Kansas City Barbecue
In 1908, an ex-steamboat cook named Henry Perry settled in Kansas City and started selling smoked meats out of an alley to workers downtown looking for a quick and cheap lunch. In the earliest days, the Perry restaurant was a street-side stand with an open fire pit where common ‘meats of the day,’ like beef […]
Barbecue and Politics
Barbecue is coined a truly unique American culinary tradition. It is said that barbecue is to food what Jazz is to music, an American creation. While I don’t intend to debate this here, there is one thing about barbecue that is irrefutable, its connection to politics. Older than the Republic itself, barbecue has been an […]
Seeking a Definition of Barbecue
As barbecue continues to evolve from a rural southern cooking tradition into a global cuisine, more attention has and needs to be paid to its origin and definition. Purists seeking authenticity find themselves hampered by a confused and often false history of the development of barbecue linking its roots to the early colonial Americas. As […]