Get Your Grill On

Here’s an interesting article that Grub Street, NY Magazine’s on-line food section just put up about the pre-preponderance of Jewish Pit Masters on the New York barbecue scene. But NY Magazine was beat to the punch on the connection between Jews and Que in NY by my buddy Erica Marcus over at Newsday. Look’s like Mr. Cutlets, Josh Ozersky, is blinded by the borders of NYC and is playing catch up. C’mon out to the burbs Josh!

Robbie Richter is arguably the grand-daddy of competition barbeque in New York City. He and his team, Big Island BBQ have been competing and winning big on the KCBS circuit for years. He’s an all around good guy. I wish him much success with the new place.

It looks like I’ll have another place to eat for free in the new Manhattan BBQ tri-angle.

Barbecue: The New Kosher Food?

Robbie Richter: not mentioned in that Adam Sandler song — yet.

Photo: Josh Ozersky

Reading about the launch of Blue Smoke in Danny Meyer’s new book Setting the Table, we had an epiphany. It’s somehow happened that, in the midst of the greatest barbecue boom New York has ever seen, nearly all of the cuisine’s major restaurants are either owned or operated by Jews. Given the wide berth our people have historically given pork, this seems worth commenting on. Meyers’s launching of Blue Smoke was just the beginning. Josh Cohen has just reopened Biscuit in Park Slope; Adam Perry Lang has become a major star in competition BBQ, in addition to launching his Daisy May’s empire; Andrew Fischel’s RUB was anointed by Adam Platt as the city’s best barbecue; and the field will only become further Semiticized this spring, when Mark Glosserman and Robert Richter launch Hill Country BBQ in the Flatiron district.

Don’t get us wrong. There are some very fine Gentile barbecuers in New York: John Wheeler at Rack & Soul and John Stage at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que are both expert practitioners. Still, we’re surprised someone didn’t coined the phrase sooner: Bar-B-Jew.