, you’re wasting your money. You might as well boil it.
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6. Give Me a Goddamn Plate
I know that you’re whole aesthetic is a “Who gives a damn, let’s eat!” kind of thing, but give me a real plate. Yeah, I eat off of paper plates all the time at backyard barbecues all the time, but again, this is not a company that intends to provide service day after day to hundreds of people. This is just some idiot’s house.
I need a plate for two reasons:
One, if you made your shit right, I’m going to have pieces falling all over. I want to eat those. I don’t care if half the pulled pork falls out of the sandwich. That’s why they invented forks, plates, eyes, mouth– pretty much all the parts of the face, realy. And I’m not super interested in eating out of a wax paper.
Two, when that rib meat falls right off the bone because you cooked it just right, I don’t want my conveyance collapsing, tipping off the table or some such other shit. Just give me a plate and let me go to town.
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Thanks for reading another week of Helpful Snowman. There still aren’t a lot of entries in the “Name My Motorcycle” contest, so click here to enter because I really don’t want to name it something that takes me three hours to explain.