Meats of The Southern Wild

PulledPork is a powerful thing. And with great power comes great responsibility.

To the People.

The PulledPork People.

So: ME (and you)

Take a look at the Sharpie hieroglyphics marking the side of any nearby Starbucks cup and it’s clear. We want what we want, and DON’T MESS with it.

I’m saucy. I’m a saucy lady. I like a well-bolognesed pasta, a drowned enchilada, and I like my PulledPork in a Puddle. A smoky sweet puddle of liquid courage: BBQ sauce.

 

Once upon a time, I was not given sauce with an order of dumplings. It did not end well.

http://thefoodessfiles.blogspot.com/2010/08/sauciers-apprentice.html

The regional differences regarding BBQ ingredients and technique is well documented.

Not by me. By them: http://gardenandgun.com/gallery/bbq-sandwiches

Travel through five different states, get five different approaches to BBQ.

I remember when Goode Co. BBQ was a shakety-shack in Houston in the early 90’s, cranking out sloppy piles of sauce-swaddled animal lunch. It was a city secret then, with a parking lot seemingly made of dust into which shiny Mercedes and Beamers would nestle. Inside were the businessmen and women of the city, dress shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, silk ties tucked between buttons or thrown over shoulders.

Hands that moved millions with the stroke of a key, ran the city’s banks, businesses, and bottom lines were taking a lunch break at that moment to manhandle a soft-bunned PulledPork with Pickles.

I love change! Until you change something. Remake Psycho? I cannot even make eye contact with you. I refuse to acknowledge any Catwoman after Michelle Pfieffer. Thank god I never watched Felicity-the haircut would have killed me. Change is good, until it is not.

The Hello My Name Is BBQ has no idea what a Molotov cocktail of change it is to my PulledPork memory database. To that very first sloppy bite of Goode Co. BBQ, drowning in sauce. Just look at it sitting there. A cat among the pigeons…

 

The Holy City is decreed in chalk to be beer braised pork BBQ on grilled brioche. I read it and scanned the available extras. I raised my “ok coleslaw is new for me on a PulledPork, but keep an open mind Frances” eyebrow (the left one) crossed my arms across my chest in a classic Frances “pickles might be a deal breaker” gesture. I am a purist. A divider plate girl.

I am handed my paper-nested sandwich and instantly make a snap judgement. Decidedly NOT saucy. I breathe through it. Change can be good. Change can be good.

I take my incendiary sandwich with me to sit on a blanket in the sun, ringed by people who eat food, know food, and write about food. Namely, the extraordinarily charming Charles and Emmy Powell, BBQ chronicler Dan Cassavaugh and the behatted rum drinker known in certain circles as Jed Portman.

Sometimes change arrives in the form of extremely uncharacteristic mint green nail polish. (Christmas 2012) Or forgiving Ben Affleck for Gigli, on accounta Argo and Gone Baby Gone being so damned good. And apparently, change happens on a sunny Saturday in a southern city, when after one full bite, and while chewing the second, you accept that a PulledPork sandwich with coleslaw and pickles is very, very good. And that you can accept coleslaw’s vinegary crunch, in place of a saucy slurp. And that, while perhaps you can’t totally reeeeeealllly taste the beer of the “beer braise,” you are really very happy to be eating this sandwich at this moment. It is a very good sandwich. And you are having a tremendously good time here.

 

NOTE: The Hello My Name Is BBQ Truck does indeed have a help-yourself shelf of on-the-thin-side squeeze bottle sauces, and I plan to take slightly more vigorous advantage of these next time.

 

Change is good. Life is change. Right, Ben Affleck?
 

NOTE 2: Additionally, a not-so-saucy BBQ experience does mean that you can wear a cream-colored sweater to a BBQ with confidence. Silver. Lining.