Best Food Writing 2012 by Hughes Holly

Author:Hughes, Holly [Hughes, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Writing
ISBN: 0738216038
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2012-10-23T06:00:00+00:00

The Wee Hours

Bourbon and pigs. That fairly sums up my next twenty hours. The pit doors shut and smoke rolls out. Nothing to do but wait. The chefs and pit masters hold little summits, conversations that food nerds would freak out over. There is laughter. There is boudin and soft-shell crabs and oysters and crawfish. There are trays of Jell-O shots, and big cups of bourbon, and people dance until the speakers overheat. There is some drama at the pig; the fire gets too hot, but Rodney Scott finesses the coals, brings the temperature down. There’s no pit problem he can’t fix. You’ve seen Pulp Fiction? He’s the Mr. Wolfe of pork.

I fall asleep in a chair by the pit and later move to a couch. I wake up at 4:30 a.m. to find Scott and Brock still awake. Brock and I tag out, and I settle in next to Scott. He’s bulletproof. I’m not. The Pappy is gone. There’s a dead tall boy of Pabst and a cashed bottle of Patrón on a table, along with the empty shell casings of Jell-O shots.

“We look rough,” says Sarah Johnson from Jim ‘N Nick’s.

“I feel rough,” Brock says.

Scott puts R&B on the speakers. Al Green brings us back to life. We’ve been goofballs for the past two days, but when the end comes, it’s all business.

“Do you feel good about this?” Nick Pihakis asks.

Brock nods.

It’s time to create the Box. We’ve talked about the Box endlessly, lending it the importance of an advanced policy initiative, which seems slightly ridiculous, given that the Box is a Styrofoam container of cooked pig. But the Box is for the most important part of judging, the blind taste test, so there are four Beard-winning chefs on the Jim ‘N Nick’s mobile smoking rig. Everyone is calm, quiet, with a few jokes and short, precise comments. The Box has to go at noon. Link has a knife in his hand. Some of the Beach Road 12 sauce is in a jug; abstract ideas and theories are great, but these guys didn’t become who they are by trying to lose. Some of my snark evaporates as I realize every team is doing this exact same thing.

“It’s 11:50, guys,” John Currence, from City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi, says quietly.

What follows is a damn impressive ten minutes. My boys are stone cold. Nobody ever raises his voice or appears to rush, and I realize that before these guys were famous, they spent their lives in hot kitchens, cranking out dinner night after night. All thirty-four other whole hog teams are equally concerned with sticking the landing.

The Box is off, and three in-person judges are coming through. They are given the Gospel According to Fatback. Pat Martin does most of the talking. They hear about the Mangalitsas, about the pit masters and the chefs, about Martin’s dream of a win at Memphis in May changing the arc of the pig industry, replacing the flavorless factory hogs with ones more like our grandparents ate.

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