Augieland: Thoughts on the 4th Annual Big Apple BBQ Party

4^th Annual Big Apple BBQ Party in a row. From the first little one where only those who loved cue enough to stand in the rain were on line to last year, which had such perfect hot weather that the lines got as long as two hours, to this one in which cooler temps made the hour wait seem longer, the best part of the BABBQP is meeting other people willing to brave such conditions on line.
It is a great thing that there are now three places making BBQ in NYC of a standard that they could hold a place at this event. And it is gracious of Danny to include them in an event he started to draw attention to the ground-breaking place he and Ken Callaghan had opened back when no one would invest in the apparatus required by local statutes to properly smoke things here. But the truth is we can get the food of the other places every day, let Blue Smoke have their stand out of respect for the work done and round out the other very limited space with people a little farther away than Harlem.
People will stand on line for up to an hour to get food from places that range in distance from a 5 minute walk to a 9 minute walk to a 25 minute A train ride.
Confining beer drinking to the circle set up in Madison Square Park was silly, when EMP was selling very tasty spiked lemonade to all those with six bucks in their entrance.
The best showing on both Saturday and Sunday this year was Southside Market, amazing ¾ inch smoke ring on the brisket and some of the tastiest smoked sausage ever.
Ed Mitchell's whole hog pulled itself back up with the leaders (where it has been in prior years) Sunday morning with beautiful, simple chopped pork interspersed with crackling after running out about two hours early Saturday and having one of the all-time rudest servers in history manning the Bubba line.
Ubon's shoulder is a great saucy sandwich.
As good as the rib tips are at Smokey O's, the snoots are what all the other attendees should copy. Somewhere between pork rinds and crackling with a very nice sauce.
Feel like I do and think it is silly to get ribs on the street from a place a little more than 4 blocks away that you all ready eat at about 10 times a year, yet want to give patronage to the locals? Got to Blue Smoke once you are full and wash it all down properly with a little Bourbon. This year Bear, Bubby, Pichon, Ringwald, Vee, Wife and I got rather julepy Sunday evening with bellies full of BBQ from parts far and wide, and a good time was had by all.