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Caterers and restaurants that specialize in barbecue report that their event business

is booming; even for weddings, clients want good, old-fashioned comfort food

BY SARA PEREZ WEBBER

T here’s something about barbecue. No matter what area of the country you’re in, you’re bound to be close to a barbecue festival, a barbecue joint that packs ’em in, or even a neighborhood pitmaster who earns bragging

rights for his pulled pork. After all, according to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association, 80 percent of all U.S. households own a grill or smoker, and 97 per-cent of those owners actually used it in the past year.

Beyond the backyard, the business of barbecue is booming—including for catered events. The four businesses profiled here all specialize in barbecue, and they all report that its popularity is on the rise. Even for weddings—not traditionally associated with this type of casual cuisine—couples are increasingly choosing what’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

In scenic, historic Gordonsville, Va., The Barbeque Exchange has been around for only four years. Yet the restaurant—in

a white-washed, rustic building, where seating for 100 includes picnic tables on the front porch—has a booming catering business, booking anywhere from four to 12 weddings a month from the end of March through October.

“Barbecue is fun—and different,” says Jaclyn Conlogue, catering and special events coordinator. “Weddings have this stigma of mediocre food, and we hope we are part of the movement to change that. I see even the non-barbecue wed-dings trending more toward fun, casual Southern elegance, rather than black-tie and plated dinners.”

CATERINGDOWN-HOME THE BARBEQUE

EXCHANGEGordonsville, Va. bbqex.com

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feature The Barbeque Exchange's wedding menu options include macaroni and cheese, and grilled chicken quarters (opposite); as well as (clockwise from left) shrimp and grits hushpuppies; butternut squash soup with curried pepitas; the choice of five signature barbecue sauces; and Southern-style green beans with bacon and onions.

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TOP LEFT AND RIGHT PHOTO BY RON DRESSEL PHOTOGRAPHY (RONDRESSELPHOTO.COM); MIDDLE PHOTO BY PHOTO BY SARAH CRAMER SHIELDS (CRAMERPHOTO.COM); BOTTOM AND OPPOSITE PHOTOS BY JEFFREY C GLEASON PHOTOGRAPHY (FOTOSBYJEFF.COM)

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Richard Shelor attributes his love of barbecue to the family reunions he attended growing up in southern Georgia. “I feel there are emo-tions attached to barbecue,” says the CEO and founder of Sweet

Georgia Catering & Event Planning in Atlanta. “Usually where there’s barbecue, there’s a good time being had. I also think barbecue is one of those foods that everyone has an opinion about, and that’s really fun to cater to.”

Catering is Shelor’s third career. After graduating from the University of Georgia with an economics degree, he worked at a hedge fund, and then in real estate. But he had fond memories of helping out at a child-hood friend’s family restaurant, and he continued working in kitchens throughout college.

“I found myself being pulled back into the industry as a part owner of a barbecue restaurant and two food trucks,” he says. “Two years ago, I decided to focus on starting a barbecue catering company, and that’s when a friend and I started Sweet Georgia Catering.”

Shelor’s culinary philosophy is based on “simplicity, freshness and high-quality ingredients,” he says. “For example, my creamed corn is incredibly simple. The recipe came from Thomas Keller’s French Laundry. In his book, he only uses a tablespoon of it as one layer of a duck roulade, but it works perfectly as a 6-ounce side, too. We simply puree a quarter of IQF corn and then add the puree and corn to a pot. The starchy puree will thicken up as it cooks the corn. So it is corn cooking in corn. We add a little butter and heavy cream, and then we season with salt off heat, and that’s it.”

The company caters events of all stripes, and Shelor has found that clients consider his traditional barbecue menu to be a good value and a crowd-pleaser. “A high percentage of people in a group usually like traditional barbecue with classic Southern sides,” he says. “We do a lot of brisket, pork and chicken. Our customers tend to order either mac-and-cheese, honey baked beans or cole slaw for sides. Our grill station and grits bar are our most popular specialty stations.”

Sweet Georgia Catering utilizes a

custom-made rotisserie smoker by Cadillac Smokers for events of 100 or more people, often cooking onsite and pulling the meat straight off the smoker for guests. “I prefer that set-up because it guarantees that the guest gets a perfect product,” says Shelor. “We also have large six-foot gas grills that we take to events for when we do steaks, grilled chicken, hot dogs or hamburger stations. We just did a nice setup with our grilling stations for the Atlanta Braves’ opening day VIP party right in front of Turner Field.”

In the beginning, Shelor experimented with modern interpretations of some of his menu items, but they didn’t sell well so he went back to the basics. “My customers kept asking for traditional menu items,” he says. “I have always believed that a good restaurant owner lets his customer write the menu.”

Chef Craig Hartman specializes in hickory-smoked and slow-roasted pork shoulders and spare ribs, dry-curing the meats with secret-ingredient rubs and cooking them in “The Beast”—a customized barbecue cooker that has the capacity for 48 shoulders and 108 racks of ribs. Sides include Brunswick stew, baked beans, collard greens and house-made pickles.

“For our barbecue brides, the pork is a must,” says Conlogue. “Brisket or chicken tend to be the other meat option they choose. Most ceremonies are outdoors, with many venues offering some sort of covered or indoor reception area.”

In addition to pork, brisket, chicken and even smoked tofu, Chef Hartman experiments with sausage, Virginia-cured ham and bacon—a featured ingredient in some of the Barbeque Exchange’s most scrumptious desserts.

“We love bacon here!” says Conlogue. “Our standard is the bacon brownie, made with 70% chocolate and about a pound of bacon for each pan, plus ganache and more crispy bacon on top—it’s decadent. We also offer bacon dough-nuts on Sundays, and make an old-fashioned, yeast-raised fried doughnut that we glaze with maple, Nutella, chocolate or vanilla, and cover in bacon bits.”

All the bacon desserts can be ordered for weddings—a sweet, fun ending, indeed.

SWEET GEORGIA CATERING AND EVENT PLANNINGAtlanta sweetgacatering.com

Highlights of Sweet Georgia Catering's menu include pulled beef brisket with its popular Sweet & Smokey sauce, with sides of Jamaican collard greens and mashed sweet potatoes (opposite), as well as such appetizers as Caprese salad (left) and prosciutto-wrapped melon balls (top). The company's custom-made smoker, "Big Tacy" (above and top left), can hold 500 pounds of meat on a rotisserie.

THE BARBEQUEEXCHANGEContinued

The Barbeque Exchange's house-cured ham and sweet potato biscuits.

ABOVE PHOTO BY WILLIAM WALKER PHOTOGRAPHY (WILLIAMWALKERPHOTO.COM)

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Anna Mikeska-Payne and her sister, Angela Mikeska Conlan, were on a mission: “to bring the cute into barbecue,” explains Mikeska-Payne.

It all started when they were asked to cater the premiere party for HGTV’s “Junk Gypsies,” hosted by their friends, design-ers Amie and Jolie Sikes. “We said we needed to do something fun,” says Mikeska-Payne. “We own a lot of junk, so we made this cool set-up that was kind of vintage-looking.”

The Mikeska sisters hail from a barbecue family. Their father, Clem Mikeska, founded a barbecue restaurant in 1965 in Temple, Texas, that has since become an institution. Clem Mikeska’s Bar-B-Q now has four locations in central Texas, employing many members of the Mikeska family—and 84-year-old Clem still buys all the beef for the company.

When the original Clem’s opened, it spe-cialized in sirloin tri-tip—an unusual move for a Texas barbecue joint. Clem “flew to Chicago to check out this new cut of beef people were talking about, and he fell in love with it,” says Mikeska-Payne. “It’s foolproof—it’s lean and easy to cook.” Only five years ago did Clem’s start serving brisket, the Texas BBQ staple. Other specialties include homemade sausage, a nod to the Mikeskas’ Czech heritage, and Clem’s All-Purpose Seasoning, a rub that’s added to many of the restaurant’s recipes.

While Clem’s does plenty of traditional catering, both on-site and off-site—with a party room in the main Temple location and a lengthy catering menu—the “Junk Gypsies” event inspired Mikeska-Payne and Conlan to start a new catering division that focused more on the aesthetics of an event. They named it Country Chic Catering.

“We noticed that weddings nowadays don’t want just a plain old institutional setup for barbecue, so we added a cute frill but kept it rustic,” says Mikeska-Payne. “It has taken off. We did more weddings last year than we did in the previous six years.”

COUNTRY CHIC CATERING CLEM MIKESKA'S BAR-B-Q

Temple, Texas clembbq.com

The family already owned a lot of the props the sisters use at the events—old wine barrels, for instance, and the covered wagon that has become the signature of Country Chic Catering. “We own a lot of junk,” says Mikeska-Payne. “We got to marry our junk and our catering, and it works! We’ve been very lucky.”

The meat is barbecued in-house and then transported to each event, but all meat is freshly cut on location. “People love the food,” says Mikeska-Payne. “It’s all done from scratch.” Popular menu items for Country Chic include the pork loin, hand-cut red potatoes and grilled chicken breast with a Pontchartrain sauce. Many events will feature drinks stations with Mason jars and roast-your-own S’mores bars. The family also owns vintage cars that brides can rent for photo ops.

“It’s what’s in right now—burlap and lace, the vintage-rustic look,” says Mikeska-Payne. “We had to bring cute and fun into our catering business, because we were only known for barbecue.”

At Country Chic Catering and Clem Mikeska's Bar-B-Q, it's a family affair, with even Anna's 13-year-old son Hank helping out (opposite, far left). Founder Clem still buys the beef for the company (pictured in a cowboy hat in the center photo, flanked by, from left, daughter Angela, son Stephen, daughter Anna and Anna's husband Troy). Country Chic Catering displays such rustic touches as hay bales, wine barrels, antlers, chalkboards and its signature covered wagon at events. Its wedding business (left) has skyrocketed.

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You can’t miss it when MISSION BBQ caters a large event. That’s when “Bam Bam,” a deuce-and-a-half military truck

tricked out with a fully operational smoker, pulls up, prompting guests to start lining up next to it for a photo op.

“We wanted something identifiable and to get a little chuckle from it,” explains co-owner Steve Newton. “You see all those barbecue cook-off teams, and they’re very unique, so we wanted something along those lines.”

Bam Bam also ties into the mission of MISSION BBQ—giving back to the local com-

MISSION BBQGlen Burnie, Md. (headquarters) mission-bbq.com

Wounded Warrior Project. MISSION BBQ sets aside $2 from each refillable “American Heroes” cup sold for the charity, as well as 10 percent of all gift cards sold during the holiday season. On Armed Forces Day in May, Newton expected to present Wounded Warrior Project with a $150,000 check. The company also works closely with local police and fire department

charities in each of its locations. “Our first answer is ‘yes’ to all local police and fire depart-

ment charities,” says Newton. “We try to be the first responders to those first responders.”

Newton and Kraus both have corporate backgrounds—Newton spent 20 years as regional vice president of Outback Steakhouse, while Kraus was an executive with Under Armour. “Barbecue reminded me very much of what the steakhouse segment was like when I first got into it—very local, regional and independent, but built around a timeless concept: one great piece of protein and one great side,” says Newton.

The two friends crisscross the country researching the best barbecue—from Austin, Texas, to the Carolinas to Chicago and Kansas City, Mo.—and MISSION BBQ’s menu reflects their

travels: Texas-inspired brisket, NC Pulled Pork and St. Louis-style spare ribs are a few options. Sauces range from Memphis Belle to KC Classic to Tupelo Honey Heat, while popular sides include double-cooked baked beans and Maggie’s Mac-N-Cheese (named after Kraus’ daughter).

Things are going so well that, in addition to the planned expansion, MISSION BBQ is opening a full-service catering facility in Glen Burnie, a Baltimore suburb, this summer, enabling it to build on its growing catering operations. The company has catered for the 5,000-member brigade at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and has booked more than 50 weddings this year.

“We’ve had double-digit growth in each of our restaurants,” says Newton of the chain’s success. “I think with the advent of the Food Network and cooking shows, there has been an affinity toward flavor. One of the great-est things about barbecue is you hear about the weekend warriors who tend their pits all night long, and after 12 hours they have a product they are very proud of. There is an artistry in this cuisine.”

munity and to American heroes. Newton and co-owner Bill Kraus opened the first MISSION BBQ location in Glen Burnie, Md., “on Sept. 11, 2011—10 years after the World Trade Center [attack]—as a remembrance of what happened and the coming together of our country,” says Newton. “There’s nothing more American than barbecue.”

Now with seven locations in four states, and eight more slated to open on the East Coast this year, the company donates a “sig-nificant amount of resources” to military-related national charities, particularly the

Specialties at MISSION BBQ include barbecue ribs with green beans (above) and pulled pork sandwich with fries (above right). Members of the military often attend the chain's openings (top right), and the company's tricked-out military truck, Bam Bam (middle right), travels to large catered events.

The barbecue turkey sandwich with mac-n-cheese cup (left) is on the menu at MISSION BBQ, where an honor guard (far left) is often part of the grand opening ceremonies for a new restaurant. Each day at noon, the entire restaurant halts to salute the U.S. flag and stand at attention for the national anthem (below). Wedding business for MISSION BBQ is strong, especially among members of the military (below left).

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