Barbecue Road Trip by Michael Karl Witzel

Author:Michael Karl Witzel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2008-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

For three generations, the Rendezvous has been located in the alley, downstairs, behind 52 South Second in downtown Memphis. When you come upon the green and red striped awning, you will know you finally found it. ©2008 Michael Karl Witzel

The restaurant is subterranean, so you have to take a flight of stairs down to where a hostess greets you. At first glance, the interior decor strikes me as a cross between Bennigan’s and the Addams Family. Amid portraits of the founder and other paintings, an eclectic mix of artifacts occupies display cases and is mounted to the walls, including antique toys, Indian arrowheads, movie stills, muskets, swords, vintage whiskey bottles, wooden ship models, and even sheet music signed by the father of the blues himself, W. C. Handy.

I meet John Vergos, who along with brother Nick and sister Tina, runs the restaurant started by the clan patriarch whose name graces the awning, Charles Vergos. John shows me the cooking area, situated immediately to the right of the stairs where customers queue up to wait for their table. It’s an open-kitchen arrangement, where customers can watch the cooking process. For a Saturday afternoon, the place is at normal tempo, with cooks, servers, and busboys running about in an orchestrated madness, dodging hot racks of ribs as they take care of business.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.