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TENNESSEE |
“All you got to do is—is give them a barbecue. You’d be surprised what a barbecue will get you. You can trade a barbecue for things where a $20 would insult you.” – Charlie Robertson
Three Little Pigs BAR-B-Q
5145 Quince Rd.
Memphis, TN 38117
(901) 685-7094
www.threelittlepigsbar-b-q.com
Barbecue has been served at the present site of Three Little Pigs in east Memphis for over four decades. Since 1989, Charlie Robertson, under the Three Little Pigs name, has been serving shoulders—never butts—and amassing customers and an immense collection of pig paraphernalia.
In the location of a former Loeb’s—a once-famous Memphis chain—Charlie Robertson kept what worked and changed what didn’t. This is a neighborhood kind of place, and the only barbecue restaurant in Memphis where one can encounter an employee who acts as an official greeter, a man who walks the floor asking if everything was to your liking.
Mr. Robertson’s customers are as dedicated to Three Little Pigs, as he is to them; many bring the restaurant pigs plates, toys, and other geegaws from their travels. It’s telling that many of these same customers eat here three times a day.
We first visited Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q 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 Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q 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: Charlie Robertson
Date: August 3, 2008
Location: Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q – Memphis, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel
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Rien T. Fertel: This is Rien Fertel with the Southern Foodways Alliance. It is August 3, 2008 around 11:15 in the morning just after breakfast at Three Little Pigs Barbecue at Quince Road in Memphis, Tennessee. I am on the Barbecue Trail; I am here with Mr. Charlie Robertson. I’m going to have him introduce himself.
Charlie Robertson: I’m Charlie Robertson.
And your birth date please?
Oh I’m sorry; October 9, 1949.
And are you the owner of Three Little Pigs?
I am the Owner/Operator.
And how long have you been the owner of this barbecue restaurant?
For—it will be 20 years in March.
So 20 years in March, coming up on the anniversary; do you have a celebration or special plans?
We’re—we’re working on something. We’re trying to figure out what we are going to do. We’re going to do something special. We haven’t figured it out yet but we’re going to do something special.
So I mean I’ve—I’ve interviewed a lot of restaurants in Memphis and—and not many last 20 years. It’s—it’s—I guess it’s a milestone. It’s—it’s hard to get there. [Laughs] Let’s—let’s start with the history.
Well the restaurant has been here since ’68, so the restaurant has been here longer than that. And it’s just a good little neighborhood place and that’s all—and—and we’ve got good food, we treat people right, the prices are reasonable, and that’s all it takes. I mean you know that’s—that’s what the secret is. Mainly just treat customers right; make them feel like you appreciate their business.
And you said 1968; was it always Three Little Pigs or—?
No; it was originally a Loeb’s. Memphis had a franchise in—in here at one time named Loeb’s Barbecue and there were quite a few of them. There’s a bunch of these buildings still around town and it was a Loeb’s up until about ’82 and a man bought it by the name of Jack Whitaker and he did a little research and found out no one had that name registered, so he picked up the name Three Little Pigs. And then in ’89 when I bought it we—we registered the name then and that’s what it’s been ever since.
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Right; well let’s talk about the food. Do—have the recipes and the cooking processes, have they carried over from Loeb’s? Have they been changed?
Basically the recipes for beans and slaw and sauce are the same recipes that were here when this was a Loeb’s. I never—I never changed one recipe when I came in. I’ve always thought the slaw was an excellent slaw; before I ever bought this place I would come down here and buy slaw. If I needed slaw for anything I’d buy it here. The beans—the same way; the beans were really good. The sauce is not my favorite sauce. Personally I would do a different sauce but I didn’t do it to suit me. You know sauce is a real controversial thing; what you think is a good sauce and I think is a good sauce, and these other 20 barbecue places and they’re all good sauces, but everybody has some—wants something a little different. But the sauce was here and it was working and I left it alone.
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Not your favorite?
Yeah; like I—I want a heavier, thicker, sweeter sauce. Now what I’m fixing to tell you is what has been told to me by these barbecue geniuses. I’m not telling you this is what’s right. But they say a barbecue sauce should enhance the flavor of the smoked meat. It shouldn’t just be heavy and thick and smothered, like what I’m saying I like. You know they say if you get these heavy thick sauces you could basically put it on anything and you don't know whether it’s a smoked piece of pork or not. So the sauce is supposed to be enhancing the smoked flavor of the meat. Evidently it works ‘cause we’ve never had any complaints on it—never. It—like I say I just didn’t think—I wasn’t about to change it to suit my taste.
How would you describe the sauce here?
Little bit tart, little bit vinegary—not real vinegary and not real sour or nothing but just not—it’s not real thick; it’s kind of thin. We make it you know—make it here; so it’s not made from scratch. We use a concentrate that we start with and then we add stuff to it, but it’s not a heavy, thick, sweet sauce. Corky’s is—in my opinion is a heavy, thick, sweet sauce which I actually like. It’s a little hotter than I like. Our sauce is not hot either; now we have a hot sauce. We have a hot sauce we make that’s really good and it’s hot. But now I’m not a hot sauce eater, so—. But our mild sauce is very mild; whereas, in my opinion, Corky’s, even their mild has got a little bit of a bite to it.
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Are there any other barbecue restaurants that carry over from Loeb’s? I know some other barbecue restaurants operated in old Loeb’s locations, but do any continue that Loeb’s tradition like you do?
We got—there’s nobody that can beat us with beans. We’ve got one of the finest barbecue beans you’ll find, because they are made from scratch. They are made from scratch with pork and beans and most of your barbecue places have gone to using Allen’s Baked Bean and then they just add a little bit of stuff to it and go on, which it’s okay.
What do you do?
Well we use pork and beans. We start with pork and beans but we add sugar, brown sugar, barbecue sauce, chili powder, salt, this, that, and the other [Laughs] and—and—and the secret is brown meat, the brown meat from the barbecue. The outside brown, we grind it up and get it not fine but get it where it’s chewable and once it gets into the beans of course the brown meat is kind of tough and chewy. A lot of people can't eat it but once it sits in those beans it soaks up that juice and that—it thickens the beans, plus it softens that—and that brown meat just gives them real good flavor.
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So we have to talk about the pork. I mean that’s why I’m here. So tell me what you do; I—I understand you do shoulders.
That’s all we do is shoulders. We’ve never—never done ribs. I say we never—we do ribs for catering; we do chicken for catering and we do spaghetti for catering, but on the menu we basically are chopped or pulled pork. We cook nothing but shoulders; I don't cook butts. That’s another controversy between barbecue people is which is better, which will yield you the best? Well in my tests and in my studies, shoulders yield better than butts do. Of course butts are going to cost you more money per pound, but we just buy a basic shoulder, put in the cooker and leave it alone. It cooks 24-hours which is an unusually long time; you don't find many people that cook that long. But what that does is melts a lot of that fat out of the middle of the meat. But now you’re losing what they call yield by doing that too. Well the longer you cook it the more you melt out, the smaller and less in weight you’ve got. So that’s another reason a lot of people won't cook that long. They don't want to lose that volume, but you’ve also got a greasier product. I hear people tell me the big difference they see in our barbecue and—and all the others which they’re all good; you know I’m not going to sit here and knock anybody—is the fact that ours is a leaner product. It’s not as greasy. And that’s from cooking a long time at a low temperature.
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And—and—well I mean people in Memphis love barbecue. Why do you think barbecue is so tied into Memphis?
That’s a good question. That’s an excellent question. I don't have an answer for that. I don't know. I mean you know it’s just like why do people in the South like turnip greens and cornbread? Go to Dayton, Ohio and they look at you like you’re crazy if you wanted to eat that stuff. [Laughs] I don't know; it just is.
But when you were young did people eat as much barbecue as they do now in the City?
Well I don't know about in the City but I know we always ate a lot of barbecue. My mother would do barbecue—even in the winter when she couldn’t get outside and cook a shoulder, she’d cook one in the oven. She just baked it in the oven at a low temperature and then make a—there again; now she’d make a heavy thick sweet sauce which is probably why I like a heavy thick sweet sauce. And once you put it on that baked shoulder it’s as good a barbecue I ever eat in my life. You know you didn’t know the difference.
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What kind of pit did y’all have?
Made out of just blocks—concrete blocks stacked up with a grate on it. And she’d have to keep the fire just right under it, and of course now she would try to roll her shoulder around—turn it and move it but it was a big deal for—for her to cook a shoulder. But like I say, in the winter time, she’d just put it in a roasting pan and roast it in the oven and then baste it real good with that sauce and put it back in there and turn the temperature up enough to kind of brown it you know. Shoot; it was good to me. [Laughs]
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Where was this pit; was it in the backyard? It was—it was legal to have an open fire like that?
Oh yeah; oh yeah. Yeah; you could have—whether—now you said was it legal? I don't know if it was legal. We did it. [Laughs] Nobody ever—I mean if you’re cooking barbecue you think they’re going to come arrest you? All you got to do is—is give them a barbecue. You’d be surprised what a barbecue will get you. You can trade a barbecue for things where a $20 would insult you, you know but you offer them a barbecue and they jump at the chance for to get that.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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