Get Your Grill On

Here are some more of my thoughts while judging the KCBS barbecue contest at the Anheuser-Busch grounds in Merrimack NH.
Scoring Challenges
When I first started judging, I was always the last judge at the table to submit my scorecard. I’m still among the slower judges, because I want to do the best job I can. There’s […]

Last Sunday I judged the KCBS barbecue contest at the Anheuser-Busch grounds in Merrimack NH. The weather was perfect, the barbecue was good and it was a great opportunity to make new friends and re-connect with old ones. Here’s just a sample of what was trickling through my mind as I judged.
The scoring
Each of the […]

In my recent BBQ Restaurant Pet Peeves post, I talked about “award winning” barbecue, effectively saying that you’ve got to take these awards with a grain of salt. Now don’t get me wrong (or as Roger Clemens likes to say, “make no mistake about it”), I have the utmost respect for both restaurateurs and competition […]

Having the barbecued meats arrive in a pool of juices.
No, I’m not talking about meat juices. I’m talking about leakage from cole slaw, baked beans or collard greens. How about just serving the sides on the side (which is why they’re called “sides”), or using a small bowl to keep everything segregated?
Being charged extra for […]

By the Pound
I like joints that sell barbecued meats by the pound. In the Northeast, you’ll see this at RUB (NYC), Fette Sau (Brooklyn), Wilson’s (Fairfield CT) and Bendle-Bean’s (Pembroke MA). This method gives you the ultimate flexibility to create any combo you want and eat as much or as little as you want, in […]

It’s already April and I’m still making my way through last month’s magazines. The March Men’s Health had a nice little feature with advice from some of Food Network personalities, and I was glad to see Mario Batali included. Two of Mario’s recommendations were familiar mantras from the Molto Mario shows: establish good relationships with […]

Now I’ve seen everything. The manufacturer Jakks has a series of action figures based on the Rocky movie series starring Sylvester Stallone.
Not only are there multiple versions of Rocky, in different outfits and in various degrees of punch drunkenness, but there are also figures of brother-in-law Paulie, trainer Mickey, rival-turned-pal Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang (Mr. […]

Here’s my rebuttal to New York Is Barbecue Country, posted recently on Get Your Grill On.
I rank RUB and Daisy May’s with the best of Northeast BBQ, but I think overall, New York City barbecue still has plenty of room for improvement. I’m not sure which NYC barbecue joint ranks #3 on my imaginary Gotham […]

Check any of the all-purpose restaurant bulletin board sites and the only topic more arduously debated than who has the best barbecue in any given area is the subject of tipping. I originally posted these tips on tipping on my barbecue restaurant review site, but these could apply to any restaurant:

For a full-service restaurant, if […]

With March Madness upon us, photocopiers in offices across America are being used to record NCAA basketball picks—for entertainment purposes only, of course. Around the water cooler (I prefer a bubbler, but that’s another story) there’s lots of talk about brackets and seeds. With the weather in suburban Boston warming up, I’m looking at a […]