Good Lord

Ridgewood Barbecue
900 Elizabethton Highway
Bluff City, Tennessee

Now, I must admit, I walked through the door inclined to like the place, both out of a sense of geographical loyalty, being from East Tennessee myself, and having read in a battered issue of Jane and Michael Stern's 1992 book Roadfood that here was the home of the best barbecue in the States. You could say I had high hopes. I'll say those hopes were met, exceeded, and sent on their way with a pat on the ass.

It's not real easy to find, but not too bad if you pay attention. From E-town (that's Elizabethton) you head north on 19E like you were going to Bluff City. Like you know where that is. A bit before you get there, you'll see a Shell station up ahead on your right. Before you get there, look for Elizabethton Highway on your left. Head down that road for about five minutes and you're on it. You can leave your belt in the car.

It was a rainy Wednesday lunchtime when I arrived, and the place was packed with working men and church ladies and fellows in collars...a real rainbow of white folks. A table opened up soon enough and I was directed to the last table on the right, beneath a painting of a woman saying grace, hung on a wall whose paper was printed with paddleboats and gristmills, churches and train depots. When the waitress came around, I put in my order for the pork platter, which comes with fries cut on site, as well as rolls, and asked if she recommended the beans or slaw. She inclined me to the beans, but wound up throwing in some slaw with my order just cause she was feeling friendly, I suppose. Sweet tea to drink.

The beans came early and on their own, ahead of the main meal, in a little crock. They were sweet and they were spicy and with little bits of onion and shreds of meat. They went fast. The tea was good and cold and kept full. Waiting for the main attraction I overheard one of the servers say to the table across from me that she'd been there for thirty eight years. That's about a dozen Sundays more than I've been doing anything. Looking to my right, several fellas were making short work of sandwiches endowed with a pile of pork the size of your fist.

Then the main plate came. Fries, nice and crisp with a little skin still on em, piled over a more than generous mound of sliced pork. Somewhere between here and North Carolina, the sauce had switched over to a tomato base. From what I understand, the details of this particular concoction are known only to Larry Proffit, son of the founders, and his daughter Lisa. And I am here to tell you it was no joke. As good as it was, I was impressed by the fact that it didn't overpower the pig. In fact, balance was what made this such a memorable meal. You could definitely taste the pork, and not just the sauce. There were variable textures, from juicy, tender, chewy slices from inside the cut, and crunchy bits from the outside, with a more pronounced smokiness. Turns out they don't cook pork shoulders here, but hams. Maybe that's part of what made the taste of the meat so distinctive. That and the fact that the lot was smoked in a building down the hill over locally harvested hickory.

Let's say you're some kind of weirdo and don't like pork, or that you have a perfectly good reason for not eating it, like being Jewish. They've got burgers and shrimp, steaks and ham. Grilled cheese. They're probably all good. But as far as I'm concerned, you're better off to d-i-g the p-i-g.

I know l did.