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TENNESSEE |
“It’s just something that all of us do. On holidays you’re in the neighborhood, you drive through; it—people are smoking and you smell the smoke and the sauce burning and it—it’s been that way all of my life, you know. Even when we were growing up, all the neighbors that—I mean we would do that.” – Andrew Pollard
A&R Bar-B-Que
1802 Elvis Presley Blvd
Memphis, TN 38106
(901) 774-7444
www.aandrbbq.com
Andrew Pollard lives barbecue everyday. He vividly remembers watching his father smoke pork and brisket. In 1983 he opened A&R. And on his rare days off of work, Pollard and a neighbor pass ribs, back-and-forth, to taste over the backyard fence.
A&R is where many Memphisonians eat their daily barbecue. Traditional pulled or chopped pork sandwiches and famous fried pies: apple, peach, sweet potato. Show up early, or call ahead, the pies run out fast, locals would encourage the tasting of one of each.
We first visited A&R Bar-B-Que in 2002 as part of our initial foray into documenting Memphis ‘cue, a project that included photographs, original essays and a smattering of oral history interviews. Visit the original A&R Bar-B-Que page.
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.
Subject: Andrew Pollard
Date: July 7, 2008
Location: A&R Bar-B-Que – Memphis, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel
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Rien T. Fertel: This is Rien Fertel from the Southern Foodways Alliance. It is just past noon on July 7, 2008, a Monday. I am here at 1802 Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee with Andrew Pollard of A&R Barbecue. Mr. Pollard can you please just introduce yourself by stating your name and your birth date, please?
Andrew Pollard: How ya doing? My name is Andrew Pollard and my birthday is February 22, 1945. [Laughs]
Okay; and—and you are the owner of A&R Barbecue?
Yes; I am owner and founder of A&R.
Okay; and as I understand A&R goes back more than two decades. Can you talk about how old the restaurant is and when you founded it?
The—the restaurant is 25 and a half years old and we founded it in 1983. I was—what it was, I had worked for a meat packer for about 20 years and they decided to leave the area and that’s when we decided to open up a—a restaurant to try to feed the kids, so—. [Laughs]
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And how—what do you remember perhaps in your childhood about barbecue? Did your parents barbecue at home? Did you go out and eat barbecue?
No; we didn’t. We didn’t go out to eat barbecue. We were too poor. My dad was a great cook. I mean he could—he could cook anything and he would get an old tub and put a rack out of the stove over it and put coals in it and barbecue there and we kind of picked it up from him. I guess we come from a long line of talented men ‘cause—in our—in our family all the men could cook. But my dad you know we picked up things from him the way—the way he would fix barbecue.
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So did any of his recipes—maybe his sauce or the—the way he—he cooked—. Well let me ask you this first; did he teach you how to cook or did you sit and watch him?
Yeah; we would—we would at—at our home we had to cook anyway. My mom would say you make the cornbread and [Laughs] you make the cake or you make the lemonade, so we come up having to cook and do chores, wash—we knew how to wash; we could do everything around the house. But we—we picked it up from them how to cook you know and—and like I say I think it’s kind of a gift anyway, even my—my son is a great cook, you know so—. It’s just a gift that we have too.
Do you cook at home too?
Yes; my wife loves to cook too but I do get an opportunity to cook at home on occasions, especially holidays. She wants me to barbecue and, you know we have people over and very—we never go out to eat barbecue. We always eat our own.
What do you like to cook at home?
The baby back ribs; that’s my wife’s favorite—the loin-back ribs, yes.
And so I think what I was going to ask you originally, did the way your dad barbecued did—does it affect this restaurant here? Did it carry over to the sauce or the recipes here?
Yes; it—it really did because the—the—the—before I opened the store up, the same taste and the way we cooked it at home, it was so good to us and our friends. So we used the same recipe when I—when we opened our stores. Now my—my sauce, my wife kind of changed it a little bit. You know we got some pointers from her on—on that, but the same taste that we enjoyed we just said well maybe some more folk will enjoy that also. So that’s—that’s the way we cook it.
So you—you opened in 1983, A&R Barbecue and you said you wanted to—to feed the kids. What—what made you really want to open a restaurant? It’s—it’s a tough business right?
Well I didn’t know it at the time. I—all I knew is I didn’t have a job and I knew it was something that—that I could do and I was—I really was inspired from a—a friend of mine who also worked at the meat packer where we were and he opened up a little old sandwich place and—and he—he—he did—did well there. It was a business that another old lady used to have and she closed and she gave him the recipe to her—to her slaw. It was a kind of a sweet pickle like slaw and I tell you people would come from all around to eat those big hotdogs and the slaw that she would put them on ‘em. And I went by there and talked with him and it really encouraged me, and inspired me to try to do something for myself.
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Okay; well let’s talk about what you do here. You cook shoulder, ribs, brisket like you said. Describe the cooking process if you can; what—what fuel do you use, what kind of cooker?
Okay; we use the old-fashioned method—open pit. We—we use—we got a smokehouse out in back, at this original location and the—it’s lined with—with steel and we’ve got—let me see 10,000 fire bricks around it, so it’s really like a smoke oven like. And the meat is directly over the pit and we cook our shoulders about 14—15 hours and ribs we—you know we cook them—we don't leave them on overnight but our shoulders we do. We leave them on—overnight at least 14—15 hours our shoulders and our—and our beef briskets.
And—and what kind of fuel do you use? Do you use wood or coal?
We—we use the—a blend of hickory charcoal and we use hardwood also—hardwood coals. The hardwood seems to—to maintain the heat longer and, you know because you need a longer heat for your shoulders and the hickory coals give it the taste—the flavor that we want.
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It would be interesting to find out. So tell me about—there’s—there’s something very famous on your menu. I’ve read about it in books; it’s in the book, Smokestack Lightning, your pies—your fried pies. Can you talk about them?
Well yes; we—very few people have the pies that we have. They’re—they’re fried pies and we—we have three kinds of pies. We—we sell a fried peach pie, a fried apple pie, and fried sweet potato, and we make out our own crusts, original crusts and it’s—when you—the way to tell if our crust is right when you bite it, it should flake in your—[Laughs]—flake on your chest, you know.
Is the crust made with—with lard?
Well we use—we use Crisco®, yeah that’s—that’s one of the ingredients. We use—it’s Crisco® and we use the dried peaches. They’re very expensive but we use the dried peaches. We—we make the pies the way that our grandparents made them and matter of fact, even the—the idea of cooking them came from a lady that used to make them for me. She was a—the Head Chef at a historic restaurant called Justine’s in Memphis for years and she would make those pies and—and she didn’t have the equipment that we’ve got. She would knead and roll them out with her hand—with a rolling pin and—.
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And when did you add pies to the menu?
Really, it was a year or two after we opened, you know. My wife had met her and she said this—this lady makes these pies, hey are so good. Because my wife would get her pies and take them to work with her. And the people at—at her job would—would buy the pies. So and—so my wife said, she’s wondering if you would want to sell some at your store.
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What do you think it is about Memphis and barbecue that go together? It seems everybody here eats barbecue, right?
I really don't know. I guess it’s like New York and pizza I guess. [Laughs] It’s—it’s hard to tell; it’s just something that all of us do. On holidays you’re in the neighborhood, you drive through; it—people are smoking and you smell the smoke and the sauce burning and it—it’s been that way all of my life, you know. Even when we were growing up, all the neighbors that—I mean we would do that.
And do you still enjoy barbecuing at home? Do you still get a chance to or—?
I love to barbecue; I mean any holiday, just—I like to get out there and get the smoke going and—and kind of get the neighbors a peeping out you know. Where I live very few people barbecue; they buy, you know, but [Laughs] that’s you know, part of the fun of it is cooking yourself and you know the smell of the smoke and the meat cooking, you know.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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