Alabama BBQ Memories

StorySouth.com has a nice article on Alabama barbecue written by Jake Adam York. In the article York writes about the Alabama bbq establishments Dreamland and Bar B Q Bob's.

Here's a excerpt from the article:

"In Alabama, there was only barbecue — and a food either was or was not barbecue. Barbecue was ultimate good, and there were no degrees to perfection.

For years, we ate only at Bar B Q Bob’s, a large A-frame joint as far across town as a place could be. It looked as though it been an International House of Pancakes at some point, and someone should have remembered or asked, but nothing — not the strangeness of ski-lodge architecture in an Alabama town, not the chips or cracks in the veneered tables or booth-benches, not the absolute sequestration of the kitchen — could make this seem important. As long as hickory smoke rose as from a thurible into the cathedral heights of Bob’s, this could be nothing else but The Seat of Barbecue. At least a dozen other restaurants in town claimed barbecue in their names, but there was only one barbecue.

Like religion, barbecue was pure. And purity, once accepted, will brook neither proof nor comparison."

Read the rest of the article