Walkin’ in Memphis

I’m here in Memphis, Tennessee, diving ever deeper into the cult of ‘Q. Barbecue is more than a meal down here, it’s a lifestyle, and nowhere is that exemplified more than in the annual Memphis in May BBQ Grill Off. Teams from around the country, and even around the world, assemble to present their best ribs, butts, and whole hogs; there’s even a category for “anything but” wherein if you can grill it and smoke it there’s folks who’ll eat it. The judging concludes on Saturday night and the winners walk with bragging rights, big, oversized trophies and a not inconsiderable chunk of cash. The Memphis riverfront turns into a circus, with people pouring into town and the smell of wood smoke hovers on the air. I’m here because of Sheffield’s and our renewed commitment to serving authentic and excellent barbeque. There are as many ways of spelling bar-b-cue as there are techniques involved in its production, but at the end of the day, determining what’s really good Cue is like the old definition of what constitutes pornography: you just know it when you see it.

I love Memphis. I’m a tourist so I don’t have to deal with all the problems that the town’s newspapers screech about daily. I just walk around and revel in the history, the gentility, and the really good food. I first discovered Memphis courtesy of an old girlfriend who once attended the University of Tennessee. She walked me around, we toured BBQ joints and Beale Street, and we wound up, very early in the morning, in some afterhours bar hastily constructed in someone’s living room, where beer was being served out of coolers set up on sawhorse tables and a clutch of ladies huddled in the kitchen cooking up burgers on the stove. I forked over a few bucks for a can of suds, drinking in the atmosphere of an operation that was clearly illegal (and just as clearly a whole lot of fun) and I left Memphis smitten, determined to return.

That first afternoon my girlfriend took me to the world famous Rendezvous Rib-house and my life was changed forever. You can argue all day about whether or not the Rendezvous has authentic BBQ and who has Memphis’ best ribs, but you can’t beat the smoky, cavernous, subterranean embrace of the ‘Vous for character. We sat at the bar and drank beer and ate smoked sausage and cheese and I fell in love. The girl is long gone but my affection for Memphis will endure as long as I’m walking around above ground.

One of the elements that make this town great is that there are such lovely pockets of rich authenticity, where the gracious and sensual old Southern lifestyle grates hard against the abrasive advance of American homogeneity. Beale Street could be a commercial nightmare – and parts of it are – but somehow, in the midst of the neon-lit garishness there are shadowed corners where the ghosts of tobacco farmers and cotton brokers seem to hover, sipping whiskey and nodding along as a thumping bass and electric guitar wail the blues.

Of course there are other areas, mostly in the blocks that spill out from Beale that are alternatively pathetic and tacky. A TGI Friday’s sits on one corner, just down the street from a restaurant that calls itself the Kooky Canuck. That a TGI Friday’s exists here is bad enough, but at the Canuck, diners are challenged to choke down a seven and a half pound burger in under an hour. This gustatory abomination weighs in at more than 12,000 calories and your prize, should you finish it (other than a heart attack) is that your burger is free and you get your name on a plaque that hangs from the wall (I didn’t actually see this plaque – there is no way in the world I’d go inside – but their website says it’s there so I’ll take their word for it).

I look at a place like the Kooky Canuck and I wonder just who thought it a good idea. Some businessman (or woman) sat down and not only considered this a practical venture, but spent thousands of dollars and many hours to see it through to fruition. And not only did they think that, but people go there! I walked past and there were customers! These people are in Memphis, with some of the best blues and BBQ in the world at their very fingertips, and they make a conscious decision to dine on hamburger and bad domestic beer in a storefront carved out by some expatriate snowbird with bad taste in both food and interior design? Just down the street there’s Texas de Brazil a “Brazilian Steakhouse”. Huh?

A thing that is not true to itself and does not occur through a natural evolution can never be whole. Like those sad Jimmy Buffet bars constructed in a strip mall in the Midwest, anything that’s forced into an uneasy relationship with its environment will always seem awkward and stilted. Think about Jake Gatsby. This applies to everything – people, business and art. We’ve all heard it so many times it becomes more background music than wisdom; you can’t be something you’re not. I write like a pissy, sarcastic, Midwestern, cynical male because that’s what I am. When I started to write I always tried to copy the style of other writer’s I admired, and the results were predictably dismal. Copying too exactly another’s style only works in parody.

Everyone has their own unique voice and the journey of any art is to discover more truly what that voice is. People started to read James Patterson’s thrillers because he was a pretty good workman in that genre. Now he phones in his books; usually they’re written in conjunction with another author and I would bet Mr. Patterson’s participation is limited to concept and plot points. As anyone who’s read any of these recent efforts knows, they’re pretty bad.

The Rock n Soul Museum claims that there have been more songs written about Memphis than any other city in the world. Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer crooned about it. More recently Marc Cohn reminisced about Elvis and his blue suede shoes. It’s the kind of place that inspires song. The places that work here work because they reflect some little slice of all the rich tapestry of history that imbue this clubby town on the banks of the Mississippi. The places that ultimately fail do so because they neglect to properly acknowledge that heritage. I’m down here learning about Barbeque because Chicago is the lucky recipient of much of the culture that flowed north when the old South started to dry up. I want to learn about that transition from its roots.

When I build a restaurant, I want it to fit into its place as comfortably as a foot goes into an old shoe. I want a place that’s going to be around for a long, long time. I try to approach my writing from that same space, from the perspective that I’m bringing the things that I know to the table and I try not to add to many things that I don’t know enough about. I just think that any other approach would be like forcing a pseudo-Canadian restaurant into the land of BBQ and Blues; uncomfortable for everyone involved. It’s the only way I can work and feel that there’s some integrity to what I’m trying to do, that maybe I’m getting closer to saying what I really am trying to say.

McDonalds is one of the most successful restaurant chains in the world but you can’t get me to spend money in one for love or money. A McDonalds doesn’t even think about its environment, it just plunks itself down and looks exactly like every other McDonalds from Memphis to Moscow. Worse than eating there, I could never approach my business with that kind of disregard for place and setting. It just smacks of what’s wrong with the typical approach to business, where it’s all and only about money.

That kind of thinking might work in a dollars and cents way, for a while, but it’s not satisfying on so many other levels. And if I have to try and cram down a seven pound burger to have fun, there’s something wrong with my approach. I’m in Memphis to learn about the art of BBQ and the whole culture that goes along with it. I have to do it right or not at all. To me it’s the only way to do things, cooking or writing, the only way it feels satisfying, the only way that really works. I know that there are a lot of people that don’t consider those elements all that important, a lot of people whose first question about the Kooky Canuck would be whether or not it makes money, but to me that’s the least important aspect. It’s just the way I’m wired to look at things and I think that some element of that philosophy is what we feel when we stumble over an author (or any artist for that matter) whose work resonates with our experiences. I really believe it’s that important. Or maybe I’m just a little Kooky.

— Ric Hess, May 14, 08:46 AM

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