On a recent weekday evening, three cars pulled into the parking lot of Big Poppa’s Chicken and Ribs in Harvey and nine men–some carrying notebooks and digital cameras–crowded in to place their order: a slab of spareribs, rib tips, and hot links, sauce on the side. The food was unpacked and arranged on a counter, but a stout man forbade the others to touch it until he’d taken its picture. Then the group began its work.
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For the group, Big Poppa’s was the midpoint of a six-hour survey of south-side and south-suburban barbecue shacks. All of the men are regular posters on the online discussion board Chowhound, and several are contributors to the upcoming Slow Food Guide to Chicago. Wiviott, an accomplished home smoker and proud barbecue snob, is a member of something called the Society for Preservation of Traditional Southern Barbecue. The group’s mission was to identify the finest barbecue shacks they could find, establishments that sell a very different style of pork from what’s served at the sit-down, north-side “meat Jell-O” palaces that represent what has become known as “Chicago style” barbecue.
Slow Food is an international organization devoted to ecologically sound food production, regional and seasonal culinary traditions, and slowing down to enjoy cooking and eating. Joel Smith, by day a CBOE trader and the majordomo of the scouting trips, had taken over the Slow Food guide’s chapter on barbecue after exhausting himself eating and writing for the Italian section. Applying the organization’s standards to barbecue, arguably the most American of food cultures, turned out to be daunting. The south and west sides are dense with small, low-profile barbecue shacks and fast-food holes-in-the-wall masquerading as the same. Smith, who grew up in Dallas and has been known to carry a bottle of Sonny Bryan’s barbecue sauce around with him, enlisted the help of fellow Chowhounds and Slow Food members.
One group member who’d taken it upon himself to mount a solo exploration of Division Street by bus stumbled upon the unassuming eight-month-old Honey 1 Barbeque in Austin, run by father and son Robert and Robert Adams. The senior Adams, who hails from Marianna, Arkansas, makes exactly the sort of barbecue the group was looking for: slow-smoked over a small, well-managed fire and suffused with layers of flavor. They made repeated visits and spent hours around the smoker with Adams, talking barbecue. A good sign of his commitment is that he’s frequently out of ribs. He refuses to serve ribs that have been sitting for a long time, so he smokes what he knows he can sell. When he runs out, it’s another two or two and a half hours before more are ready (so call ahead).
