Welcome to my blog!

Well, it appears that everybody has a blog so, why not?  I'm thinking it's yet another great way to connect with fans of Blues, Brews, and most importantly, BBQ.  Hopefully we will be able to also have a comments section so it can be interactive.  This is important since I have learned more about BBQ from customers and friends than I ever knew myself.

So, here on my first post as a newly minted blogger, I think I'll start by sharing what got this place going.

I was introduced to BBQ by my father.  I think he did one BBQ in the 17 years I lived at home.  Actually, it was grilling.   I'd never had burnt chicken before and it was a real eye-opener.  Thankfully, that was the end of that.  I don't remember seeing the little grill around after that either.

Later, I purchased the obligatory Weber and tried my hand at chicken.  I knew that good BBQ had sauce, so I dipped the chicken in sauce and put it on the grill.  Fortunately the grill was not located under any trees or near any buildings.  The flames were beautiful as the drippings ignited  on the coals and the flames reached the sugar in the BBQ sauce on the chicken and it was off to the races from there.

Armed with this knowledge, I modified my technique and always kept a spray bottle of water handy to put out the flames.  Brilliant.  The chicken was still awful, but at least the neighbors were safe.

So for several years (like 20) if found other things to do besides backyard BBQ.  I have always enjoyed cooking, actually, always wanted to really do it well.  I am a natural born host and nothing rewards me like delivering a feeling of well-being to others.  I knew that a great way to do that was through food.

Somehow, maybe by reading cookbooks, I was exposed to the difference between grilling and BBQ.  There are two more personality quirks I have in addition to my affinity for being a host.  I'm very interested in the origins of things.  Where did this word originate?  Where did this idea come from?  Who invented this and how did they come to do it?  The second quirk is, the more complex a subject is, the more interested in it I become, to a point.

So when I discovered that BBQ is not grilling, it's cooking with indirect heat and flavoring with spice and smoke, well, I was hooked.  I built a back yard smoker, a "double barrel" type.  Fire in the bottom barrel and the cooking chamber in the top barrel.  Wood burning.  Did ribs, pork butts and turkeys, of all things.  Long story short, got great feedback, which I was highly skeptical of since I had no idea what I was doing, and it was consistently good feedback so I decided to do some catering, some parties and some turkeys for Thanksgiving.  It was fun and people seemed to like it.

Then, when the current recession finally caught up with me and I got laid off, I decided to go for it and try my luck at running a restaurant, something I've always wanted to do.  Fortunately my wife, Jessica, was fully supportive of this.  I had expected a great deal of resistance but I couldn't have asked for a better response than I got from her.  Spent a year on the business plan, picked up a huge smoker and took it from there.  Got plenty of mentoring and advice from the BBQ community too.  Invaluable.  (The world of BBQ has some of the most generous, wonderful people you'd ever want to meet and I'm eternally grateful to them for their encouragement and help early on.)

Found this place, wrote my check and figured I'd be out of business and filing Bankruptcy in 6 months or so.  That's the fate of the vast majority of restaurants and I fully expected that to be my fate as well.  Through good fortune and the support of you wonderful customers, things have come out totally opposite my expectations.  For that I thank you!

Currently we're Best of Yelp (please help us stay there!) and Tripadvisor has us as the #4 spot in the whole city, according to travelers who have rated us.  We have also been recommended in the 213 Michelin Guide, Bay Area and Napa Valley.

Next time, we'll talk a little more about BBQ and maybe some Blues too!

Thanks for reading.

Paul