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TENNESSEE |
“That’s the main thing I’ve learned through being in the restaurant business—if you can control, well let’s just say consistency and quality, if you can control that, you will have repeat customers. That’s like I’ve always told anybody. If I get you in the door one time I know you’re coming back. It’s kind of like Curtis Mayfield Pusher-Man. I’ll give you a free taste the first time and I got you hooked.” – Craig Blondis
Central BBQ
2249 Central Ave.
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 272-9377
www.cbqmemphis.com
Craig Blondis opened Central BBQ with partner Roger Sapp in 2002. Their goal was to turn Memphis on to the “competition style” they’d been perfecting on the barbecue circuit since the early 1980s.
Central really does give the people what they want, a lot bit of everything: ribs, pork, beef, pork rinds, bbq nachos. Add to the expansive menu, four sauces, a couple—vinegar and mustard—not commonly found in these parts.
Still a barbecue competitor Craig Blondis is as serious as one can get concerning smoked meats. But Central BBQ doesn’t take itself too seriously. Memphisonians—often barbecue traditionalists—are coaxed to try the ‘new’ sauces. The tie-dyed garbed employees are all called “hippies.” And Blondis’ voice can be often heard shouting spiritedly above the cacophony that is Central BBQ; he always seems to be having the most fun of all.
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: Craig Blondis
Date: July 13, 2008
Location: Central BBQ – Memphis, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel
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Rien T. Fertel: I am here with Craig Blondis at Central Barbecue. This is Rien Fertel from the Southern Foodways Alliance. We are at 2249 Central Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. Mr. Blondis, will you please introduce yourself; tell me your name and your birth date?
Craig Blondis: Yes; my name is Craig Blondis. I was born September 18, 1962.
And what is your role here at Central Barbecue in Memphis?
I am Managing Partner. I oversee day-to-day operations.
And when was Central Barbecue opened or founded?
It was April 1, 2001. … I’m struggling when it was; it was ’01. … Seven years this April, so yeah—no; ’02—’02. [Laughs]
April 1st that’s a funny day to open a restaurant. Was that a—?
To be honest with you it was on Good Friday which was like March 28th, so we just say April 1st to make it easy, but you know it’s kind of like a running joke because the gentleman I used to work for said I was crazy for going into the barbecue business and so that’s the—the whole crux of April 1st. It’s fool—show them who the fool really is. [Laughs]
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Tell us where you’re originally from and when you moved to Memphis and about your early years in Memphis.
Okay; I was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the Bay Area and moved to Memphis in 1971. I went to school here in Memphis and went to UT for a couple years and came back and went to U of M and decided college wasn’t my strong point. So I started off in the restaurant business and been going to TGI Friday’s busing tables, washing dishes, worked my way up through that organization and worked for corporate, private—a little bit of everything.
Do you remember eating at any restaurants as a teenager, any favorite places that your family would go to?
Well the first barbecue restaurant I ever went to in Memphis when we got here was Leonard’s Barbecue on Bellevue. And there was another place my dad used to take us to a lot which is Baratta’s, which used to be on the corner of Park and Highland. Other than that I mean my—as a kid growing up my favorite place to eat barbecue is the Cozy Corner over on North Parkway and you know that’s the place where I ate barbecue. I didn’t eat anywhere else just because that was the first I ever had and I thought that was what barbecue was and nobody else’s was any good, so—. Now it’s Central Barbecue. [Laughs]
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You have a founding partner in the business?
Yes; Roger Sapp is my founding partner. When we first opened he was employed at Wursburg as the Chief Comptroller. He recently is retired and taken on a management position at the—our second location over on Summer Avenue but the first three years—four years it was pretty much all on my own, you know as far as that. The way we came about was both Roger and I had been cooking competitively on barbecue teams and he had sold one of his rental properties and didn’t want to pay any capital gains taxes, so he bought the property that we’re at here on Central and asked me if I wanted to go in with him and open the restaurant. I’m like okay; no problem. What kind of restaurant do you want to try? He said, well why don't we try our hand at barbecue? I go okay; that’s not a bad idea ‘cause John Wells used to be right down the street here by CBU and he had a goldmine. So we said well we’ll take the chance and see what happens. And that’s where we’re at, you know. The barbecue we serve here is what I tell everybody is—it’s competition style barbecue. It’s what I serve to a judge at a cooking contest and that’s what sets us apart—apart excuse me—from most other barbecue restaurants is we are serving more of a competitive style barbecue. And that’s how we became a restaurant and we’re going to keep true to our roots and go from there.
When did you start doing competitions and with whom and what teams?
Okay; when I—the first team I was a member of and helped on was Red Eyed Smokers back, I think it was 1981 or ’82 was the first contest I was in down at Memphis in May back when there was no running water, no electricity; you had to bring generators in and bring your own water in and I’ve watched that grow from the first contest they had was inside a tent.
Those were the early years, the early ‘80s?
The very early years; I think ’79 or ’80 was the first year for Memphis in May. Don't quote me on the exact year but—and I know Roger, he cooked on a team for years called the Hog-a-Holics which they are—they were a group of professionals—doctors, lawyers, that type—they cooked all over. They gave and went with Fed Ex over to China or Bangkok or somewhere in a competition they had over there, so you know they—they—as far as the old school I mean you mention their name and a lot of the older people that have been on the barbecue circuit would know exactly who you’re talking about. So between the two of us you know you—you’re talking 30 to 50 years of barbecue experience between the two of us in competition. So it’s—that—that helps out a lot too. So you know that’s where you hone your skills, come up with your rubs, your spices, your sauces—that type stuff.
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Well let’s talk about the competition style barbecue that you do here at Central Barbecue. How would you describe the—the pork that you serve? What kinds of cuts do you do; how would you describe it?
Well, we use a whole shoulder bone-in, shank bone-in. As far as the ribs we use a loin back rib which is probably what I would call—I tell people it’s the Cadillac of ribs, because it’s—it’s the best cut as far as ribs. You—your St. Louis cut is from the belly side of the pig and the loin back is from the backside—less fat and more meat. We use whole turkey breast; we’ll use whole chickens, brisket you know—we—we cook a variety of meats. All of our meats we rub with spices and let them marinade overnight so we use a dry cooking process as opposed to a wet cooking process. That’s more the competitive side as opposed to most restaurants which cook wet style—and my personal opinion on that is, if you’re cooking wet style it’s basically to cover up the fact that you’re not cooking in a true barbecue style. You know you can always just take some ribs and parboil them and put sauce on them and throw them in the oven and call it barbecue but there’s no true smoking or slow cooking involved in it. Whereas ours, you know like the ribs take about five hours to cook and about 225—250 degrees. Shoulders, we usually put them in about 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon and take them off about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. So you know that’s a lengthy process; the type of cookers we use and that is a gas rotisserie convection style that has a wood chamber in the back so as it heats up the pit it burns wood to fill it with smoke throughout the cooking process.
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So you—you say it’s a gas-fired rotisserie. There’ s a lot of wood outside; can you explain how it works and what kind of wood that is and how it works?
Right; on the outside of the pit you’ve got a door—obviously it opens up. That’s your wood chamber or smoke chamber—what I call it. You have a giant igniter furnace that comes across that chamber and ignites the wood as it’s heating the pit. And the top of it—it’s a round cylinder about 18 inches in diameter and the top there’s holes cut in it for the smoke to come out. So basically the wood is strictly for smoke; it’s not for heat. So the gas is what you’re using to keep the—the pit at a constant temperature; the wood is strictly for smoking.
And what type of wood is it?
We use predominantly hickory or pecan; those are the two that we use. They’re very similar; pecan is a little lighter as far as smoke. It doesn’t have quite as much of a bite to it as a hickory does, but you know there are some people that swear by using fruit woods, like apple, cherry, peach—they’re a lot subtler and they don't have as much flavor in the smoke. It’s—so that—for that reason alone that’s why we choose to use hickory and pecan. I know that if you go to other regions like Texas they use a lot of white oak mixed in with hickory. It’s just—it gives it a whole different flavor to the meat, so it’s—pecan, hickory—that’s the way to go.
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Well let’s talk about your sauces. What kinds of sauces do you have—a hot and a mild?
We have a hot, a mild, a mustard base, a vinegar base, and the whole idea behind that is barbecue is regional. People are used to different sauces. I didn’t want to alienate everybody and say—because when you go into most barbecue restaurants you have one or two choices and that’s it. It’s my sauce and—or nothing. I didn’t want to be that kind of a person, so that’s why I have four different sauces because somebody from Carolina wants a vinegar or mustard base—I’ve got it for them.
Do you find that Memphis people are apt to try those sauces or want to or that they will only stay with those kind of tomato(ey) Memphis sauces?
Traditional—the—it was very hard for me to get people to try different sauces. I had to basically beg them to do it and tell them they are—especially the mustard and the vinegar you know. And like you say a lot of people are traditionalist; they’re either going to do a mild or a hot. You know for example, my mild sauce is more of—I would call it a traditional across the board barbecue sauce. It—it’s something that you would find in Kansas City; you’d find it in the South—not necessarily out West—Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma; they’re more of a—a lighter vinegar based sauce. So you know and my hot sauce is a bourbon and Tabasco® based barbecue sauce. You get the taste of the bourbon and you get the heat form the Tabasco® afterwards which is not a traditional hot style barbecue sauce. Most people would just take their mild sauce and spice—doctor it up to make it hot. So and then the vinegar is just that; it’s a vinegar based sauce. We use apple cider vinegar and apple cider are the two main ingredients in it and then the mustard base is just what it sounds like. It’s a sauce made with mustard instead of ketchup. And you know I finally have educated people like my smoked turkey; the mustard sauce on smoked turkey is out of this world. So you know as—as time has gone on people have started to learn that there—you know sauces are just like anything else in a restaurant you know. If you have a good saucier guy you’re going to have good—you know that’s—that’s what people tell me that if I were in a kitchen that’s what I would be—a saucier guy ‘cause I like making sauces to put on top of meats, you know or to the side. And it’s like anything from a cilantro based sauce for a brisket to you know the—I’ve done—one I used guava and roasted habaneras and made a Caribbean style. So you know it’s—it’s—to me that’s what makes it. … I mean people grow up in different regions; they get like me you know I’m born in Oakland and came to Memphis. That was a big culture shock you know, so it—travels yes give you ideas but for the most part it was just because I didn’t want people—I know not everybody is a Memphian so they’re going to have their idea of what barbecue is. You can get it here, kind of like Central Barbecue. We were tossing it around calling it Barbecue Central, so you know it was—I—I just say it’s travels, yes to an extent, like the hot sauce. When I was in Texas I had some that was you know—and I was like man, I got to find this recipe. So yeah, ‘cause then any time I travel I—I got to stop at least one or two barbecue places. And my wife is sick of it. [Laughs]
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Does everyone here eat and love barbecue?
Wow; that’s a good question. What ties Memphis and barbecue—aside from Memphis in May making it more renowned world-wide, it’s a southern thing? I mean you get down in the Delta, you go down to Clarksdale, Cleveland, I mean you’ve probably been to some of the places down there. You know it’s a whole—it’s a way of life you know it’s not just eating a product; it is a way of life. It’s southern; you can't get more southern than barbecue—maybe cornbread and turnip greens but that’s why I sell those here so you know it’s the whole soul food southern experience.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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