Eating Memphis Barbecue & Thinking about Injustice

Eating Memphis Barbecue & Thinking about Injustice

If you’re enjoying some barbecue at Central Barbecue [http://cbqmemphis.com/] in Memphis, and you happen to glance out of the big open windows in back, you’re likely to see Jaqueline Smith [http://www.fulfillthedream.net/pages/mlk.jsmith1.html], standing in front of the National Civil Rights Museum [http://civilrightsmuseum.org/]. The last resident of the Lorraine Hotel, she’s protesting her eviction, which took place almost three decades ago.



The day after I sucked down ribs, pulled pork and a bologna sandwich at Central Barbecue, I stopped by to snap a picture of Smith.

ME: May I take your picture?
SMITH: Not until I tell you why I’m here!

That seemed a reasonable demand, and I appreciated Smith’s feisty insistence that she be treated as more than merely a tourist’s photo subject.

Smith has been standing there, in front of the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King was assassinated – and where the stunning museum now stands – for around 28 years. To everyone who passes by, she explains why she feels the museum exploits King’s legacy and is not helping poor people, like her, who were displaced when the Lorraine was purchased and converted into one of the very finest social issue museums I’ve ever visited.

Smith is a firebrand but also a very articulate and charming person. I liked her, and I liked talking with her. She’s a person possessed of non-mainstream ideas, for instance, her belief that Africans were here before the American Indians.

SMITH: So, how’d the so-called Native Americans get here anyway?
ME: Uh, I believe they came across the Bering Strait?
[Smith becomes only slightly impatient]

Smith was interesting to talk to but ultimately frustrating because seemingly impervious to generally accepted historic fact (which is pretty much all I know – and I’m not bragging about that).

Me, I’m just happy to eat barbecue, and at Central Barbecue I ate several items that made me very happy:



• Memphis sausage: a lot like Polish sausage, cut into medallions, fried on both sides, and served with cubes of cheese, pickles, peppers, all covered with “barbecue shake” (a kind of seasoned salt).



• Bologna sandwich: I ate one of these almost every day. So simple, so good. I just filed a Tribune story about my bologna-related adventures in Tennessee [insert joke here].



• Pulled pork: this version of pig meat was served at every barbecue place we visited in Memphis and environs. Frequently simply smoked, rather than rubbed or sauced, it was added to beans to make some of the best pork and beans in memory, the two main ingredients enhancing each other, making each better.

There’s a lot of injustice in the world, a lot that’s wrong. Eating barbecue may go some way to towards convincing that there’s also a lot that’s right.

David Hammond wrote:

• Bologna sandwich: I ate one of these almost every day. So simple, so good. I just filed a Tribune story about my bologna-related adventures in Tennessee [insert joke here].

Never an uninteresting post [No Joke]. I was just in Nashville last weekend and enjoyed a late night fried bologna sandwich at an old time diner in those parts. Though in that area they seem to dress them on toasted white bread with lettuce, tomato, mayo and cheese. Were most places in Memphis pushing them slathered in BBQ sauce and Cole Slaw on a white bun similar to the one up above? I'll be on the lookout for the Trib article.

Da Beef wrote:Though in that area they seem to dress them on toasted white bread with lettuce, tomato, mayo and cheese. Were most places in Memphis pushing them slathered in BBQ sauce and Cole Slaw on a white bun similar to the one up above? I'll be on the lookout for the Trib article.

Hey Titus, no, I would not say most places served them this way, at least the places I went to. The ones at Central were grilled, drying them out in a way that doesn't seem as likely with griddling or even smoking. Thus the sauce.

The best I had was at Helen's Bar B-Q, and that bologna was simply smoked by Helen. She buys a "stick" (maybe 7 or more pounds), cuts it in half, and smokes for "couple of hours." She uses only wood, hickory and oak, and the meat goes on white bread (with mustard, if you're fancy, though Helen's sauce is always available). Had thirds.