Believe the Hype

Charles Vergo's Rendezvous
52 S. Second Street
Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis. I very nearly passed it by, as it's such an obvious stop on the barbecue trail, and I generally root for the underdog. Turns out there's a reason this town in the deep left corner of my homestate is as renowned for what they do with a pig as for being the birthplace of the blues. And Charles Vergo's Rendezvous is a fine place to check out Memphis' signature dry ribs.

Like the Ridgewood back in East Tenn, finding it is part of the fun. As you cruise around downtown looking for a parking place, keep an eye out for the famous Peabody hotel. Anywhere around there will do. The restaurant itself is in an alley on Monroe, next to a parking garage. Hell, looking back, maybe I shoulda parked there in the first place.

So it's down the alley and down the stairs out of the heat of the day into a dimly lit, cool and comfortable cave festooned with sports and farming implements. For a restaurant with plenty of folks in it, it was oddly quiet, people speaking softly as if in church, the hum of the air conditioner just audible over the murmers of a reverent and ravenous congregation. Checkered cloth tables have the menu inset, so you can get thinking, as well as an honest-to-God cloth napkin. The first one I'd seen on this tour, I believe. For myself, it was the dry ribs I'd come for, which comes correct with beans and slaw and a couple whitebread rolls. Since the sun was fairly well up, I rounded it out with a Michelob draft. Being a grownup has its moments.

A word on dry ribs. That just means that the sauce is on the side, not that they're not juicy. Mine certainly were that. On the table were a hot and mild sauce, but I just couldn't bring myself to put them on the ribs, which came beautifully flavored and spiced with a mix of something along the lines of garlic and onion, cumin and paprika. Whatever it is it does the trick with a kick. I did try out the sauce, adding it to the puddle of pork liquor on my plate, and used the whitebread to sop it up. Pretty much any time you sop anything up, it's gonna be good, and it's worth noting that these sauces, if typical of Memphis style, were less sweet than I'd found elsewhere. The beans also were a bit spicy, though the slaw, with a richness and complexity I can't describe well with my state school vocabulary was refreshing. Less so than the beer, of course.

So I suppose there's a reason why the famous are famous, that the cream rises to the top, why NBA stars get so much money and hot chicks. I'm still down with the underdog, but I would have really missed out had I not taken the time to see what all the fuss was about downstairs and down the alley at the Rendezvous.