Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2006

[hitmanoo]

Taking a break after round 1.

The Bubba's Fast Passes did NOT provide the speedy service we anticipated. Unfortunately, the machines were so very slow in processing the cards that it took at least a full minute from the time the card was swiped until each order was processed. Multiply that by the # of people in line, and you have BIG PROBLEMS

It got so bad that a couple of places just stopped swiping cards and just gave out free food just to speed things along. That was nice, but it shouldn't have to be that way.

We went to Southside Market to start off with a fantastic combo of sausage and brisket. Would have preferred the sausage a little spicier, but other than that it was dead on! Nice vineger based slaw on the side.

The line for Big Bob Gibson was so long that we snuck in some Blue Smoke Ribs. The ribs were just ok, but were a nice filler until Gibson.

Gibson's pulled pork was exceptional. The red sauce was recommended and is fantastic. I may buy a bottle or two for myself.

Will head back for round 2 shortly...

[Jason Perlow]

Here we go.

Elgin Sausage and Brisket

Mike Mills / 17th Street / Memphis Championship Babyback Ribs and BBQ Beans

Amy Mills Tunnicliffe

Blue Smoke Pitmaster Kenny Callaghan

Pile 'o Blue Smoke St. Louis Cut (Kansas City style) ribs

Blue Smoke's grill is white hot

Blue Smoke Ribs

Salt Lick Sausage

Salt Lick Brisket

Uncut Brisket

Salt Lick Sausage

Salt Lick slicing up brisket

Salt Lick Pitmaster Micheal Rodriguez making the slaw

Plate 'o slaw.

Salt Lick Brisket and Sausage

Salt Lick's J&R smoking pit

Deep in the Heart of Texas. Salt Lick even brought its own wood fence and tumbleweeds.

Danny Meyer and Kids

Ubon's Pulled Pork

Danny teaching his children how to eat BBQ

Ubon's BBQ Pork Sandwich

Blue Smoke Blueberry Pie

Blue Smoke Key Lime Pie

Smoki O's Rib Tips

Otis Walker, presiding over the rib tips

Urban Picnic

Paul Kirk's "Bubba Stik"

Paul Kirk Slicing RUB Brisket

Paul Kirk

RUB Brisket

RUB Burnt Ends Closeup

RUB Brisket

Big Bob Gibson Pulled Pork

Ed Mitchell's Whole Hog (Organic, no Antibiotics)

Ed Mitchell's Whole Hog Sandwich

Edited June 11, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[hitmanoo]

Round 2

Many places were out of food by 4:30, but we hit one place and that was enough BBQ for one day.

The Beef Brisket and Sausage from Salt Lick. The best combo I tasted all day. The BBQ sauce seemed a nice mustardy vinegar which went great with the brisket. The sausage was nice and spicy, and I really enjoyed it.

What a beautiful (but windy) day, and a perfect day for barbecue!

[Fat Guy]

The barbecue was terrific today as always, but the event has grown so much that managing it has become a logistical near-impossibility. They oversold the Bubba FastPasses, so the FastPass lines were long to begin with. In addition, a lot of people had gamed the system and were ordering as many as 30 sandwiches (that I saw), causing some individual transactions to take 10 minutes. Towards the end some of the pits figured out that rationing (2 servings to a customer) was the only way to get through the day. And, indeed, the POS machines were very slow and there weren't enough of them, or enough people plating the food, or enough efficiency in the plating process.

I went to a pretty interesting seminar on "Good Pigs," about the trend -- well, it's barely a trend, since only one person is doing it -- towards using better hogs in barbecue. Ed Mitchell, the one guy who's trying to do this, got stuck in the elevator at ICE for about half an hour on his way to the seminar, so they started without him while the BABBP staff stood in the hallway calling Ed on his cell phone and searching for building maintenance staff to retrieve him. He arrived to great applause from the small audience -- by charging $20 for the seminars and locating them all the way over at ICE on 23rd between Fifth and Sixth (closer to Sixth) they created serious disincentives to attendance.

Anyway . . . the gist of the seminar was that pork today sucks compared to the way it used to be, primarily because it has less fat and the feed they use today is garbage, and the fact that pitmasters today are working with pork that tastes like tofu has led to the need for injecting, aggressive rubs, etc., to compensate for the pork's flavorlessness. Probably worth a separate topic, if anybody would like to pick up the conversation.

[hitmanoo]

From what I observed, the problems were not in plating the food, nor were they in particularly large orders. The problem was with the slow processing of the fast pass cards by the equipment. They had the food all plated and stacked onto trays for people to take away, but the hold up was in data processing. At one point, we gave our card, and they swiped it and it took at least a full minute to process the transaction. Multiply that by the 30-50 parties ahead of you online and you have trouble. If there were a couple of more registers dedicated to fast pass, or if they were able to speed along the few they had, things would have rolled along smoothly.

[johnder]

Last year the problem with the fast pass was that you had to purchase a ticket at one register and decide all the stalls you wanted to visit at that time. Then take your ticket to the stall to pick up the food. The obviously fixed specific problem this year by adding card swiping machines at each stall. The problem then became the time per transaction was so high. I think Danny and his crew do a great job pulling this off and given the scale of the logisitics involved have still find time to make improvements over last year.

The single biggest problem this year aside from the slow processing time was the problem Steve mentioned, 2 people with one bubba pass loading up a tray full of food. More than once I was directly behind someone doing this and it took them at least 8 minutes to fill their order of 25 elgin plates. While I agree that the rules of the fast pass don't prohibit this, if USHG does do this next year again, I am sure you will see a disclaimer saying each pass is only allowed 2-4 orders of food.

I really hope to see the BABBQ continue, but from Jason's podcast with Danny, he seems to think this event is growing out of control logistics wise.

I actually spoke to the micros guy outside their data trailer, as I was admiring their Micros 1.0 layout diagram that they had taped to the side of their trailer. He said that they underestimated the total number of simultainious transactions that would be occurring at one time, hence they delays. He was hoping they could get things processing faster today. I guess we will see.

john

[hitmanoo]

The single biggest problem this year aside from the slow processing time was the problem Steve mentioned, 2 people with one bubba pass loading up a tray full of food. More than once I was directly behind someone doing this and it took them at least 8 minutes to fill their order of 25 elgin plates.  While I agree that the rules of the fast pass don't prohibit this, if USHG does do this next year again, I am sure you will see a disclaimer saying each pass is only allowed 2-4 orders of food.

←

I can't say I agree with this, as everytime I saw people ordering large amounts of food, the food was always loaded up and ready to go before the transaction was processed.

Of course, the largest orders I saw were about 10 plates so I could be wrong.

I'm definitely feeling the effects of yesterday today. A return is questionable!

[scottie]

Though I probably will check out that seminar. The Good Pig one on Saturday also looks promising for those interested in the kind of pigs they get and how they're raised. Ever since I read Peter Kaminsky's book I've been dying to try some Ossabaw.

←

I'll post in the Southeast Forum next week about cooking one of these hogs at the Hillsborough Hog Day festival in Hillsborough, NC. There are a growing number of folks around here who are as committed as Ed Mitchell is to "Good Pigs."

I'm bummed to be missing the BABBQ- I'm moving to NYC in just 2 weeks!-but I'm thrilled to get in one last good old-fashioned pig pickin' before leaving NC.

[brooklyncook]

I hear you on bummed.

This is the second year in a row I've missed out on the Party; I work weekends and can't get out long enough to stand in line and get some 'cue.

So the pictures are a comfort of sorts. Great shots!

[Fat Guy]

Major improvements today with the payment processing -- they really moved the FastPass lines along at most of the pits, though a couple still couldn't plate the food quickly enough to keep up. All in all -- and I'd be interested to hear others' perceptions -- it seemed to me that Sunday went much better than Saturday.

Aside from Ed Mitchell's whole hog, which is always my personal favorite, I thought the best things were Paul Kirk's brisket, the sausage from Elgin and Mike Mills's ribs. I mean, all the barbecue I tried both days tasted very good to me, but those were the standouts.

We had a good panel discussion, I thought, on "The Future of Barbecue." It was moderated by Lolis Elie, and on the panel were John T. Edge, Jeffrey Steingarten, Paul Kirk, Chris Lilly and me. Danny Meyer, speaking from the audience, also participated a bit at the end. Maybe there was someone in the audience who can post about it more impartially than I. If not, I'll try to sum it up later.

[Jason Perlow]

If anyone is interested, I've uploaded some highlights of Day 1 to Google Video (click)

(Edit: This video should be working now. You might have to reload the page several times.)

Edited June 11, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[Rachel Perlow]

We saw Danny Meyer on our way out today and he mentioned that the IT guys rewrote their software overnight and hopefully the FastPass transactions were faster today when compared to Saturday. I will say that several times when I used my card, the thing didn't ever want to read it on the first swipe. It took several swipes for it to recognize and process. Maybe they need to go back to tickets, like they had the 1st year.

We hit two seminars today. The first was on making your own pork barbecue at home, the second was the film "Whole Hog" and panel including the filmmaker and Ricky Parker of Scott's BBQ in Lexington TN. Ricky wanted to cook here this year, but his style demands an open fire to burn wood down to embers before using in the pit, so permits for this was not obtainable. The movie and discussion afterwards made Tennessee hit the list for future vacation plans.

Hmm, my favorite 'cue's? Southside Market's sausage, RUB's brisket, 17th St's baby back ribs, Bob Gibson's spicy coleslaw, Dinosaur's pulled pork, Blue Smoke's St. Louis ribs, Shake Shack's burger (had to see if you're paying attention). Oh, and the desserts were killer, that key lime is as good as a good one in Florida, and the blueberry pie was fab too.

Edit: Shaw and I posted at the same time, glad to see similar thoughts about the 'cue.

Edited June 11, 2006 by Rachel Perlow (log)

[juuceman]

The barbecue was terrific today as always, but the event has grown so much that managing it has become a logistical near-impossibility. They oversold the Bubba FastPasses, so the FastPass lines were long to begin with. In addition, a lot of people had gamed the system and were ordering as many as 30 sandwiches (that I saw), causing some individual transactions to take 10 minutes. Towards the end some of the pits figured out that rationing (2 servings to a customer) was the only way to get through the day. And, indeed, the POS machines were very slow and there weren't enough of them, or enough people plating the food, or enough efficiency in the plating process.

←

I don't understand some things in the above paragraph.

It's a popular event and has been so since Day 1. While the crowds have increased each year, so has the number of pitmasters and the physical space has increased from a single crosstown block, to a number of blocks. There were tension barriers up to keep the lines in check.

They oversold the Bubba FastPasses. So they broke their agreement with the public that they would only sell 2000 of them. This resulted in an excess of people in the FastPass area, and slowed down everyone's access to the pits.

A lot of people had gamed the system and were ordering as many as 30 sandwiches.. How is this gaming the system anymore than those who were selling off the remaining value on their cards to friends or strangers? It wasn't prohibited by the regulations nor were there signs anywhere prohibiting it. If the machines had been up and running in the first place- they weren't on Saturday morning, much in the same way that they weren't working last year on Saturday morning, or had they trained people in their use before firing them up, it wouldn't have been such an issue. Likewise, had the software been designed to allow for the purchase of multiple items (again, it's not like there weren't people buying multiple items last year) it would have eased this concern.

As much as I enjoy this event, and am in awe of Meyer's ability to bring in the level of talent that he does, and tip my hat to him for pulling it off four years in a row, there are still enough issues with it to disappoint me. That said, this year was better managed than last, and today was a lot smoother.

Edited June 11, 2006 by juuceman (log)

[Jaymes]

I particularly liked Mike Mills' ribs, and beans. And of course, the Ed Mitchell sandwiches. Didn't have any Southside or Salt Lick, because I get plenty of that back in Texas.

All in all, it's a great event, and I had a wonderful time, and am hoping to go again next year. Kuddos to everyone that has a hand in it. Speaking literally, of course.

Edited June 11, 2006 by Jaymes (log)

[johnder]

Today was definately better than yesterday. My transactions at the register were in the order of 10 seconds processing as opposed to 45+ seconds yesterday. I think the lines were about the same lenght as yesterday for the fastpass, they were just moving through quicker.

For me the highlights were definately the whole hog, and the elgin sausage. I really liked 17th streets ribs too. I noticed when 17th street was cutting the ribs instead of just saucing them, they also sprinkled some of their rub on it and mixed it all in. Very tasty.

The Elgin sausage today was I think better than yesterday. The piece I had yesterday was good, but it was *very* greasy. Each bite I took included a large squirt of grease along with it. While I usually the last to complain about pork fat, I was a little eh, queasy from the grease after a few bites.

Todays sausage was better, it may have to do with the fact it was cooked a little crisper.

I need to detox now. No more pork for at least, uh, 2 days, yah that should do it.

[Fat Guy]

That's beef fat in the Elgin sausages. They're made from beef navel (just like pastrami) plus some drier cuts to bring the fat content to 25-30% raw, according to the pitmaster there. As they smoke, the sausages self-baste and they're incredible. I only had them today, so I can't say if they were the same yesterday (I imagine there's batch variation, as in most barbecue), but the ones I had today were one of the best sausage products I've ever tasted -- and made from beef no less.

[Brad K.]

Yes, everyone agrees the food was great and overall a well done event (nothing less from D. Meyer). But the discussion here seems to be focused on the fault of the BubbaPass system. My question/problem is why were the lines for us common folk (i.e. non Bubba buyers) so long? The wait time on Saturday was between 20-40 minutes at each booth. That is just too long (particularly if you want to stop at 2-3 or more booths). For most people the economics/logistics of spending $125 for the Pass just does not make sense. Clearly this is an extremely popular event and they need either booths double the size/capacity or many more booths. The servers should have been more proficient at getting their food out - most booths only had one or two choices thus little reason not have food moving quicker. Look towards other festivals like the New Orleans Jazz Festival, where they are very quick to get the food out and move the lines along.

In fact, I ended my day with a Shack Burger - at 15 minutes wait it was the shorteset I've seen it in a long time, cerainly half the wait time at any of the 'cue booths and that burger was soooo good...

[johnder]

That's beef fat in the Elgin sausages. They're made from beef navel (just like pastrami) plus some drier cuts to bring the fat content to 25-30% raw, according to the pitmaster there. As they smoke, the sausages self-baste and they're incredible. I only had them today, so I can't say if they were the same yesterday (I imagine there's batch variation, as in most barbecue), but the ones I had today were one of the best sausage products I've ever tasted -- and made from beef no less.

←

Ah beef fat. Tasssty beeef faaaat. I am assuming it was part of the same batch they drove up, the only difference I could taste today was todays was more well done than yesterdays, so I imagine the longer cooking time allowed more of the beef fat to baste and drip out. I agree with you, their sausage is really amazing. I would love to go to Elgin, TX one day and eat it in it's home setting.

Speaking of other great sausages (well keilbasa actually) there is a small polish place down the block from the larger well known eagle here in brooklyn called Jubilat that makes an awesome house smoked kielbasa. They have a fierce looking smoker in the back of the store, along with a large plastic bucket full of house made kraut to go with it. Their kielbasa is a fixture on my grill this summer.

john

[Jason Perlow]

I actually enjoyed the squirty Elgin sausages yesterday. And I'm secure enough in my machoness to admit it.

[Jason Perlow]

In fact, I ended my day with a Shack Burger - at 15 minutes wait it was the shorteset I've seen it in a long time, cerainly half the wait time at any of the 'cue booths and that burger was soooo good...

Wasn't that awesome? I had one for breakfast!

[Jason Perlow]

That's beef fat in the Elgin sausages. They're made from beef navel (just like pastrami) plus some drier cuts to bring the fat content to 25-30% raw, according to the pitmaster there. As they smoke, the sausages self-baste and they're incredible. I only had them today, so I can't say if they were the same yesterday (I imagine there's batch variation, as in most barbecue), but the ones I had today were one of the best sausage products I've ever tasted -- and made from beef no less.

←

I think it would be really cool if we could get a quality Kosher foods purveyor in the NY area like Abeles and Heymann to partner with South Side and make those things here.

Edited June 12, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[robert40]

I need to write up my thoughts soon but after basically just my son and I knocking off a Bubba Pass ourselves I am still recovering.

Wish I had tried Elgin's sausages but missed that one.

Bob Gibson had some of the best coleslaw I ever tasted. Had some heat to it that my family did not care for and passed my way.

Really enjoyed Salt Lick alot. But believe with all the wind yesterday it cooled the food off very quickly and wished it all could have been hotter.

[Jason Perlow]

Bob Gibson had some of the best coleslaw I ever tasted

It was the only coleslaw at the event that was spicy, yep. Was not expecting the heat, it was a nice surprise.

[robert40]

Also Jason and Steven, I so much wished to say 'Hi' but somehow missed both of you. Hopefully next year!

[Dryden]

In an effort to disagree with everyone as much as possible, we thought the best items this year with the rib tips from Smoki O's (the snoot was also darn good) and the brisket, particularly the deckle, from Salt Lick. I, personally, didn't feel like Mike Mills' ribs or Ed Mitchell's stuff was quite up to their own lofty standards from past years, but they were still darn good...

The fastpass lanes were definitely moving about 1000% better Sunday than Saturday, but the waits weren't too bad either day. If my extremely pregnant wife can stand and wait 10 minutes for Ed Mitchell's stuff, not sure what the big fuss is. And for the clever people who ended up using cut up boxes, foil trays, plastic pallets and everything else in sight to transport 20 plates of barbecue, what's wrong with that?

Another year with another great event. I'm hoping they keep doing it forever.