It’s All About the Love

It’s all about the love, says owner of The Blues BBQ Company, Patrick Maggi. And that love kept up its long, slow, and seductive pace as the first sip of Buffalo Trace bourbon slid sweetly down, finishing in a tang that cut the spice of my Carolina-style pulled pork doused with some vinegar-based sauce.

The warm, low-key atmosphere of this small barbeque and bourbon bar, tucked into the corner of Market Square in downtown Roanoke, was wrapped with blues tunes and posters of dignitaries such as Robert Johnson, Billy Holiday, the Duke, Sarah Vaughn, and Count Basie. It was Saturday night, and voices were humming along just beneath the sauce and swing while the Jesse Ray Carter Trio set up for its first November Saturday appearances.

But let’s talk BBQ and bourbon. My waitress kindly asked if I’d like to join their bourbon club. No fee, she said. Just a name and an address and a record of what bourbon I’ve quaffed. Sounds suspect—those pearly gates may have swung shut on my imbibing, but it went down well (the Buffalo Trace website describes this liquor as bearing a “complex aroma of vanilla, mint, and molasses … pleasantly sweet … notes of brown sugar and spice that give way to oak and leather”). As time goes on, I was told, the 50 types of bourbon will increase to 80.

I sipped and watched the owner scuttling back and forth in a galley-sized kitchen as dishes wafted past us—until, shortly thereafter, our starter arrived. Mind you, this was supposed to be a starter. Blues wings, the menu read, but these tender, spicy chicken wings, heavy with meat, numbered eight and were served with little tubs of ranch and blue cheese dressing.

They just whet our appetite for what came closely behind. I add an aside here: my husband and I used to take the old way to Topsail Island in North Carolina, swinging into the parking lot of the Goldsboro-based Wilbur’s BBQ restaurant where they do things the right way, as in a pit out back. We were hedging our bets that Blues BBQ wouldn’t even come close.

No, it didn’t. It left Wilbur’s BBQ back at the pit and went straight to heaven, zooming past Gabriel and even offering the archangel a bite on the way. One-half rack of baby back ribs came in the form of eight—we would have had to invite an offensive line if we’d ordered an entire rack. My husband commented that he had never not had to reach for a toothpick after ribs … until then. The meat pretty much leapt from the bone to his mouth—no pulling involved. It was tender, sweet, slightly spicy, and the best meat this side of the River Jordan. The sides chosen for this dish were slaw, not sweet and not drowning in mayonnaise, but fresh and perfect, and crispy, light beer-battered onion rings.

I eyed those ribs and took a bite of my pulled barbeque, complemented with collard greens and fresh-cut homemade fries. Another aside—everything is made by Maggi’s hands. Later, I sampled the brisket and chose as a side fried okra, a perfect complement to the juicy and tender beef brisket. Now who offers collard greens and fried on the downtown market? That’s something you might find in the deepest South, or on someone’s table at home if they’ve grown those vegetables themselves, but greens and okra in a sophisticated restaurant where the blues belie the message that the food brings? They were great, as were my slightly Cajun-spiced fries, as was the second choice of bourbon for the evening, Ridgemont Reserve (1792). This bourbon, with a smoky finish, helped wash down my BBQ that I had experimentally sprinkled with another of the three homemade sauces—Memphis. There’s also the Savannah, a honey mustard sauce.

Heaving huge sighs at the sight of BBQ not finished, I asked that it be put in a doggy bag (do not tell my mother, who doesn’t approve), sipped my last drop of bourbon, and ordered one of each dessert—okay, there were only two—and coffee for each of us. Switching halfway through, we had a hard time deciding which was best, the chocolate cake, dense and delicious, or the bourbon bread pudding, two generous slices. The vestiges of those orders also had to be taken home, much to our son’s delight at midnight.

Maggi is no rookie. He’s been cooking for 20 years as well as playing trombone. A cousin in Chicago, he said, taught him how to cook the real thing, which entails smoking the pork for five hours at 220 degrees before grilling and the beef brisket for 14 hours.

Now that’s love.

Posted: December 7th, 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.