Downtown BBQ Makes the Grade in KC

Winslow’s BBQ
20 E. 5th St.
Kansas City, MO





Sometimes I feel like a Kansas City barbeque failure.

I pride myself on my barbeque tasting expertise. You name the smoke shack or pig joint and chances are I’ve been there, tasted the ‘que, lived to tell you all about it and bought the shirt (or cleaned my grill with it).

I feel like I have a good handle on a wide cross section of the meat served in all the barbeque Meccas like Memphis, Columbia, Lexington and Lockhart.

But I’ve never really eaten my way through Kansas City, one of America’s great ‘que towns.

Oh sure, I’ve done the obligatory stops at Gates and Arthur Bryant’s.

Who hasn’t?

But to really get a sense of the barbeque culture of a city, you have to do more than just check off the list of places that make regular appearances on cable TV.

And that’s where I feel like I can improve my performance in Kansas City.

I need to hit up L.C.’s, Rosedale and Danny Edwards -- the lesser known pit houses where the locals go to get real KC ‘que.

Unfortunately, all those venerable authentic smoke shacks tend to congregate on the south side of Kansas City -- a place where Suit757 rarely travels.

In general, local dive barbeque shacks tend to be in the parts of town Suit757 doesn’t have much business. (I’ll let you speculate about why that might be.)

Of course geographic inconvenience has never stopped me before. But with a tight schedule, I knew venturing out to wilds of South KC wasn’t going to be in the cards on this trip either.

There’s got to be some place in this barbeque crazed city to get some ribs and burnt ends near downtown.

Sure enough, I found Winslow’s BBQ.

It’s been around for over four decades. That’s a good sign.

Won lots of awards. Another good sign.

But when I walked up to Winslow’s I quickly realized that it is located in one of those fake touristy taxpayer subsidized “festival marketplaces” downtown along with stores selling souvenir KCMO coffee cups and key chains -- and t-shirts that read “Who farted?”

Not a good sign.

And during prime dinner hour I was the only customer in the place.

Definitely NOT a good sign.

There’s no way I’m going to get any sense of authentic KC barbeque at this joint.

But you know what?

The smoked meat served at Winslow’s was downright exquisite.

Too bad I was the only one in Kanas City getting to experience it.

Fortunately, the one lady who did double duty as the lone waitress and bar tender had the TV turned to the MLB Network with the sound turned up loud.

I happily sat there alone positioned directly in front of the TV drinking a big Boulevard Pale Ale out of a plastic cup watching baseball -- just like at the bar in my home.

Only I haven’t figured out how to make barbeque this good at home.

I ordered the three meat platter for $15. It was enough food to feed a family of four.

Five big meaty ribs with pork soft and tender like butter.

The pulled pork was soft and smoky like the best you’d find in North Carolina or Tennessee.

The brisket was best of all.

Usually when you order brisket, you can choose between sliced or chopped. This was like both in one.

The beef was sliced, but it was so tender it fell apart into delicious morsels of chopped brisket with the slightest touch of my fork.

All three meats were smoked to perfection, with telltale red smoke rings.

Most extraordinary was how tender and moist all three meats were.

Dave Winslow, the original founder, hired an engineer to invent a steam pit that evaporates 50 gallons of water per day.

At Winslow’s, the meat isn’t just smoked. It’s enveloped in steam for hours, yielding fall apart moist barbeque that needs no sauce.

Of course being Suit757, I had to try it anyway.

East Coast barbeque purists love to disparage Kansas City style barbeque for the thick glops of ketchupy sauce Midwesterners supposedly like to slather onto their meat.

Here at Winslow’s, that sauce discretion is left to the barbeque eater.

Winslow’s sauce was not as thick or sweet as some Kansas City sauces.

The sauce was good -- but unnecessary.

Some purists would claim it would be a crime to cover up such perfect barbeque with sauce.

For me, the real crime was that I was the only customer in the place.

Where the heck is everybody? There should be a line out the door for barbeque this good.

I think it is the location.

Nobody goes downtown anymore.

This has been a known phenomenon in virtually every American city since the advent of the shopping mall forty years ago.

This is the type of problem politicians like to solve with our tax money.

Of course they don’t bother to consider the REASON nobody goes downtown any more.

Business owners don’t open businesses downtown because…

…wait for it…

…nobody goes downtown any more.

So here’s the solution: pay business owners to locate downtown with taxpayer financed “festival marketplaces” like KC’s River Market.

But no matter how many tax subsidized businesses locate downtown, the politicians can’t create customers out of thin air.

Because nobody goes downtown any more.

No matter how good the barbeque happens to be.

And that’s too bad.

Winslow’s deserves a wider audience than just from suits who don’t have time to venture to the south side of town.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Making a Mess in Room 225

Hot Sauce Williams
3770 Lee Road
Cleveland, OH






We call this website Suits in Strange Places.

Because when you are a business traveler combing the back woods and back alleys of America to find the coolest places to eat, drink and have fun, you have to be willing to push yourself a bit out of your comfort zone.

With this gig, you just have to accept the fact that you just aren’t always going to fit in.

Especially when you are a white guy in a suit in the ghetto of Cleveland.

It’s not like I’m going to pass myself off as a local at Hot Sauce Williams.

Sometimes you just have to get your food, snap a few clandestine pictures and take it back to Room 225 at the Clarion.

So, I hope, my dear reader, you’ll grant me special dispensation this one time.

Tonight, Suit757 was doing carry out – the cop out of every solo business traveler.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how important and profound this review could become.

Every business traveler in America can relate to the perils of motel room carry out.

After 250+ reviews on this website, it’s about time we broached this important issue.

It’s time someone stood up for the rights of the solo business traveler.

We’re tired of being treated as second class citizens. Persecuted business travelers should unite for more napkins, better utensils and a table to eat at in the motel room that faces the TV!

Is that too much to ask for?

I think not!

From my research, I knew Hot Sauce Williams probably wasn’t going to be a “dine in” kind of place anyway. And I heard it was on the seedy side of town.

So I figured I must have been lost as I cruised down Van Aken Boulevard in my rental Ford Focus past stately brick mansions and leafy suburban side streets on my way to Hot Sauce Williams.

But as soon as I turned left on Lee Road and rumbled over the railroad crossing, the neighborhood changed dramatically.

Within the span of a few hundred feet, the bucolic Cleveland suburbs transformed into chicken and waffle joints, pawn shops and pay day check cashing services.

I guess this is what they mean by “wrong side of the tracks.”

And to think, pompous Yankees accuse us Southerners of segregation?

We figured this stuff out a long time ago. Forget the federal government. Good food will always be the best desegregation tool.

I guess that’s why I thought it was strange that I was the only white guy to come or go in the ten or fifteen minutes I spent at Hot Sauce Williams.

For a place with barbeque and sausages this good, great food should transcend demographics, like it does in the South.

Speaking of desegregation, I found it ironic that one of the most famous items on Hot Sauce Williams’ menu is something called a “Polish Boy”.

That’s what I came for!

Cleveland has long boasted a large Polish population with top notch pierogies and kielbasa readily available.

But great Polish sausage at a black barbeque joint? I don’t have an explanation for that one.

A Cleveland Polish Boy is a kielbasa sausage on a hot dog roll smothered in French fries, cole slaw and that namesake hot sauce.

Yes. You read that right.

The French fries and cole slaw are squooshed onto the top of the sausage along with the hot sauce.

You get all four food groups in each bite.

Of course, as Suit757, I was concerned that most important food group of all might be under represented under that mound of carbs.

So I eagerly voted for the option of adding freshly barbequed pulled pork to my Polish Boy monstrosity.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself as I made my way back to the Clarion under the intoxicating spell of Hot Sauce Williams’ hot sauce saturating the recycled air inside my Ford Focus.

I just ordered pork on top of my pork!

Aren’t I clever?

That was the longest six mile drive of my life.

Nostrils tingling with the scent of dead pig saturated in hot sauce. Stomach growling in anticipation.

Forget that slow ass motel elevator.

I bounded the stairs three at a time to the second floor, fumbled for my plastic key, and flew open the door.

Didn’t even bother to bolt it. I had more important things to do.

I flipped the TV to the Indians game, cracked open my $12 “Hoppin’ Frog Goose Juice” and laid my aluminum foil Arch of the Covenant on my lap.

This was the moment I had been waiting for all my life.

I opened it up like a four year old on Christmas morning.

And there it was splayed out before me – an absolute freaking mess.

WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS???

Cole slaw, pork, hot sauce, fries, bun and sausage disemboweled like the carnage from an overly realistic war movie.

No fork. No knife. No plate. No bib. Two meager cocktail napkins.

If you’ve ever attempted to eat carry-out on the bed spread of a motel mattress, you can feel my pain.

I mean, every motel, no matter how cheap, now provides you with a coffee maker, iron and ironing board. Is it too much to ask for a few paper plates, plastic forks and paper towels?

I guess so.

I sacrificed a motel towel to mop up my inglorious mess.

Serves them right.

I quickly concluded there is no responsible, mature way to eat a Cleveland Polish Boy.

So I just went all cave man on it with my bare hands. And resisted the urge to use my gory fingers to change the channel between innings.

I was up to my elbows in cole slaw, hot sauce and pig remainders, dripping all over the well worn Clarion carpet.

And you know what? Alone in my motel room, with no one looking judgmentally at me, there was something liberating about devouring my meal like a Neanderthal.

I think my primitive conditions in Room 225 made my Polish Boy taste even better.

The sausage was dense and smoky but complimented by the creamy cool flavor of the cole slaw and starchy fries.

But the highlight was the pulled pork and sauce, which seemed more sweet than hot – surprising, considering the name of the place.

Best of all was my Goose Juice – the one clear cut advantage to motel room carry out.

When you can stop by the Whole Foods across the street to buy your own beer, you are not held hostage by the lame dine-in selection of beer taps.

That was especially important this evening considering that Hot Sauce Williams doesn’t even serve beer.

It would be a crime against man and nature to consume a pork and hot sauce-laden Polish
Boy with anything but good craft beer.

Granted, pouring it into the shrink-wrapped plastic Clarion cup is probably not what the brewers down the road at Akron’s Hoppin’ Frog Brewery had in mind when they carefully crafted this high alcohol rye IPA.

But, you know. See above about the plight of motel dwelling business travelers.

Come to think of it, I’ve had enough of these indignities.

I’m starting a national campaign right now with this review: beer-clean pint glasses in EVERY hotel room.

Oh, and don’t forget the extra napkins.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Hickory Park Letdown

Last week I was in Ames, Iowa for the big political event of the season, but the politics was almost upstaged by the barbeque. It was on everyone's mind, and on their plates.

One of the candidates had a "Famous Dave's" tent, and nearly everyone else had some kind of smoked pig, brisket, or bbq chicken on their menu. But when I'm traveling and looking for bbq, I'm usually on the hunt for a local establishment so I can order the "house special".

The other few times I was in Iowa, there wasn't enough time to enjoy the local specialties, so now I was asking around to see what the top joints were. One place kept popping up: Hickory Park.



The first time I tried to eat here, it was dinnertime and the line was out the door. The parking lot smelled pretty good, so I wasn't surprised a bit.

The wait was 20 minutes and since I was on my lunch break, at everyone else's dinner time, I decided that I'd come back tomorrow for a proper lunch.

The next day there wasn't a line and my compatriots and I were able to sit down at a table right away. We were brought menus and iced teas, and our waiter seemed knowledgeable and helpful.

Hickory Park looks kind of like a cross between a German beer hall and a typical BBQ joint. As I walked inside, I happened to eyeball a few customers wearing lederhosen.

"What do Germans know about BBQ?" I thought. Not much, as it turns out.



I immediately asked for the "house special" and our waiter pointed to a highlighted part of the menu, to an item called the Saucy Southerner. Touted as "Hickory Park’s version of a pulled pork sandwich - The perfect combination of chopped hickory, smoked pork, beef and turkey simmered in barbecue sauce"... how could I go wrong? I ordered it with a side of green beans and mashed potatoes.

While we waited for our order, I excused myself from the table and made my way to the wait-station to inform our man that it was my table-mate's birthday, and that despite what he might say at the time, he really did want an ice-cream sundae with a birthday candle.

Soon our food came, and just in time - I was getting hungry. We had a pretty good selection at the table. Between my Saucy Southerner, a bbq chicken dinner, and a plate of smoked beef, pork and turkey, I figured we had all of the bbq food groups covered.



Now before I tell you about the worst bbq experience in my amateur bbq career, let me take a minute to say that Hickory Park has the best bbq green beans I've ever eaten.

Seriously.

The green beans were fresh and flavorful. They were cooked perfectly - not too mushy, but not crunchy and under-cooked. The seasoning was light and complimentary, not heavy and overpowering. Overall the green beans were excellent, and if I lived in Ames I'd get my bbq somewhere else, and make a trip across town just to complete the order with some of Hickory Park's green beans.

The sandwich roll looked fresh, and it was. Fresh, but tasteless. I took a bite of it naked, before putting any sauce on it. That's when I was glad I hadn't eaten all of the green beans right away.

Have you ever seen those 1986 diesel Volvo's, where the back bumper is blackened from diesel soot and burning oil? I'm sure you can imagine the odor of riding behind one of those old Volvo's in a traffic jam.

If you were to lick the rear bumper of that Volvo, you'd know what my Saucy Southerner tasted like.



The mashed potatoes weren't much better. I should say, the mashed potatoes could have been amazing, but since they were covered in a gravy that tasted like the inside of an over-heating vacuum cleaner, I wasn't able to tell.

It was so bad I started laughing, and I had to get my table-mates to try some.



Obviously "this is the worst bbq I've ever eaten... no seriously, you gotta try some of this!" isn't the best selling point.



At this point I reached for the sauce and started to get liberal. No matter how much I put on, I couldn't shake the Volvo bumper flavoring.

Needless to say I wasn't able to even choke down half of it, so as soon as the waiter came around asking about dessert, I was more than ready.



When he came back with the rest of his crew, 2 ice cream sundaes and a song, we had a few laughs and tried to forget about the whole horrible bbq experience.

RATING: I wouldn't insult my grill by using the t-shirt to clean it off

Barbeque in the Belly of Barney’s Beast

Blue Ribbon Bar-B-Q
1375 Washington St.
West Newton, MA

It’s just wrong.

This is a website about great food, authentic barbeque joints and back-woods dive bars – with a right wing slant.

What THE HELL am I doing at a barbeque place in the congressional district of Barney Frank??? The physiologically confused politician second-most responsible (after Alan Greenspan) for single-handedly destroying our American economic system???

Wrong.

Very, very wrong. (Kind of like running a homosexual prostitution ring out of your congressional office.)

I really wanted to hate Blue Ribbon Bar-B-Q – and its overly scrubbed, nouveau rustic motif. And its typical north-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line something-for-everyone menu.

I had this review all written in my mind before I even crossed the threshold.

“Limp Wristed Barbeque”.

It was going to be a classic.

Oh well.

Don’t write your review before the first bite.

As much as it pains me to admit it, Blue Ribbon serves up some legitimately good barbeque.

Like any barbeque joint located behind enemy lines, Blue Ribbon can’t afford to specialize. It offers a little bit of everything for every taste. But, it manages to avoid the curse of lowest common denominator food.

Unlike your local Southern town square BBQ pit that only knows how to do barbeque one way (the right way, the locals will tell you), ordering at Blue Ribbon can get a bit complicated, even for a barbeque connoisseur like me who has tried all the various versions of “the right way” barbeque in every state in the old Confederacy.

Blue Ribbon has chicken, sausage, brisket, pork and ribs, each with its own variety of sauce. And enough side dishes to put the Old Country Buffett to shame.

I chose the sausage (a popular choice of Barney’s, I presume) and pulled pork combo with “black-eyed corn” and baked beans.

The sausage was smoked to perfection, appetizingly scored and drenched in a Southern style mustard sauce, a la Maurice Bessinger in Columbia or Fred Cotten in Jacksonville.

Smoky, tender and tasty, the pulled pork was saturated in an oily but sweet vinegar sauce. It was the real deal.

The beans were not sticky sweet, but very good, more Western style than Southern.

As it turns out, black-eyed corn is exactly like it sounds – a mish mash of smoked corn and black-eyed peas.

If this sounds like a lot of food, well it was.

Piled on top of this massive mound of barbeque was a hefty piece of sweet corn bread, perfect for lapping up that oily sauce.

I left Blue Ribbon in desperate need of a digestion nap. Maybe under the branches of a sweet smelling magnolia tree with a blue-eyed Southern belle in a flowing cotton dress to caress my bloated stomach.

Wait a minute. I’m in Barney Frank’s home town.

Alas, that bucolic scene will have to wait until I get back to my homeland. Where limp-wristed, lisping, economy-wrecking, politicians thankfully are as rare as good barbeque in Massachusetts.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Great Southern BBQ... in China

Garys BBQ

620 Highway 29 N

China Grove, NC 28023-2616

Once my final meeting in South Carolina was finished SuitOchoCinco was more than ready to haul proverbial ass back home.

I jumped in my jet black Chevy “forced union made” Impala and dropped the pedal to the metal.

Now, I’d been told of this storied BBQ joint just North of Charlotte called “Garys BBQ” but wasn’t able to locate it throughout my trip… so I had a moderate amount of disappointment plaguing my empty stomach

Plus I literally had 6 hours to do a 7 hour trip and had no time to spare.

But then I saw it… flying up the interstate at near mach speeds I passed what I thought was a “Garys BBQ next exit” sign… could it be? Was this a sign? (I mean like an omen… it was obviously a “sign”)

I owed it to my other suits, my brethren, my brothers in arms to stop, I had to stop… a place with this much legacy had to be reviewed and it had to be reviewed now. (OK I didn’t really owe anyone, I was freaking starving)

In order to dine at this storied eatery I was going to have to make up some time and quick, I flew off the interstate onto the exit a speeds only rivaled in recklessness by Obamas spending in the last 2 years, followed the signs about .3 miles off the Interstate into a little town called, China Grove.

The BBQ gods were obviously in agreeance with my hasty decision because basically at the end of the ramp was “Gary’s BBQ” in all its glory.

Folks, I tried to pull into the parking lot, to no avail. This place was packed… bursting at the seams… like entitlements in a Bill written by Nancy Pelosi packed.

Finally a spot cleared and I cut and 85 year old man and his wife off, look, this is BBQ, and I had 15 minutes… don’t judge.

I ran in the front door, the walls were adorned top to bottom with vintage Coke and Pepsi signs and the place packed. Luckily there was one spot at the “bar” and I bellied up.

Within one minute a beautiful young lady with an even more beautiful southern drawl approached me and asked what I would like. I said a plate of your finest pulled pork with a mound of vinegar slaw and a southern style sweet tea, what can I say her drawl had me nostalgic for a true southern bbq experience.

Every sip I took out of my tea was met with a pitcher filling it back up and in under 5 minutes I was met by a heaping plate of beautiful chopped pig and crisp fresh cole slaw, 3 handmade and fried hush puppies as well as an unexpected surprise, they decided to buy the new guy a heaping cup of Gary’s famous Banana Pudding.

I don’t remember the next 5 minutes, I just remember coming out of my swine induced haze a little bit later with an empty plate and a smile on my face from ear to ear…oh yeah, and Garys signature sauce was ear to ear too. (Oh yeah... the banana pudding was the best I have ever had in my short life)

Gary himself came over to thank me for coming by, I stopped him, thanked him, and hurriedly paid my tab and got on the road again. (blue apron)

Look… if you drive anywhere near Charlotte North Carolina… STOP AND EAT HERE... it was amazing.

Rating: Tried to buy the shirt, sadly they didn’t have my size