Texas BBQ had left me with an appetite for meat. This appetite had always existed. I am an embarrassing person to go to Brazilian Steakhouses with. If you haven’t discovered the wonders of these yet in Britain, get on Google IMMEDIATELY and locate your nearest one. The premise is that you sit down in a dining room containing circling ‘gouchos’, special waiters, carrying skewers of various meats, as many as 21 types typically. They rotationally approach your table carving off slabs of protein, cooked to your liking. It is all you can eat and offers people like me a source of great, great joy. However, what Brazilian had once stirred, Texas BBQ had now inflamed into a veritable blaze. Memphis BBQ approached and I was ready to stuff myself silly and compare the two on the merits of their meat. The death match was to continue.
In my article on Texas BBQ (click here to read, it’s worth a gander) I set out the differences between the various genres of BBQ within the United States of America. To quickly summarise, Texas BBQ in general favours dry rubs with no use of sauces and uses a lot of beef (commonly brisket), as well as pork. Memphis on the other hand uses a lot more pork in its BBQ, mostly ribs, and comes either ‘wet’ or ‘dry’; wet meaning with a sauce, dry meaning without. I was sceptical on the advantages and motivations of saucing; as I think I mentioned previously, to me it seems an easy way of masking poor quality BBQ, both meat and preparation. To me, conceptually it undermines meat. Meat was meant to roam free, to frolic across your plate unhampered by sharp sauces that disguise its taste and distract from its texture, mooing and oinking unchained. Memphis BBQ, in theory, was therefore more attractive to me at that time than North Carolina or Kansas City, since Memphis gives you more of a choice as to whether you want it sauced or not, in the others it is simply standard.
In my article on Texas BBQ (click here to read, it’s worth a gander) I set out the differences between the various genres of BBQ within the United States of America. To quickly summarise, Texas BBQ in general favours dry rubs with no use of sauces and uses a lot of beef (commonly brisket), as well as pork. Memphis on the other hand uses a lot more pork in its BBQ, mostly ribs, and comes either ‘wet’ or ‘dry’; wet meaning with a sauce, dry meaning without. I was sceptical on the advantages and motivations of saucing; as I think I mentioned previously, to me it seems an easy way of masking poor quality BBQ, both meat and preparation. To me, conceptually it undermines meat. Meat was meant to roam free, to frolic across your plate unhampered by sharp sauces that disguise its taste and distract from its texture, mooing and oinking unchained. Memphis BBQ, in theory, was therefore more attractive to me at that time than North Carolina or Kansas City, since Memphis gives you more of a choice as to whether you want it sauced or not, in the others it is simply standard.
I tried 2 different venues to see what Memphis could bring. Abe’s Bar-B-Q , just outside of Memphis in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the renowned Rendezvous, just off Beale Street. Abe’s Bar-B-Q brought me pork ribs, mostly dry but with a dollop of sauce. It wasn’t amazing. The ribs didn’t come close to the best ribs we had tried in Texas; moist enough but not very tender. The sauce was vinegar based, as was the slaw (another source of contention and variation in the BBQ states), and had a good amount of acidity that would, in theory, work well to cut through fatty pork. If the pork had had an ounce of fat in it that would have been the case. In reality, there was little purpose to its presence. I didn’t love it. Rendezvous offered a much more satisfactory glimpse into Memphis BBQ. The restaurant itself has earned wide acclaim for its BBQ, appearing on Man vs. Food and the Today Show, to name but a few. For the Man vs. Food clip, see the video below.
It is always busy; when we arrived at 6.30pm we found ourselves at the back of a large queue. As it happens, it turned out that the people queuing had gotten confused and were queuing outside a private party upstairs. I noticed this, exclaimed and scampered to the very front of the real queue provoking angry looks and resentment but hey, gotta be sharp when meat’s concerned.
Rendezvous’ pork ribs were good; flavoursome and very moist. Tender and with a very good rub, spiced and savoury with a perfect amount of salt. I didn’t even bother to use the sauce that was served on the side. Still, they were not as good as the best ribs we had eaten in Texas in Smitty’s Market and City Market.
However, what absolutely blew them out of the water and more than rivaled the best ribs we had tried on the Tour were Rendezvous’ lamb ribs. I have never eaten BBQ lamb ribs before. I had tried BBQ lamb breast, cooked masterfully by our friend Chris in Austin, but not the ribs. Quite simply they were exquisite. The cooking process, long, slow and smoky, lends itself perfectly to the flavour of lamb. Its natural taste became amplified to the utmost degree to produce ribs that seemed a summary of lamb itself. Just so, so lamby. Not at all greasy; the right amount of flavour bestowing fat, but still crisp on the outside giving way to tender, tender, not gelatinous flesh on the inside near the bone. They melted into me. I demand to see these replicated on BBQ menus nationwide for they are fantastic, utterly worthy of mimicry. Again they were served dry and it would have been a crime to have dunked them in their sauce.
To conclude, Memphis BBQ like Texas continues to offer the consumer respect. Respect in the form of producing plates containing meat that simply has to be of the highest quality in sourcing and preparation, devoid of the distraction of sauce. It also offers respect in the presence of personal choice; wet or dry. I like that. The BBQ we tried, in my opinion, was not quite as special as that of some of the Texas venues we frequented. We ate much worse pork ribs in Texas, much worse, but we also ate much, much better. Where Memphis stood out was in the lamb ribs of Rendezvous. They were articles of flavour of epic proportions. I was quite struck by them. The question as to whether Texas would do them better is irrelevant. They don’t do them. Memphis does. Please visit.
www.hogsfly.com/
52 South 2nd Street Memphis, TN 38103
(901) 523-2746
www.hogsfly.com/
52 South 2nd Street Memphis, TN 38103
(901) 523-2746
