Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2005

[Lyle]

As far as I could tell, the major difference was that Salt lick was cooking and serving the whole brisket, including the deckel, and Elgin seemed to be only serving (and perhaps only cooking) the first cut.

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Both were serving deckel, and you could specifically ask for it if you were willing to be patient and have the folks in the generic white staff shirts ask the real staff doing the carving for you. That said and having tried the deckel at both, I still liked Salt Lick's brisket better. Elgin's was much moister than what they were mostly serving and still managed to keep the slightly firmer texture that Fat Guy liked. Salk Lick's though was much more seasoned especially towards the end bits which were practically caramel.

Not sure who I was talking to but there was a blond woman wearing a denim Elgin shirt who didn't know what I was talking about when I asked for deckel. Her husband was right behind her though doing the carving and looked up to say "That's the side you like Honey."

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In Texas one orders "fat" or "lean" brisket.

[juuceman]

I wonder where all those pit workers came from. It doesn't seem likely that most of the servers were brought up and housed overnight.

The non-Southern staff was provided by some event staffing company.. i thought most of them were pretty ineffective, poorly trained, and generally mechanical.. for instance, on Sunday at noon, when the Bubba Pass system was up and working and people were pouring in, two of the main registers were down because the operators didn't know how to clear paper jams.. for at least 20 minutes we had to wait while she yelled at each person with a walkie talkie who walked by and asked them to help her.. for the most part they just kept going and she got more and more frustrated.. i should note that while this happened, the guy who runs the company was sitting on the grass in the middle of the park drinking beer with his friends.. he later complained that he had to put someone on duty to keep the beer contained within the beer garden area.. the fact that they had centralized registers for the bubba pass seemed pretty counter-intuitive to me- why not just have a register at each vendor, rather than what i believe were four (plus a single anomoly register at the Southside booth)..

i don't think that the stands were paid for individual portions.. most all of them sold out, some faster than others.. portion sizes were all over the place, and accounting was sloppy, to say the least.. i'd wager that they were paid handsome appearance fees to show up with their rigs and cook.. everyone was more than happy to give away the food on saturday when the system was down, and i can't imagine that they'd have been that charitable if it meant the money was coming out of their pockets.. coupled with the line that proceeds benefitted the Madison Square Park conservancy, I'm pretty sure of this..

[schmooty]

I am still kicking myself for not buying a Bubba Fast Pass. The regular lines were a joke. I pretty much refuse to wait an hour and a half for anything. On Saturday I ate from Bob Gibsons's and 17th Street. Gibsons pork was my favorite thing I ate all weekend. Sunday I had brisket and sausage from Salt Lick and both were excellent. I ordered from the deckle, and they were happy to accommodate me. Does anyone know if Salt Lick was using the sauce from the bottles or did they make a batch specifically for the BBQ block party? I find their bottled sauce to taste pretty bad and chemically. The sauce yesteday tasted much better to me. I will 100% be buying a fast pass the day they go on sale next year. I also got to say hi to Steingarten which was cool. I told him "you the man" and he said to me no, "you the man." It was pretty funny.

[Jaymes]

The best single piece of information offered at the seminars was Peter Kaminsky's comment on Iberian pigs at the Regional Foods seminar. He noted the superiority of the fat, in terms of health issues, of that which comes from a pig raised entirely on acorns. Hams from these pigs are still not allowed to be imported into the US and may be reason alone to visit Spain. You're not likely to see me trim the fat on a slice of good Bellota quality ham. (Bellota is the Spanish word for acorns and the term used for pork from a pig raised on a diet of acorns. It's pretty much the top quality on the market and can command a much heftier price in Spain than Italian prociutto does in the US. Expect it to be very expensive when they ever get permission to import it here.)

There's a fellow in Central Texas that came from Germany a while back to open a restaurant. No matter what he did, he couldn't get his pork to taste the same as back home. He discovered that was because he couldn't get pork here from the same breed of pig that he had been accustomed to.

So he imported a breeding pair of pigs. Now he raises his own, feeding them whatever it was they ate in Germany.

And the meat is delicious.

[johnder]

The whole ticket thing was really over the top. I don't see the need for a computerized ticket system for such an event. Given the bubba pass ticket "rules" changes from Saturday to Sunday was a major pain. On sunday you needed to pick in advance, on the spot which pits you wanted tickets for.

I think it would have been much easier to just have several regular registers where you would buy pig chips, or beverage chips. That way I can go there, pay in cash or charge 7 pigs chips and 5 drink chips. I can then use those chips at any line.

It was ironic how on Sunday how after I spent time picking my lines, the printer was out of ink and nobody could read the tickets anyway. I ended up just handing the illegible ticket to the workers and was met with a blank stare. After about 10 seconds of trying to read it, they just handed me a plate.

In regards to Smoky-O's, where did they cook their snoots? I just saw them at pre-setup taking big trays of pre-cooked snoots out of serving trays and breaking them up.

[Jason Perlow]

Smoki-O's cooked the snoots in St Louis, Danny Meyer's home town.

One thing that should be noted about the snoots is that in their restaurant in StL, they are warm and already covered with sauce, which makes them somewhat softer. At the event they were pretty crunchy.

[Mayhaw Man]

Jason Perlow and eGullet get a mention in The Gothamist concerning his photographs of the event.

[alacarte]

excellent pictures, as always!

[kurl]

Smoki-O's cooked the snoots in St Louis, Danny Meyer's home town.

One thing that should be noted about the snoots is that in their restaurant in StL, they are warm and already covered with sauce, which makes them somewhat softer. At the event they were pretty crunchy.

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As far as I know, they're sauced to serve in St. Louis, and still quite crunchy.

[jhlurie]

In Texas one orders "fat" or "lean" brisket.

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At the Katz Deli in NY too... (although they call it "pastrami" there)

[Bux]

All of the pit tents had facilities to take cash and credit cards. I truly don't understand the discrepency between the way they operated on the cash side and the Bubba Pass side. On Saturday without a pass I waited for close to an hour to get some ribs, but paid neatly and efficiently with a credit card. On Sunday I avoided lines for a while and eventually had to deal with shorter lines, but the whole thing with the tickets was so inefficient. I was left with fists full of receipts, copies and slips good for pork. Often I was given both the white and yellow copies and there seemed to be no rational for when the servers crossed off their line on the yellow or white copy. I was constantly fumbling in my pockets looking for the right slip with credit for one pit or another and then having to reach back in my pocket for the Bubba card to get from one section of tents to another. It the number of people who buy passes increases, they're going to have to deal with the process far more efficiently. Since the pit tents all had the facility to deal with credit cards, it doesn't seem to me to be a reach for the Bubba pass to be a cash card and have each tent deduct cash as you get your pork and beverages.

Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group have been praised for organizing the event and criticized for appearing regularly as other NY cue places take their turns with a pit. The event doesn't owe something to him, it owes just about everything to him. I'd like to thank him for providing the second floor private dining rooms as air conditioned venues for the seminars. Many of us arrived dehydrated from the heat and thirsty from the salt and spices to find pitchers of ice water and clean glasses at the back of the seminar rooms. Danny always emphasizes that he's not in the food business, but the hospitality business. Danny's a great host.

[Jason Perlow]

By the way, some more great pictures on Flickr here (click) and here (click) of the event. You might even recognize a few people.

[Rachel Perlow]

This one, or better yet, this one of a bunch of the pitmasters is great. I love the series of pics of people biting sausage, and both seemed to catch the same guy passed out OD'd on 'cue.

[Lyle]

In Texas one orders "fat" or "lean" brisket.

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At the Katz Deli in NY too... (although they call it "pastrami" there)

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Good. That's how I order it there too as I didn't know what deckel was. I'd hate to, ya know, look like a tourist.

[Fat Guy]

The event organizers just sent around some statistics on the 2005 Big Apple Barbecue. Thought you all might be interested.

Over 100,000 people estimated to have attended.

• 6000 lbs of spare ribs • 26,000 buns

• 3850 lbs of baby back ribs • 1000 lbs of baked beans

• 5500 lbs of beef brisket • 1900 lbs of coleslaw

• 4000 lbs of pork butt • 11,284 cups of beer

• 2600 lbs of whole pork shoulder • 8011 bottles of water

• 30 whole hogs • 5512 bottles of soda

• 30 cases of pig snoots • 300 lbs of chocolate chips

• 35,000 slices of bread • 195 bags of charcoal

The event raised more than $50,000 for the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

[slkinsey]

• 30 cases of pig snoots

People are learning to love the snoot, I see. I wish they could do their more usual dish, which is rib tips and snoot, but apparently there isn't enough room for them to have a fire (or, for some reason, the need for them to have fire for the rib tips means they can't do it).

[Curlz]

The event raised more than $50,000 for the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

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How does that compare to last year?

[juuceman]

I think it would have been much easier to just have several regular registers where you would buy pig chips, or beverage chips.  That way I can go there, pay in cash or charge 7 pigs chips and 5 drink chips.  I can then use those chips at any line.

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this is how the event was run for the first two years.. it was a clusterfuck.. there was a line to purchase tickets at one of the two stands (each with multiple registers) followed by even longer lines to purchase the food.. the most logical thing for them to have done would've been to have a credit card machine at each tent dedicated to pastpass use.. i believe this is what the original plan was but technology got in the way..