Kyle Guin

Car-Lot BBQ
235 Bankhead HWY
Winfield, AL 35594
(205) 487-2281

“We got a new smoker now. If we had to, we could probably cook around 1,300—1,400 pounds of meat at once, if we wanted to. It’s got three fireboxes. It’s just a monster. We had it built around the back by a guy that rented out the space, and he built it and brought it around on the forklift and set it on the slab, and we built the building around it. It was too big to fit through the doors, so it’s a monster.” – Kyle Guin

In 1975 Roger Guin started an Oldsmobile dealership in Winfield, Alabama. Around 1985 he switched to selling Chevrolets. In 1989 he switched to barbecue. Roger always made barbecue for his family at home. As a businessman, he figured some homemade ‘cue would bring more customers through his door. He was right. The people came, but more came for barbecue than Chevrolets. In 1998 barbecue became his number-one business. A few years later his youngest son, Kyle Guin, took it over. Today, Kyle carries on the business that his father started but with some flair of his own. He has added items like “The Smothered Pig,” which is a plate of fries with cheese, barbecue, and sauce. And then there’s the drive-thru. Customers pass through the garage doors that are part of the old car lot repair shop to get to a pick-up window for to-go orders.

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Kyle Guin talking about some items he’s added to the menu at Car-Lot BBQ. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Kyle Guin
Date: September 28, 2006
Location: Car-Lot BBQ – Winfield, AL
Interviewer: Amy Evans

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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance on Thursday September 28th 2006 in Winfield, Alabama, at Car-Lot BBQ with Kyle Guin. I think I probably just slaughtered that but anyway, Kyle, if you would say your name, please, for the record and also your birth date.

Kyle Guin: Kyle Guin, September 28th 1971, so today is my birthday.

Today is your birthday? Happy birthday...So before we get deep into the barbecue talk, let’s talk about your last name and your family’s connection to the town of Guin up the road.

It was named after my fourth great-granddaddy, Jeremiah Guin, which one, our first—our second child is named after, and he gave the first land in Guin for the railroad and cemetery, so they saw fit to name it after him. That’s about it.

And your parents are Roger and Faye Guin?

Yes.

And your father started a car dealership here [at this very location] in the [nineteen] ‘70s. Can you give a little background on that?

He started in [nineteen] ’75 or ’76 with an Oldsmobile dealership and that lasted—that lasted ten or fifteen years. And then he bought into the Chevrolet dealership and moved and rented this place out for a while and kept the Chevrolet dealership about fifteen years and decided to retire. And when he retired, he decided to go into the barbecue business back down here, so in ’98 we converted to a barbecue place.

But he was doing barbecue on the side in the dealership for a time, was he not?

Well, he did it on the weekends some. He really didn’t do it on the side. He started tinkering with it and he had—when he—when he got out of the full-time dealership, he came up here and he started a—a used car dealership and then started building the barbecue up and building the barbecue up, and then we found we had less cars, more barbecue. So it just kind of phased out the car version of it…He phased his way out of the cars and had more barbecue than he was selling cars, so he just decided to do it full-time with the help of his lovely family. [Laughs]

Do you have brothers and sisters?

I’ve got two brothers, Greg and Phil. Phil is the oldest and Greg is the middle; I’m the baby of the three and no, they have nothing to do with this place. [Laughs]

Were you just luck of the draw, or you really liked the barbecue business when you were growing up?

Well my brother is a chaplain in the Air Force, so he was never around. My brother—other brother is a CPA, so he didn’t really have the time. I just happened to be the one left over.

But you enjoy it, too, right?

Oh yeah, I love it; I love cooking for folks. You do it as long as I have now, and you ain’t got much of a choice—either you love it or you go home. [Laughs] I’ve got three kids; I’m not going home soon.

So do you remember when you were—I guess you would have been like five years old or so when he opened the Car Lot business back then?

I can remember parts of it; I can't remember everything, but I can remember parts of being up here. I can't really remember when he opened it up but as far as being up here, all I can remember as a kid was being here up ‘til I went to school and when I’d get out of school, I’d walk down here and help wash cars, help a guy out there that taught me how to drive—Charlie Bass. He’s been here since I was a little kid, and I’d help him wash cars. And that’s about all I ever did when I was a kid.

How old were you when he started getting into the barbecue?

Well I started getting, let’s see—[I was] around 27 or 28, something like that was when he started really getting into it.

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And we were talking when we were sitting out front about some of the things that are in the dining room now and that your grandfather was a—a butcher. He was in the meat business.

He had—he had a meat packing plant; it was called, well Clay Guin’s—God, what was it called? I remember all the stickers that he had that said “Clay’s Finest Meats,” but it was—they slaughtered cows and hogs and sold to distributors and stuff like that but yeah, I’ve got—I’ve got a rifle out there that he actually slaughtered the hogs with, and I’ve got the wood chopping or wood block table that he actually did his meat-cutting. I’ve got some meat saw out there that he used and some of the scales and some of the ox yokes he had when he was farming and just little tinkers like that.

With your grandfather in the meat packing business, did your father ever talk about coming up and them having, you know, hog roasts or anything?

I don’t know how much Daddy actually did of the slaughtering or meat cutting. I know he did some, but he mostly sold to the other distributors around. When Granddaddy—I can't remember—the packing plant closed down before I was born but it was—no, as far—as far as I know, Daddy—Daddy always sold cars, and when he didn’t, I don’t think he had any interest in—in the hog business. After—after that, I never did really hear anything else about it ‘til, you know, the early [nineteen] ‘90s or the late ‘80s, when he started cooking barbecue again—or when I can remember him cooking barbecue. It just kind of growed back in his blood, I guess.

Well let’s talk about the barbecue now. You were saying earlier that your father would barbecue at home once a month or something and enjoyed doing it. Can you talk about that and those memories growing up?

Yeah, he wait to well—I don’t know if it would be a holiday or something like that; he would go out back and he had his little make-shift smoker, and he’d throw a butt on the grill and let it sit out there all morning. And he’d come back in, and he’d you know—he’d be picking everybody, “What did you think about it,” and, “What did you think about it?” And, “Is the sauce too spicy or is it not spicy enough? Or is it not thick enough?” And they’d just, you know—it was more of a tasting party than it was a supper. It wasn’t really—just grilling us about how we liked it. That was the only thing that ever worried him. He just hated for somebody to say it wasn’t good. Of course, I don’t remember anybody ever saying that but he—he liked doing it.

Can you tell me about the sauce because do I remember that you said it was your grandfather’s recipe?

As far as I know, Granddaddy had a recipe and Daddy tweaked on it a little bit. Of course, I’m, you know, partial but it’s the best I’ve ever had. I like it. It’s just a good combination. It’s not too sweet; it’s not too spicy; it’s—to me, it’s just right.

Is it mainly tomato-based or is there a little vinegar in it or—?

It’s a little bit of everything. It’s got a little bit of this, a little bit of that; it’s just a good mixture of everything put together. It’s not a bottled sauce. I mean I know some people they try to take bottled sauce and put it in their bottles and say it’s homemade, but I can guarantee you this is made here every day.

Is the sauce that you’re making, is it pretty much the same as the sauce that your father and grandfather made?

Pretty much. Well, like I said, Daddy tweaked on it a lot. When he used to have it, it used to be—I don’t know what all he did with it, but it’s a lot different to when we were growing up. It was a lot—I don’t know; I really can't explain it. You’ve just got to taste it then and taste it now to really realize the difference.

And tell me about your white sauce, too.

We do pretty good on our white sauce…There’s a lot of people that come in and get barbecue now that would rather have the white sauce than the red, so we oblige them.

Is the white sauce something that your family made or something that was kind of more of customer demand?

That was a recipe from my sister-in-law when we opened this thing. She had it tucked away. My middle brother, Greg, his wife, she’s the one that gave us the recipe. And to my knowledge, we hadn't done a thing to it, so whatever she had was right.

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So tell me how and what you learned about barbecue from your father.

Hmm, we ain’t got that long. We just take a good slab of meat and put it on the smoker and smoke it for a long, long, long time. We usually smoke it from—I think we put it on around 10:30—11 o’clock; it comes off the smoker about 7:30—8 o’clock the next morning, so I mean it stays on there quite a while. You know, a lot of people—we add some stuff, but a lot of people, you know, they’ll try to flavor it up, putting rubs and baste on it and marinade and I just—I keep it simple. You know, if you’ve got a good hickory fire, you’ve got a good smoker, you keep it on there long enough, and you’ve got a good sauce to put behind it, there ain’t much way to screw it up. It’s not—it’s pretty idiot-proof. Of course, I don’t know, that’s just my take on it. I don’t know. A lot of people push their rub; they like putting it on there, and then you got too much garlic in something or too much paprika or you know—I don’t know. I just like keeping it simple.

And your dad did it the same way?

I do it the same way Daddy did it. Don’t fix what ain’t broke.

And the smoker that’s up in the front room, that was the original one that your dad put in when he started the barbecue?

That was the one that he set on fire in [nineteen] ’99. That was the renovation of ’99 and 2000.

Can you talk about the fire a little bit? Was he baby-sitting the—?

Well I’d—we’d got through—me and him stayed pretty late that night. I don’t know what we had going on but he had—there was a little partition around it and there was the suspended ceiling at the time and it was inside—actually inside the restaurant here. I had went home at like ten o’clock, and he was staying behind to throw some wood on the fire and leave it. Well about 10:30 I get a phone call from the police department, and the only thing they told me was, “Is this Kyle?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Well we wanted to tell you that the Car Lot was on fire.” So I come back up here pretty quick. And Daddy was on oxygen and I asked him, I said, “What happened?” And he said, “Well I melted—I melted my shoe to the smoker and—[Laughs] I said, “Why?” And he said, “Well it just got away from me. It got hot and it—. He did. He melted the sole of his shoe out, trying to kick the door shut and he—he was lucky to get out of it because that partition he had wasn’t—it was—it was just big enough for probably two people to get in there and move around. But he—he was lucky. But that—that started the renovation process. We got a new smoker now. It’s probably three times the size of that one out there that we use. We can smoke up to—I figured that up the other day and we could—if we had to, we could probably cook around 1,300—1,400 pounds of meat at once, if we wanted to. It’s got three fireboxes, and it’s got four shelves but it’s—I think it’s about four-foot deep and twelve-foot long and twelve-foot high. It’s just a monster. We had it built around the back by a guy that rented out the space, and he built it and brought it around on the forklift and set it on the slab, and we built the building around it. It was too big to fit through the doors, so it’s a monster.

So that was installed in ’99 after the fire after you were renovating. What made you want to commit to a smoker that big? Did you have grand hopes of what Car Lot BBQ could become?

That was Daddy’s idea. Daddy has always kind of overdone it. He hadn't never—I think that one out there was just a little bit too small. He couldn’t get enough meat on it and then you know [Laughs]—if it was too small, fix it bigger. Well he just—I think he went a little overboard and—but I mean it does the job. Lord, I can cook whatever I want to and how much of it I want to. I can throw chicken, ribs, barbecue all at one time and not have any problems.

So are you doing most—you said ribs and chicken but then the barbecue, is it mainly butts?

We don’t do many—the rib part, there’s a guy up the street that used to do ribs [The Spare Rib], and I kind of let him have them because we’re not a big place and I’ve got to pretty much be here all the time, and I’m the main cook. I don’t have anybody that does it for me; I ain’t going to hire nobody to do it for me. I just don’t have time with having to work in the kitchen and do that, so mainly what we do are half-chickens. We cook them on every Thursday and have them through the weekend and when we run out, we run out. The butts I cook pretty much every day, and that’s what people seem to want. That’s what I’m going to do. I have calls for ribs every now and then, and every now and then I will cook them on occasion for people, but most of the time we just cook butts. I mean that’s just—that’s what I like to do. I don’t like fooling with that other. You’ve got to baby-sit ribs too much and then you—there’s too many critics that say, “Ah, these are too hard,” or, “These aren’t cooked enough.” And I just—I’d rather just not cook them than have—I can't stand somebody to come in and tell me they don’t like something. I keep the barbecue; I haven’t had any complaints about it yet.

Well when your father started doing barbecue at the Car Lot, did you see it getting to be big?

Well it got a little bigger the longer he kept it—a little—he’d have to add stuff every year and do a little something different and then the catering started coming, and we did a little bit. When me and my wife bought it in what, 2004—2003, something like that—I started pushing it. I started doing a lot of advertising. Daddy never advertised or anything like that. And we’ve got some more stuff that we do that I pushed and tried to get a lot more younger people in and tried to get it out to different counties and different states…I don’t know; I’ve just tried to push it a little bit more than Daddy did. I think Daddy was just happy to cook for somebody and make a little money while he was doing it, but I want to corner the market. [Laughs]

Can you talk a little bit about what kind of person your dad is?

He’s a good guy. He’s—he turned 70 the other day, [September] the 22nd and I don’t know. When he had the car lot, we didn’t—we didn’t see him a whole lot when he was coming up in the car lot and, of course, he was trying to work all the time and make money for us. But then when he got out of the car business, he started getting a little more down-to-earth and not competitive or anything like that. The older he gets, the mellowed out he gets. He was kind of uptight for a while but he’s a good fellow. He’s—you won't find anybody around—I mean there’s folks that oh, gosh—there’s folks from Birmingham that you’ll see that come in looking for Daddy. They had bought five cars from him in 1981. Or there’s folks from I mean all over—Mississippi—come in and said they hadn't never bought a car from anybody but Daddy. And, you know, they still—there was somebody in here the other day that all he had bought was cars from Daddy and had Daddy find him another car. And Daddy doesn’t even do cars anymore, but he—you know, he does it for people. He’s a good fellow.

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So tell me a little bit more about how you’ve changed the restaurant since you’ve owned it—about what you’ve added to the menu and just the décor and things like that.

As far as the menu, we haven’t added a whole lot; we’ve added some stuff. We’ve got a little thing that Daddy came up with that was probably right before I bought it or right after I bought it—I can't remember—but they come up with a little thing called “The Smothered Pig” and I sell a—he came up with it, and I pushed it. I had one guy who came in one night and said—my nephew was working for me at the time—and asked him—said, “Fix me a smothered pig.” And I looked at him like, you idiot, you know. What—what is it? And my nephew, Clay, said—he said, “I’ll take care of it. You just sit here and watch.” So he put it on a plate and I said, “Well that’s a pretty neat idea.” And he—I started advertising it and we sell—that’s probably one of our best—best sellers.

And what is it?

Well it’s pretty simple. It’s a plate of fries; it’s covered in cheese, barbecue meat on that, and then smothered in sauce, and it’s, you know—everything kind of jammed up together but it—it is a Car Lot exclusive. It’s—you’ve got some people that can't eat them and some people that can, but we’ve got what you call a “Piglet,” which is just the half version of it that we sell a bunch of, but those are probably our two main sellers. And then you’ve got the “Chick” and the “Chicklet” that we’ve got now. People started griping because they couldn’t get chicken on it, so we swapped it over to where you can put chicken on it. So we sell a bunch of those. That’s about the only change on the menu that we’ve got. We started doing wings and stuff like that, but that’s about it.

And now tell me about the pick-up window that you’ve installed here.

Well that’s another Car Lot exclusive. That—I think the front portion of the building, where the tables and everything were was the showroom. That’s where we had cars set up—Oldsmobiles—and our kitchen was where the parts department was. We just cleaned all the shelves out and put plumbing in and, you know, prettified it a little bit. Well then that covers probably a quarter of the building; well the rest of it is a garage in the back with two big sixteen-foot double doors on each side. Well that’s the drive-thru; you drive through one and drive to the back of the kitchen and drive out the other side. It’s a drive-thru or pickup window, but it’s a drive-thru.

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And it was obviously important to you, then, when you bought the business, to keep it Car-Lot BBQ, even though it’s just the restaurant now.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, the only thing that’s changed about the name is it no longer says “Roger Guin’s” on the front of it. I figured it’s just Car-Lot BBQ because everybody helps from time to time, and I ain’t going to put one name on it.

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So what would you say, specifically, sets your barbecue apart from other barbecue?

Oh, Lord, I don’t really know. It’s basically the same thing you get every time you come in…As long as they keep coming, I don’t care, you know. It’s going to hurt my feelings when somebody comes in and says, “That was the worst thing I’ve ever eaten,” but I don’t see that coming in the near future.

And then what about this volunteer fireman gig that you have?

Oh, Lord, this has took away from a lot of that. I’m a member of the local fire department here, and I used to make a bunch of calls. But three kids later and a business that takes up thirteen, fourteen hours of your day, I don’t make a whole lot of calls anymore, but they still let me. They let me come dress up every now and then.

So what do your buddies think about you being the guy who sets fires here at his business and puts them out when he goes with the Fire Department?

It’s a little bit of a joke sometimes. It was about three or four weeks ago I was cooking up—it was real hot that day, and my smoker kind of tends to get a little hotter on the hotter days and there was—there was smoke just blowing out of it. And this buddy called me about 10:30 and told me I needed to come up there. Nine-one-one [Emergency] had called them and said my business was on fire. So I run down there and opened the door, and there was smoke everywhere; you couldn’t see, and it was hot. He told me, he said, “If you want to go in there, we’ll put our air-packs on and we’ll do it right.” And I said, “Alan,” I said, “I ain’t doing that.” I said, “That’s embarrassing to come down here and have to call my buddies out of bed to come put my fire out.” I said, “I’ll get a water hose and run in there, and I’ll put it out real quick.” But we get a kick out of it from time to time.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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