Entries tagged with 'Memphis'
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Dry rub Memphis barbecue. [Flickr: orangachang / CC BY-SA 2.0] Memphis barbecue ain't all that. There, I said it. I expected and wanted Memphis barbecue to be the soul shaking, stomach sating, come-to-Jesus occasion everyone says it is. I planned for weeks, read reviews, scoured internet forums, and I did my due diligence talking to locals about their favorite spots once I arrived in the land of Elvis a couple of months ago. I hit Central, Germantown Commissary, Rendezvous, Cozy Corner, Corky's, Interstate, and Leonard's. It's the best I could do in three days, and it's possible if I'd just hit one more place—Neely's or A & R or Pig and Whistle or (insert your local favorite)—I would have...
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Nick Kindelsperger of The Paupered Chef (and Serious Eats Dinner Tonight contributor) left Chicago last weekend to spend forty hours in Memphis. He stopped at four of the city's most vaunted barbecue haunts: Cozy Corner, Rendezvous, Interstate Barbecue, and Corky's....
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Crispy Critters preps its whole hog entry at last year's Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest enjoys the saucy subtitle, "Superbowl of Swine." Like the football game that sorta shares that handle, it can be almost impossible for spectators to get up close to the sizzling hot action at Memphis in May, which starts Thursday and wraps up Saturday. It’s like going to a party and being told to stay away from the buffet. After watching the mouthwatering competition on the Food Network, hundreds of ‘cue fans make the pilgrimage to the annual event only to be bummed when they learn it’s not cool to walk up to...
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Editor's note: Occasionally what looks at first glance to be a conventional guidebook transcends the genre in surprising ways. John T. Edge's Southern Belly is just such a read, which is why I'm pleased that he has allowed us to excerpt selected items from it on Serious Eats, where they appear every other week. —Ed Levine By John T. Edge | Jane Barton, whom everyone seems to call the Mayonnaise Queen, has been on her feet since 4:30 this morning. Her gray hair is fashionably coiffed. She wears a paisley smock over Bermuda shorts. Her reading glasses dangle from a gold herringbone necklace. This is her 49th year of service at the Waffle Shop, a Lenten-only canteen set in the...
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On the way back from Greenwood, Mississippi, we stayed in Memphis. We arrived in downtown Memphis at 10 p.m. to find ourselves in a sea of Elvis impersonators. They were having a huge Elvis impersonator concert and contest. I'm not kidding. There were two Elvis impersonators checking in ahead of us at the Peabody Hotel. We were not there to see faux kings, we were there to eat barbecue. In the name of research, because Bon Appétit had named Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous one of its three finalists in its search for the best baby back ribs in the country, and also because it was a two-minute walk from our hotel and it was too late to eat at someplace like...
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When you love fried chicken as much as I do you get really bugged when Bon Appétit announces its three finalists in its search for the best fried chicken in the U.S. and Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken is not on the list. Not that the other three contenders, Blackberry Farm (Walland, Tennessee), Price's Chicken Coop (Charlotte, North Carolina), and Willa Mae's Scotch House (New Orleans) are not worthy of serious consideration. I have written lovingly of Willa Mae Seaton's wondrous fried chicken in GQ and Business Week. (Those stories don't appear to be online or else I'd link to them.) My friend John T. Edge, whom I trust implicitly in these matters (he did write the book on fried...
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Serious Eats is proud to bring you, through special arrangement, six tasty excerpts from
Smokestack Lightning, a Day in the Life of Barbecue. The movie, from filmmakers and serious eaters Scott Stohler and David Bransten, follows ten subjects from five different states, exploring "the history and tradition of this food from its rural beginnings to its present day incarnation in large-scale commercial organizations."
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From back the alleys off Beale Street in Memphis to the cattle yards of Kansas City, Smokestack Lightning takes a look at urban 'cue.
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In this episode of Smokestack Lightning, veteran pit masters talk about barbecue with regard to race.
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Burger documentarian George Motz visits Dyer's Burgers in Memphis to investigate the joint's unique deep-fried hamburgers. "Back then, they didn't have the flat tops and all this, so they cook in a cast-iron skillet," Dyer's owner Tom Robertson says. "As you cook more burgers, the grease grows, and eventually it becomes a deep-fried hamburger. We strain and process our grease daily, but we've never thrown it out and started over, so somewhere in there's molecules from 1912. That's what makes it so good." Further Reading Dyer's Burgers [Roadfood.com] Hamburger America [Director George Motz's website]...
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