Tailgating with the Masters
Impress Your Friends with these Tried-and-True Tips & Hints

Written by Sarah Cox
Photography by David Hungate

The first rule of tailgating: no mess, no fuss. You want to have fun, eat well, be comfortable, and quaff.  Having established that as a premise, there are two absolute essential pieces of equipment—the grill and the cooler. A cooler should be large enough to accommodate food and beverage; within its confines should be dividers.  Whether they are plastic containers or built-in devices is between you and the container, but keeping things divied up reduces stress, and that is of the utmost importance.

The grill must work with no problem at all, and that is where the Coleman Road Trip comes to the rescue like a proverbial knight on a white horse. Except this one is red, can be found at Dick’s Sporting Goods, and goes for about $150. For that, you will get a super-easy assembly—as in, I did it myself, man—a one-push matchless light, and fuel that comes in the form of 16-ounce propane cylinders that screw into the back. It has two detachable burners—actually, they’re not even attached, but simply rest on the surface; these can be converted to griddles, grills, or stove grates.  The stove also stands alone on collapsible legs, can be wheeled to a perfect setting, and burns between one and four hours, depending on how high you run them.

For food, think about delicious and easy, as in already prepared and marinating kabobs that can be pulled out and plopped on the heated grill; thick, juicy, and perfectly seasoned sausages that can be rolled around to achieve professional-looking grill marks; or quick-sautéed scallops wrapped in bacon on bamboo skewers. 

Or leave the cooking to someone else, and pick up an all-in-one tailgating package from a local restaurant—complete with utensils, sauces, the works. One great place to get the “hook-up” is Pitt Boss BBQ, open just two months this September, but already doing a mean business from its home at 3904-A Brambleton Avenue, across from Cave Spring Corners.  Pitt Boss dubs itself “Roanoke’s first true Que” and offers a one-stop-shop for tailgaters with barbeque in mind. Three different tailgate packages come complete with warming bags that keep “the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold,” and Pitt Boss owner James Tedesco will even meet partygoers at 7 or 7:30 am for those who want to get on the road early. Tedesco offers a Gold, Silver and Bronze package; the Gold package includes a whopping two racks of ribs, four pounds of BBQ, eight large sides, 24 wings, buns, and sauces for $145. The slightly smaller Silver features one rack of ribs, two pounds of BBQ, 12 wings, four large sides, buns, and sauces for $90. Last but not least is the Bronze: two pounds of BBQ, four large sides, 10 wings, buns, sauces for a mere $40.   The packages are available with a reservation only—the last one accepted about 2 pm the day before—and a $15 deposit on the warming bags is returned when you drop them back off the next day.

“We use dry rub on all our products,” says Tedesco. “They’re smoked with hickory wood, and we have all the different regions of sauces for guests to choose from—there’s East Carolina, Memphis, South Carolina… But our meats are bursting with enough flavor and are moist enough that a lot of folks skip the sauce altogether.”

If you’re more of a do-it-yourself tailgater, consider relegating your second burner to a stove grate, and simmering some already-prepared chili for the unexpectedly cold football afternoon.  Make sure it’s spicy enough, with the added interest of unsweetened chocolate, perhaps substituting venison chunks for conventional beef.  Another thought is hearty peasant vegetable soup, replete with fruits of the autumn earth such as potatoes, carrots, beans, and cabbage.  If you’re committed to meat, cook beef or veal shanks in the soup, then separate from the bone and tear into bite-size pieces before serving. 

You should make sure, as in all decent repasts, that the food groups are well represented. Thus, dairy in the form of scrumptious cheeses can be laid out to come to room (aka air) temperature. Sandy Malcolm of Ukrops Super Markets suggests cheeses that will hold their shapes for tailgating—like cheddars, manchegos, and Jarlsberg. These cheeses are also nutty and strong enough to stand up to heartier autumn fare.  The cheddar, she says, goes well with apples and sausages. Manchego is a semi-firm Spanish cheese of a rich golden color that ranges from mild to sharp, depending on its age, and Malcolm describes it as being similar to parmesan.  Jarslberg, she says, is a nutty Swiss that is full flavored.  This Norwegian cheese is buttery in flavor and has a semi-firm yellow interior.

The fruits should be what is in season—that is, apples (seek out the heritage apples that you can find at the Roanoke City Farmer’s Market) and pears, interspersed with walnuts and pecans.  Munching food, basically.  Easy to put on a platter or keep in a plastic container and put out for the foragers. 

No one dislikes good home baked bread, which can be used to sop up chili, sandwich a sausage or serve alongside the cheeses.  Bread Craft on Peters Creek Road (open 8 am to 2 pm, Monday-Saturday) bakes daily specials as well as their daily breads. The latter includes baguettes, white sourdough, olive loaves, cracked wheat, walnut parmesan and walnut raisin, sundried tomato and rosemary bread, semolina filone, and foccacia. The specials of the day are stelt on Mondays (this is a hybrid form of wheat); Tuesdays feature a chocolate cherry sourdough that would be a solid complement to cheeses; Wednesdays, a miche (rye and wheat mixed), which is a hearty peasant loaf that could hold up to thinly sliced country ham); Thursdays and Fridays you will find apple and chocolate brioche (a sweet, buttery bread with a cakelike texture that is good all by itself, like a little cake); and on Saturdays, the sweetest day of the week, they bake  chocolate and plain croissants, dried fruit and nut Danish with cinnamon sugar, a chocolate chip sweet roll, and monkey bread, which is a sweet dough with cranberries, cinnamon sugar and pecans on top.
 
Now, if you’re not too full, pull out the brownies.  These are super easy to make, they transport like a trooper, and everyone likes them. If you want to distinguish yourself, use a different chip, such as peanut butter or white chocolate, and pair that with chopped filberts or macadamia nuts.
 
Thirsty work, this tailgating business.  Radios are blaring all over the parking lot, tuning in to games across the country. Spatulas and grilling forks are waved about like swords and lances. Weird aprons sport phrases such as “Please don’t give this man any beer. Thank you, his spouse.” Men are wearing madras, women are adjusting HUGE sunglasses, and even young boys—mere lads—have popped their collars. It’s time for quaffing. 

Lemonade—the real, true stuff—is easy and so appreciated. Plug in your juicer, roll those lemons to plump readiness, and let the fun begin (all this, mind you, at home).  If you want to spike it, use the default liquor of W. C. Fields—gin—and all will be right with the world.  Moving on to beer that goes with the meals suggested above, Kimberly Eakin and Cary Bednarik, owners of Wine Gourmet, urge you to consider microbrews, which are the products of small-scale craft breweries. For the venison stew, they suggest brown ales; with sausages, offer a lighter ale such as pale ales and India pale ales, or IPAs. “Stay away from porters and stouts—they are too heavy and too high in alcohol,” advises Eakin.  But, she says, you can serve hefeweissen, which are the lighter, almost fruity beers.  For late fall/early winter tailgating, when the weather is nippy and the food is hearty, get the bocks, double bocks, and amber ales for solid food complements.  In the wine category, explore dry rosé for the beginning of football season. This, says Eakin, is not the sweet pink wine, but the rosé made from Syrah or Grenache grapes and fermented to complete dryness.  Then, to go with cheeses and heartier foods, she says to leave American cabernets at home.  “Go with a lighter pinot noir or a Tempranillo, which is the predominate grape of Spain.  You want to make it to the game, so no cab,” she warns.  Wine Gourmet, formerly of Botetourt Commons, has relocated to 2219 Franklin Road and offers free beer tastings every Friday so you can check out the types of brews mentioned here.

But wait! There is movement. A surge toward stadium gates. Snap on those plastic container lids, fold up the stove in one swift movement, shove it into the back of your car, and cheer for your team.  You are satiated and ready for action.

Posted: September 1st, 2007 under Taste of the City.
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~Sarah Cox loves to eat and write about food—probably in that order. She believes that most good cooking is the result of excellent ingredients, a dollop of wine and some Miles Davis in the background. This is while her daughter emails her from UVA with a grammar question, and her son’s drum tempo shakes the floor, thus helping reduce the red sauce. Sarah has eaten in working men’s cafes in Tehran, coffee shops in Salzburg, beer halls in Munich, and train stations in Copenhagen, but she likes her mom’s cherry pie best of all. She is a graduate of The University of Virginia and the Hollins Masters program in Writing. She can be contacted in care of City Magazine at 540.345.6300 or contact@citymagazineonline.com.