MeatN3

Once my Dad walked into a (supposed) BBQ place in Florida and asked for “6 pork sandwiches; three inside, and three outside”. The girl at the counter asked “You want three to eat here, and three to take away!?”

The folks at Ken’s in lovely Pinson, Alabama (reviewed here) would never make such a vile error. They truly know the ways of pulled pork. Freaking awesome place.

This place is now known as Pat James Full Moon Bar-B-Que. But as I recall the original, Southside branch, it was a concrete block building with a huge smiling moon face on the exterior wall. We’d skip school to go there. Great ‘Q. And it had the first PacMan machine to appear in B’ham (we thought the graphics were so awesome!).

It was one of the tabletop models, so you could sit your coke and paper plate on it while you played. That was, until the owner’d yell from back behind the counter for us kids to settle down and not get slop on his machine.

The first time I went to Archibald’s was when I was a high school senior, visiting the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa). My sister was already studying there, and she and her friends took me to The Sidetrack the night before, where I had two “Derailers.” A Derailer was big plastic cup, filled with a sub-Jim-Jones level of KoolAid and 5 kinds of liquor. So we didn’t make it to Archibald’s until about 3PM the next day, and my head was still feeling like it had a knife in it.

I expected a restaurant, but Archibald’s was a concrete block building in some guy’s backyard. It had a Formica counter, and high metal garden chairs. You watched the meat cook in the pit, right in front of you. There were three things on the menu: pulled pork sandwich (which came on plain white bread, no buns, and enough sauce to make the bread a little soggy), pulled pork plate (which was two sandwiches), and the jumbo pork plate (three sandwiches).

The smell of meat and sauce was amazing, even through my Derailer hangover. So I ordered a pork plate and a coke. When I got the coke, I noticed the inner liner on the cap had already been removed, to check if any prizes had been won in the recent soft drink promotion. The inside of my cap said “Sorry, Try Again.”

One of the guys I was with asked Archibald if you could buy sauce, and he said “Yup, if you bring me a jar.” He also told us he’d cook you a chicken, if you brought him a chicken.

Needless to say, the BBQ was freaking amazing. I walked out full, firmly back on the rails, smiling rather than smarting in the sunshine, head held high.

While for ribs I’d hit the infamous Dreamland, and for “The Blade” I’d go to The Rib Cage, for pulled pork, Archibald’s was the place.