So here's the first BBQ of the week. Oklahoma Joe's looks like a gas station /
convenience store from the outside, tucked into the corner of a dive strip mall, across the street from a tiny used car dealership:
And a convenience store on the inside:
This place has ambiance in spades.
As you get to the order counter, you start to see signs that this is a place that takes BBQ seriously (besides the wonderful smells):
Banners from the aforemention American Royal, which is the biggest annual BBQ event in Kansas City.
Here's a somewhat blured picture of the menu:
I've tried just about everything on the menu, and have yet to eat anything I didn't like. I ordered my favorite, the Hog Heaven - pulled pork and sausage together on a bun. Plain beef sandwich for my grandmother, and one of their massive orders of fries.
Like I said, I think they make the best fries in town:
Not too thick, crispy, piping hot, coated liberally with seasoned salt. In the three minutes it takes me to drive from there to my grandmother's house, I burn my fingers and mouth sneaking them out of the bag.
Our feast:
About the sauce, which in my mind is probably the most important criteria on which to judge BBQ. OK Joe's includes it in containers on the side with the sandwiches. I find their sauce to be almost too sweet for my taste, but with enough background spicyness that I enjoy it. The sauces that I really love are assertive and peppery, with an afterthought of sweetness, and this is really the opposite - sweetness with an afterthought kick of spice. So, good sauce, great pulled pork, stellar fries, and the unique ambience make this one of my top two.
So after I stuffed myself on pork and sausage and fries, I turned my attention to the tomatoes.
My grandparents bought their house right around sixty years ago, when my grandfather got back from WW2. It doesn't have a backyard, so much as the driveway runs back to a double garage, leaving a strip of grass and dirt about eight feet wide running along the side. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather planted tomato plants in this patch of earth. Some of my earliest memories are of summer Sunday steak dinners that always included plates of fresh tomato slices, and running around with a cherry tomato in each hand. As I got older I remember my grandfather sitting in a lawn chair with his slingshot, vigilantly defending his plants against invading squirrels. My grandfather passed away thirteen years ago, and that piece of ground has been lying idle ever since.
Since I moved to Westport a few years ago, I live only a mile or so from the house. And since my apartment is a converted attic, I have no place to plant anything substantive of my own. So this year I decided to plant tomatoes behind my grandmother's house.
I tilled the soil and fertilized it with Epsom salts and Miracle Grow, just like he used to, and in May put twelve plants in the ground. I wasn't sure how they were going to fair, since I am something of an absentee landlord to them. I check on them and water them every day, but I can't sit with a slingshot and defend them against pests. My grandmother does bang on the window to scare squirrels away throughout the day, but she doesn't really go outside since she's on an oxygen machine. So far, we've lost three plants, but most of the rest of them are looking good (if a little leggy):
Several of the plants have strong clusters of green tomatoes. I'm impatiently waiting for them to turn red. I don't know what to expect.
I think that even if these plants fare poorly, it's a worthwhile thing to do. I have a reason to see my grandmother every day, and I feel connected to the memory of my grandfather. She talks about him some, and not just the sadness of him being gone. She tells stories I've never heard about their life together, and we've been planning eagerly to share the first perfect tomato in a BLT. The shared project of these plants has brought us closer.
Edited by dividend, 24 July 2007 - 08:43 PM.
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