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TENNESSEE |
“It’s got the human touch, the human involvement in the meat you know. … I like the old-fashioned part of the barbecue, you know. I mean if they take the human touch out of the barbecue and then I don't know if you want to call it barbecue anymore.” – Adam Itayem
Tom’s Bar-B-Q and Deli
4087 New Getwell Road
Memphis, TN 38118
(901) 365-6690
www.tomsbarbq.com
Adam Itayem is a Jerusalem-born, Palestinian-American cooking barbecue in Memphis. His restaurant proves how pervasive the city’s smoked meat foodways are; Memphis barbecue incorporates all cultures.
Founded by Greek immigrant Tom Sturgis, Tom’s barbecue rub embodied his heritage, by including: oregano, thyme, basil, nutmeg, and cinnamon. All of the pork and beef Itayem serves is marinated in this same spice rub for at least twenty-four hours.
Tom’s barbecue—including the famous rib tips—is still smoked on a closely watched open pit over hickory wood and charcoal. Itayem isn’t shy to say that this is the only way to get that “human touch.”
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: Adam Itayem
Date: July 20, 2008
Location: Tom’s Bar-B-Q and Deli – Memphis, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel
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Rien Fertel: This is Rien Fertel with the Southern Foodways Alliance. It is Sunday, July 20, 2008. I am in Memphis, Tennessee on the Barbecue Trail. I am at Tom’s Barbecue and Deli with Adam Itayem. Adam, can you please introduce yourself; give me your name and your birth date?
Adam Itayem: My name is Adam Itayem; I was born April 5, 1965.
All right; and what’s your role here at Tom’s?
What’s my role? [Laughs] What isn't my role here? I do everything here. From seasoning the meat, marinating the meat for the next day, getting everything done that needs to be done before 11 o'clock, ‘cause 11 o'clock ready or not they’re here. They’re knocking on our doors.
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And how long have you been the owner of this restaurant?
I’ve been here since 1995.
This restaurant had a history before ’95. Can you tell me a bit about it?
Sure; it’s been here for at least 50 years. It used to be a little diner, a little—little deli, cold-cuts you know, sandwiches, wings you know—whatever they had back then, and little—it was actually like a little service station. And this whole area was not developed at that time. It was just one main road. And then Tom eventually got it; his first start—he first started on President Island believe it or not. And he opened up the barbecue and I happened to find out in ’95 that it was—he was looking to, you know find a way out of this and he tried to give it to his children and it didn’t work out too good. And I had a partner that introduced me to the business and took it from there.
What was Tom’s full name—his last name?
Tom Sturgis. … I think he was here at least 20 years. He was at least 20 years here and he was Greek, heavy Greek accent; didn’t speak a lot of English but he was a master with the seasoning and the—the barbecue pit. He had a good following believe it or not.
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So in ’95 when you came in, did you have a [previous] restaurant career?
I started in White Haven. I had a deli in White Haven and we started barbecuing there and I was introduced to—from a mutual friend, a business partner that wanted to introduce me to the barbecue. It—and I came over here with him. It looked like an old shack ready to fall over, siding ready to peel off, gravel—I mean it’s not a place that you probably wanted to think of coming inside, and I said what are you bringing me to? This is an old shack; it looks like a little dinky barn ready to fall over. He goes, dinky barn; he says, come Monday—I think that was like a Saturday. It was closed on Saturday. He said come Monday and see what happens. I came here Monday with him and he had a line out the door of people you know and it was busy. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t believe it. And the price was right; and you know I—my partner, he was going to run it for me and I was going to stay on the sidelines and continue with the deli. But I quickly found out that after—after we kept on fixing and improving that it was not enough for one person to actually be able to run it. It needed a good crew. Started off with three people; three people and my partner and it eventually grew up to now we have 13 people. It didn’t take much to grow real quickly. … I grew up in the deli environment. My hometown is Cleveland, Ohio and I grew up around—I don't know if you’re familiar with this—it’s called the West Side Market. We—we had a little deli right—a half a block down the street from the West Side Market. The West Side Market, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an indoor like coliseum with all ethnicities there from strudel to oriental, Asian, Indian, to Middle Eastern inside and then they had an outside vegetable and produce stands—it was humongous. It was open Monday through Saturday, every single day. If it snowed, it rained; it was open. And particularly Saturday you would see a whole—you’d see thousands of people down there. I think it’s still there. It was—and growing up in that environment in that area really helped me out. My father who grew up—my father—corned beef deli, gyros, deep—deep-fried wings, so I grew up in that environment and with a little Spanish twist to it, you know.
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So you were born in Cleveland?
No; I was born in Jerusalem. … I was born in Jerusalem and I left when I was five. My sister and I were born there and I have three other brothers that were born here in the United States. We moved to Detroit; my father came here first. To give you a little history: my grandfather came before my father. My grandfather was in Baltimore; he had a pool hall in Baltimore. Early—you’re talking about middle 1800s and he met my grandmother and she was from—she was English. She was from Liverpool and they went back for a visit to Jerusalem and they ended up living there and raising my father and my—his brothers and sisters. So my father eventually came back here in the middle of the 1960s and started back up. So we all moved in; my uncles moved in—my uncle—my uncle moved in here in the early 1900s back, so it was like a twist moving back you know, coming there.
Are you Palestinian or Israeli?
Well my ancestors—my grandfather and father are Palestinian and my grandmother is English, so [Laughs] you know whatever you want to call that. I consider myself an American—my heritage and my ancestry is Palestinian.
Is there any history or culture of smoked meats similar to barbecue or maybe not so similar to barbecue in the Eastern Mediterranean?
It’s a little bit different. It’s—it’s a twist between something like Hawaiian. What they do is they do barbecue and they use coals but a different kind of coals. It’s the original old type of coals, you know those chunks. It’s not the—something that’s glued together or put together and what they do is they—they dig a hole. What they have is like an oven and what they—it’s on the—it’s real low on the ground and what they do is they dig a hole in there and they put the charcoal and let it—the coals die down a little bit and then they put a little bit of the dirt and then they put the meats. They wrap it up with grape leaves, and then they wrap it up with foil and put it in there and cover it back up with dirt and then that brick oven. It just happened that last—I went back there two years ago, and I had a chance to see a one-on-one experience. My—my wife’s brother-in-law did it for us and he had a special oven for that, and it was awesome to be honest with you. So the—it’s a different kind of barbecue but the—the seasoning is very close—the oregano, the pickle spice, the cayenne pepper, the cumin, the nutmeg, you know it’s all there—that Mediterranean flavor is all there. The seasoning is there. I mean the Middle East is known. The Middle East grease, the Mediterranean area especially that area is well known for its spices you know.
What kind of meat did they barbecue?
Mostly there, even the Christians, even the Christian side, my—my wife is Christian and her brother-in-law is Christian also—it’s mostly to be honest with you because of the heat and the climate there it’s mostly lamb and goat—lamb and goat and a little bit of beef, you know some beef and chicken you know—not too much pork. You have to really look—go out of your way to find it; it’s not readily available there because of the Jewish community and the Palestinian community and even the Christian community—it’s a small sector there. … They call it the dakhana, which is called smoke. If you want to take the translation—smoked you know. It’s smoked, dakhana, and it’s done and it’s almost like if you’ve ever seen the pizza ovens, the old pizza ovens but not sitting up high. They use the ground; they use it—and what they do is even though it’s bricked around they still cover the whole thing with dirt afterwards you know and they only have one opening with a pipe you know for letting out a little bit of the—the smoke come out.
Have you carried over any of that history and culture to what you cook here, any of the spice rub or anything?
I’ll be honest with you; no. Most of what’s here is the way that Tom Sturgis set it up. I mean his seasoning it’s about 15 different spices and the rub that he makes and I mean if it—if it isn't broken don't fix it. I haven’t changed the recipe; it’s the same original recipe that he has. It’s an awesome Greek rub that he has and this barbecue sauce compliments it, you know. And everything that we cook here is marinated with the rub and then at least 24-hours, even the bologna, the rib tips, the ribs—everything is marinated at least 24-hours.
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You described some spices before; can you say it again what makes it Greek, the rub that you use here?
Sure; you’ve got the—you’ve got the oregano, you’ve got the thyme, you’ve got the nutmeg, you’ve got the pickle spice, you’ve got the cayenne pepper and a little bit of cinnamon, the basil, you know. We’re not giving out all the secrets in there.
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And can you kind of describe the sauce to me, what’s it based on?
Sure; it’s not a very vinegary—it’s—it’s tomato-based, more of the tomato-based, very little—very little vinegar, not very much vinegar. I don't like vinegar too much and Tom, the original owner, didn’t like vinegar very much. Got some brown sugar in there, got some nice sauce, a pureed tomato sauce—puree. You just time—you just got to—you can't rush. One thing I’ve learned here is it’s not when you want the barbecue to be ready; it’s when the barbecue wants to be ready because depending on the temperature outside, the wind on the chimneys, on the stacks—it’s all going to make the barbecue cook. I mean sometimes the pit is running very fast and you have—you can't use too many coals and sometimes you have to use more coals. It’s really weird, you know. As much as you think—if you sit there five years and you work on that pit and you come in the next day and you’re going to think it’s the same—it’s going to be the same exact day she will trick you. You’ll find out that one day that it’s not that easy. I mean sometimes on the right side it’s very hot and you have to move a little bit more to the left and sometimes it’s more hot to the left and that’s the nature of that open—that pit—that open pit barbecue. We use only charcoal and hickory wood. That’s all we use. We use different layers—the different shelves in the—in the pit to get the smoked—we start off on the first level. It’s a little bit hot there; it’s at least 260—265. We move it to the second shelf; it’s about 225 and then on the third shelf it’s probably about 175 on the, you know—. So we move it; we start from the first layer and we move it slowly and it’s all—there’s no rotisserie involved. It’s all human touch that’s involved in it. You can't walk way from the pit; it will catch on fire if you’re not there to watch it.
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There’s one more menu item I think gets a lot of recognition and that’s the rib tips. Can you talk about them? Well what part of the animal are they exactly and then how do you cook them? What do you do with them?
We call them rib tips just to make it simple for a lot of people but they’re actually St. Louis loin button bone rib tips. Okay; they’re not—they’re not actually cut from the rib. A lot of places what they do is they take the brisket part of the rib and they cut it down and call it a rib tip. We get—we have the rib tip actually specially cut for us; it’s cut from the loin, shaved right off the vertebrae down the back of the loin, so you got those little—the bones that are left in the—with the meat with the loin meat looks like buttons. So that’s why they call them button bone rib tips and that’s something that Tom originally brought to this—the barbecue. I don't think anywhere else has them. I haven’t seen them anywhere else. I’ve—it used to be two companies that used to make it for us; we’re down to one company that only makes it for us and we’re still researching and looking for other companies to—to make it for us. It’s an awesome product; it’s very specialized and that’s what we’re known for—the rib tips you know.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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