The Quest for the Holy Grail of Barbecue

It started off by accident on a previous trip earlier this year to Kansas City where we started searching for the Holy Grail of Barbecue. We ate at the top ranked BBQ place in Kansas City many years running and even tried out some Korean BBQ. The Korean BBQ most certainly won my heart for that trip but wasn't what I was looking for when I was looking for the Holy Grail of Barbecue.

So off to St. Louis we went, bitter BBQ rival to it's cross-state rival Kansas City with the goal of eating some barbecue. Out of the the six meals I ate while in St. Louis, three of them would be barbecue. I had a goal of getting some local toasted ravioli and a St. Louis style pizza while on the trip but just didn't have the stomach capacity nor the opportunity. Perhaps the next time.

The first BBQ stop for me was entirely by accident. We stopped in at Uno's Chicago Grill not because we knew anything about it but because it was in the mile and a quarter between our motel and the Magic House where we were heading over lunch time. I saw some BBQ Sliders on their menu and though familiar with sliders from my stint up in the frozen tundra of central Minnesota where they are everywhere, I had never heard of a BBQ slider. So I saddled up a little earlier than I expected and ordered two of them with a plate of fries. The sliders were BBQ'd pork butt that was extremely tender and coated with a layer of provolone cheese. It was outstanding but I still hesitate to consider it traditional BBQ. So while I didn't rank it with the other places we ate at, it was definitely good enough to get if you are in the area of that restaurant. I suspect it may be a chain judging for its formula like layout and menu layout so there may be one closer than you think. But that was definitely my first experience with Uno's Chicago Grill.

The next stop on the BBQ Train was Bandana's BBQ. I know this one was definitely a chain since I saw several pop up on my Garmin when I did my search for BBQ joints in my vicinity. I also recalled reading a review on it before I left and knew that it wasn't the best BBQ in the area but after the BBQ Sliders for lunch, I was in the mood for some light fare and didn't want to waste a trip to a classic BBQ spot for just a small portion of food. The restaurant itself is one of those gimmicky places with lots of paraphernalia hanging on all available surfaces like Applebee's or Texas Roadhouse. That alone would count against it in my book but the excellent waitress we had more than compensated for that fact. She allowed us to order off the lunch platters (for the lunch price) which allowed us to get smaller portions of food. My wife got the beef brisket and I opted for the pork butte. Like all good BBQ, the meat is fixed without sauces of any kind and the only spicing is a dry rub added before the meat was cooked. Dry rubs often caramelize leaving a glaze like finish that people mistake as sauce but the waitress was quick to confirm my suspicions that no sauce had been added. Instead, we had a full half-dozen sauces to choose from sitting at our table. I tried them all but was split between the Kansas City style sauce and the original Bandana's mustard based sauce. I really like the Kansas City sauce on the garlic bread that came with the meal and it was good on my wife's beef brisket but the original sauce seemed better with the pork. The meat was extremely tender and good but despite the good sauces, I sensed that better sauce could be found. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't hesitate to take people looking for good BBQ to Bandana's but it wasn't quite the Holy Grail I have been after.

Our third stop was at a place called Pappy's Smokehouse. I had a strong inkling from all the good reviews that this might be the place where the Holy Grail of BBQ could be found but found the location kind of strange. It wasn't on a thoroughfare and barely had what could be called a sign. In fact, I was almost entirely into the parking lot before I saw the sign announcing that I was in the right place. If it hadn't been for my Garmin, I certainly wouldn't have found it. Pappy's Smokehouse is definitely what you would call a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It was a space with an odd assortment of furniture with everything from wooden picnic tables to booths to stand up counters. Pappy himself was outside standing under the eaves smoking when I pulled in and judged by my action of looking for signage to confirm I was where I wanted to be, knew I 'wasn't from around here.' He asked as we walked up to the door what brought up to the restaurant and I told him that I had heard he had the best BBQ in town and wanted to see for myself if it was true. I think Pappy really liked that answer and personally waited on us the rest of the evening and even conversed with me a bit after we left and as he smoked another cigarette out of the rain. At Pappy's Smokehouse, the menu is a big chalkboard behind the counter and I have come to equate this to good BBQ for some reason. We walked up to the cash register, ordered our BBQ and before we could fill our drinks and sit down in one of the booths, Pappy was out the serving doors carrying our food and apologizing for the long wait. Again, I got the pork and my wife got the beef brisket and we set to work. Pappy's, like Bandana's, didn't cook the meat with sauce and instead we had three or four different types to choose from. The meat was tender and excellent and the original sauce of Pappy's was very good. The beef brisket was perfect and is the Holy Grail of BBQ beef brisket but the pork though close, just wasn't there. I hadn't eaten better but I suspected that there was something better out there if I could just find it. What he definitely was the king of was the coleslaw side. Unlike everyone else, his wasn't in the creamy white sauce and instead was natural in some sort of clear sauce. I ate two bowls of the stuff and would have had more had I any room left after my plate of BBQ. My wife also loved the BBQ corn-on-the-cob that she got as one of her sides. All in all, it was several notches better than Bandanas in food and many more notches above in ambiance without all the gimmicky flair. It also didn't hurt that Pappy himself waited on us through the night. If you have a Garmin and can find it, definitely check it out.

The last place and though and not in St. Louis, was a place we had been eying for some time and decided to eat there as a control with St. Louis fresh on our taste buds. Woody's Smokehouse Champion BBQ and Catering is just down the road from our apartment in the urban jungle and like Pappy's Smokehouse, just a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. In fact, there are only four tables perhaps a scanty two feet in diameter and then a narrow shelf along one wall for seating. In fact, just five minutes after we arrived shortly before lunch, all thirty seats were full and not one person came in the door. Evidently the locals no about the seating capacity and know by the cars along the curb in the street whether or not there is room to come inside to eat. Like Pappy's Smokehouse and all good BBQ joints, the menu was a chalkboard above the counter and lone cash register. We got our normal plates and within minutes were snarfing it down. I must add that at Woody's Smokehouse, there is always a pan of cornbread sitting up front near the door and you are welcome to help yourself to some of the tastiest cornbread around. While the beef brisket and pork were obviously not of the same caliber as that at Pappy's or even Bandana's, it is still very good and the best I have found in Iowa. However, Woody's original sauce was outstanding and I perhaps think even better than my previous local Iowa favorite of Cookie's BBQ sauce. I think if I had Woody's sauce on Pappy's BBQ, I would have had the Holy Grail at last.

So like my last trip, this one too ended up tantalizingly close to the Holy Grail but not all components together in one spot. However, all these places ended up being places I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to friends or go to again when in the area. My recommendation and what I suspect may be the path to the Holy Grail of BBQ is to pick up some of Woody's Original BBQ sauce the next time you are in Des Moines, head on down to Pappy's Smokehouse in St. Louis and get some of it to go. Then in the comfort of your home, partake of the Holy Grail of BBQ. If you are only a little bit hungry, don't hesitate to stop in at Bandana's for the all day lunch menu or the local Uno chain restaurant for some BBQ sliders.

November 9, 1989

Today it was just the two of us sitting in the student lounge reserved for those honor roll students who wished to vacate study hall for a setting a little more comfortable and less restrictive. We were without supervision, we had a couch, we could walk the halls without a pass and we had a radio. It was just a small boom box with the standard cheap antenna that could pick up only the local station and today, Eva and I were listening to it and talking about the social changes that were occurring in her country.

Eva was a foreign exchange student from West Germany and had joined our school for a year to learn American ways. Always a student of foreign cultures, I took the opportunity to learn about her country and we hit it off. Although I took her to prom the next spring, we never dated and just became really good friends who could talk about anything. But today, more than a friend, she would simply need a shoulder.

As we were talking, the music was interrupted with a special news bulletin saying that the West German guards had simply thrown open the gates of the Berlin Wall and East Germans were now streaming into West Germany. Later that evening, we would see images of people climbing on the wall and in places, attacking it with hammers and sledges trying to tear it down. But at that moment, it was just a simple announcement that the gates were open and people were crossing without fear of getting shot. The music resumed.

Eva sat stunned staring at the radio hoping that something, anything else would interrupt the music telling her of her home county thousands of miles away. I for the most part sat quietly watching her absorb the news. Finally they came, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she began to cry. Confused, I tried to awkwardly comfort her as a teenage with soothing words. But when she jumped up and hugged me, I knew that they were not tears of sadness but rather ones of joy with some homesickness mixed in for not being there to witness it. I hugged her back and let my shoulder catch her tears that day and being a softy, a few of mine too. I was truly happy for her and wished she could have been home that day.

Over the coming of the weeks, we spent much time talking about what we had seen or heard about the newly united Germany. For me, it would have just been another day in history but thanks to a West German now German foreign exchange student, that day came to mean so much more to me. To this day, I can't separate thoughts of the Berlin Wall with thoughts of Eva in the student lounge crying into my shoulder on that sunny day on November 9, 1989, twenty years ago today.

The Cast of Characters at the Holiday Inn Viking

During this year, I have been on many work related road trips and thus had to book a lot of hotel rooms. I was gone for six weeks and thus had stayed around 30 nights in motels. I decided to take advantage of the situation and enrolled in the Priority Rewards program for Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express motels where I could get free nights and other perks. So when I headed down to St. Louis, I found a Holiday Inn motel close to several of the attractions we were planning on seeing and booked it to cash a few of those hard earned chips.

As it turned out, it was a motel that I had stayed in on one of my trips and the same cast of people were still working there. I guess the cast didn't strike a chord with me on the first time since I had other work related things on my mind but it certainly did the second time around and so I am going to blog on it.

The cast that I am referring too are the people who run the Viking restaurant and lounge attached to this particular Holiday Inn. We hadn't been planning on eating there but since we had $10 off coupons, we decided we would anyway. I had remembered the service being painfully slow but it was raining and we didn't have a full schedule anyway so what they hey.

We were shown to our table by the Forgetful Waitress who as programmed asked for our drink orders which consisted of only the water in which the Splash and Dash delivered to us seconds before we could even get sat down. In fact, in his haste to fill up our glasses, he actually ran into me as I was taking off my coat and for a few seconds, I thought I was going to end up on the floor with my arms still caught in a tangle of sleeves. Mr. Splash and Dash just swooped in and within nanoseconds, had each glass filled to the brim with pools of water around each and a few stray ice cubes which he quickly swept to the floor. On my previous stay and subsequent three breakfast meals with Mr. Splash and Dash, I had learned to sit far enough back from the table so that the rivulets of water cascading from the table would not get me wet. Only after he had safely left would I slide closer to the table.

So we seated ourselves after the coast was cleared and proceeded to wait for fifteen minutes or so before Ms. Forgetful came back to take our orders. Fortunately we could watch Mr. Sweeper slowly cover every square inch of the carpet with one of those non-powered sweepers with a plastic broom handle and a squeaky wheel. Squeak-squeak-squeak was the only thing that could be heard for the next ten minutes until he had finished and left the room.

After our order, we chatted on the decades of our life gone by and those to hopefully come. We got up to loosen our limbs and wait for the coast to clear when ever Mr. Splash and Dash came to top off our water glasses, we took naps, read numerous books and just generally whittled away the time the best that we could. There were only three other tables that had people in them and they were all eating so you would think that it wouldn't take long to whip up some eggs, fruit, toast and hash browns for two and a half people but I am here to tell you that it evidently takes 45 minutes. I suspected that Ms. Forgetful had forgotten to give our order but didn't have any proof. What I do know is that Mr. Sweeper made his second of three appearances while we were still waiting sweeping a floor on which only Mr. Splash and Dash had walked on since the last time he has swept it.

Finally, nearly an hour after we arrived, we finally got our meals and ten minutes later were done and ready for our ticket. This is when Ms. Forgetful really shone because it was another twenty minutes before she came out of where ever she had been hiding while we had been visited yet again by Mr. Splash and Dash and Mr. Sweeper had completed his third trip around the room with the squeaky wheel. If I had had a piece of toast left, I would have tried to sop up some bacon grease and fixed that irksome noise.

An hour and a half after we dropped in to have a quick bite to eat before hitting the road, we finally left the Viking restaurant after stiffing the waitress any tip. Perhaps she remembered me stiffing her for the very same reasons eight months ago when I was there last? The Holiday Inn Viking is a great place to stay and if you have time to kill and $10 off in coupons, the food is better than average. However, the $10 off that left me with only $9.95 left to pay for the three of us, was still worth less than the loss of an hour and a half of my life sharing a room with Ms. Forgetful, Mr. Splash and Dash and Mr. Sweeper. I think I would rather spend the extra $10 and get an hour of my life back especially when in an area of the country I was itching to explore.

The Artic Grail

The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818 - 1909

by Pierre Berton

I think ground zero for my decent into almost exclusively reading non-fiction was "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer. Shortly afterwards, I read "Endurance" by Earnest Shackleton and thus began a long stretch of reading where I read about all the books that were on the South Pole and Antarctica. In that stretch, I did read a few books on the North Pole, one on Nansen's polar ocean drift, Amundsen's voyage of the until then, uncompleted Northwest Passage, one on the famous failed expedition by John Franklin and the failed expedition led by Charles Francis Hall to find survivors. I also picked up "The Arctic Grail" by Pierre Berton but due to its shear size, a whopping 672 pages, and due to the fact that I was starting to get burnt out reading of cold polar worlds, it has remained on my shelf for a half dozen years. A long stretch of time off with time that I would have to kill lead me to pick up the book and begin reading it. I wish I hadn't waited.

The Arctic Grail would be more appropriately entitled The Arctic Bible. It is a massive volume that contains a very good history of what it took to discover the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, the former an unpractical route between the oceans and the latter, a spot above a drifting icepack. It was so well written, that in almost two weeks, I was completely through it and wishing that Pierre Berton had just continued writing on exploration in general.

The quest for the Northwest Passage really begins with the British who in their era of exploration, sent ship after ship into the frozen channels at the top of North America looking for the then fabled passage. Time after time, their ships were destroyed, their crews racked with scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency, and sent packing home with their tails between their legs or buried in cold graves in the unknown land. After reading through the stories, you can't help but wonder at the sheer arrogance of the Brits who continually made the same mistakes, even after their follies were pointed out, and never learned from them. Numerous journal entries tell of their pity for the poor helpless savages who were actually native Eskimos that had lived there for hundreds of years when in reality, it should have been the other way around since many British expeditions couldn't live one year there. Due to the poor choices of food, shelter, clothing, method of travel, number of people needed, etc., the British crews many times only survived due to the help of the native Eskimo population.

The British invasion of the north really began at the loss of the Franklin Expedition which lost two boats and nearly 140 men due to Brittan's determination that they knew best when it came to living above the Arctic circle. Over the next ten years as they searched for survivors and found none, they would launch scores of ships which eventually mapped out the "way" of the Northwest Passage. Still, their ineptitude and loss of stomach from so many casualties eventually caused them to give up on the northern arctic. Enter the Americans.

The Americans, though more willing to learn from previous mistakes, didn't suffer like the British, they too had their problems and failed at both tasks culminating with the infamous Greely Expedition where like Franklin, many of the expedition died of starvation and even resorted to cannibalism.

All it took was one man, a Norwegian by the name of Roald Amundsen who was willing to read of past accounts, learn and realize that the native Eskimos were the experts and not just savages. He successfully navigated the Northwest Passage on his first attempt and his journals of the account are remarkably boring do to the lack of scurvy, starvation, ineptitude, etc. At points he wrote in his journals that he wished something would happen to them just to break up the boredom. With Amundsen, the race for the Northwest Passage was over and the race for the North Pole hit high gear.

Unlike the Northwest Passage and later the South Pole (both discovered by Amundsen), the north pole has no clear cut winner. In fact depending on how you define discovery of the pole, it has yet to be discovered.

Cook was the first person to claim that he made it to the north pole and back to safety in 1908. However, when he made his final push, he took no witnesses that could verify his story and conveniently lost and never produced records of scientific measurements that would also verify his locations. His proof that he eventually supplied was nothing more than a 16 page typed document with no scientific evidence supporting his claim and listing speeds three and four times faster than earlier witnessed parts of his journey. He was eventually discredited.

Peary was the next man to claim it in 1909 but he too failed to produce evidence, took no witnesses and obtained speeds that still haven't been matched to this day except by a modern day trip using a snowmobile. However, it would be several decades later before he was discredited, along with his purported sightings of bodies of water and land that did not exist and thus is why his name was in the history books for a long time and indeed still is the person people name when asked who discovered the north pole.

While the Arctic Grail doesn't go into who finally has been credited with the first undisputed sighting of the north pole, I happen to know the answer since I am a big Roald Amundsen fan. Amundsen flew over the north pole in a plane in 1926. This brings me back to an earlier question of how to you define discovering the north pole. If you define it as going there and back on a self supported trip, it still hasn't been discovered. All trips to date to the north pole have been one way or supported with aerial drops from helicopters.

The Arctic Grail was a very fascinating book and grabbed my attention from page one and kept it for 632 pages. I don't think I can say that about any book this size with the possible exception of Roots by Alex Haley. My only regret is that I waited for almost a decade to read this book.

The Curse of St. Louis and the Quest for the Perfect BBQ

Looking back on my recent trip to St. Louis, it ended up being more about barbecue than anything else. We hadn't planned for it to be about barbecue but about an hour after we arrived, it began to rain and continue almost straight through for the next two days we were there. I should have expected it since every time I have been to St. Louis, it has rained. I don't know if it is me or that there is a hidden Seattle in the Midwest but I have yet to see St. Louis in the sunshine.

We got there Sunday around lunch time and immediately ate a quick bite at Uno's Chicago Grill before heading to the Magic House which coincidentally had a Curious George exhibit. (Funny how we accidentally hit the Thomas the Train exhibit at the Boone railroad and now this.) The Magic House is a science center for kids that has been beefed up on Steroids. After three hours there and we had barely made it out of the Curious George exhibit on the first floor, I was beginning to think we would barely see the rest but Little Abbey kept trucking and we finally exhausted all the hands on exhibits about fifteen minutes before closing time. The Mrs. and I were exhausted long before that. We went back to the motel to rest our weary dogs before going out to eat. The BBQ Sliders I had eaten at Uno's Chicago Grill were still with me so I wasn't really all that hungry but we had decided to find some light BBQ, if there was such a thing and ate at a place called Bandana's BBQ.

The next day, we took a small road trip down to Elephant Rocks State Park for a small hike and stopped at a specialty medical bookstore. We settled down the day for eating some more BBQ at a place called Pappy's Smokehouse and meeting Pappy himself. On our final day with the rain still coming down, we opted out of the zoo and instead went to the Science Museum which though not as packed and taking steroids like the Magic House, was a quick way for Little Abbey to get rid of some of her energy. We opted for a lunch of pasta at Cunetto's House of Pasta on the recommendation of R. Sherman and weren't disappointed. Finally we staggered through an obligatory tour of the Anheuser-Busch plant and drove home in the rain until we got within about 20 miles of the Iowa border.

The next day found us in Des Moines for a brief errand and since we had eaten so much BBQ recently, we decided to get a control by eating at Woody's Smokehouse not far from where we live. I will do a more in depth posts on all the BBQ joints and perhaps the House of Pasta in the coming weeks. I also have a planned post on Elephant Rocks State Park and perhaps a couple other ancillary stories along the way. All in all it was a good trip "away from home" and I hope not the last before this year is through.

Creepy Things

Large Spider

Sharp Teeth

Creepy Man

Happy Halloween!

On Vacation...Again

This year I've been fortunate to have more vacation time than I can shake a stick at thanks to the poor economy. Including this week, I have four weeks left before the end of the year. I'm fortunate that I still have a job when I come back and I don't need the regular pay and thus am able to make full use of this time off.

This week, I think we are going to head south to the St. Louis area. I've been there a few times but never for an extended time. This time, we're planning on around three days in the area to check out some of the sites, find something to entertain my daughter and find some good local food to entertain me. I also hope to use this time to gather more material for my future blog post fodder.

So until I get back, sit back and relax, perhaps look into my archives or merely enjoy the blissful silence from me blabbing on about something of no interest. If I get some internet access, I'll continue to stop by your blog and check in. So until November...