The Joint, a longtime mainstay for barbecue in the Bywater, recently moved from its original Poland Avenue shack to a larger location on Mazant Street, in a corner building that once held a neighborhood grocery.
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Competitive ’cue Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > march 6 > 2012
Hogs for the Cause
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This annual cookoff and fundraiser has quickly mushroomed into a festival-like event and a showcase of local creativity with pork. This year’s music lineup includes Marcia Ball, Trombone Shorty, the Gourds and other bands, and food and drinks are for sale throughout the day. When: March 24, 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Where: Frisbee Golf Fields at City Park, 1 Palm Drive Details: www.hogsforthecause.org
Hammond Smokin’ Blues & BBQ Challenge
Considered the largest annual barbecue cook-off in Louisiana, this event is sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society and draws competitive teams nationwide. When: March 23-24 Where: Downtown Hammond Details: www.hammondbluesandbbq.com
Louisiana BBQ Cookers Association events
This statewide organization will oversee a dozen barbecue competitions in 2012. For a calendar of events, see www.labbq.org.
own barbecue,” Tramuta says. “The reason we can do that is because we’re not coming in and saying we’re better than what you have here, but just that we’re different. We’re New Orleans and Louisiana, that’s our roots, and we’re different.” That difference features jazz music on the restaurant soundtrack and a French Quarter motif in the decor, and includes dishes like barbecue shrimp and bread pudding on the menu and Crystal hot sauce.
Jenny and Peter Breen opened the Joint, their Bywater barbecue restaurant, in 2004 and recently relocated four blocks away in the same neighborhood. Since then, the Joint has emerged as a stalwart for the low-andslow approach in New Orleans barbecue, and some of those starting today’s new barbecue restaurants cite it as inspiration. Like many of these newcomers, the Joint does not adhere to one particular regional style, but borrows favorites from many. Here, St. Louis-style ribs are offered alongside Texasstyle brisket and Carolina-style pulled pork. New Orleans has long been the Switzerland amid the Balkanized rivalries of the barbecue world, simply because it had so little indigenous barbecue turf to defend. Perhaps now, as the styles, standards and traditions of these areas take deeper root and incorporate local flavors and customs, the city will become a diverse and delicious neutral ground for barbecue lovers. “We don’t want to be militantly barbecue. We encourage people to explore and get creative,” says Louapre of the approach preferred at Hogs for the Cause. “At the end of the day, barbecue is not something you need to be in a specific place to do,” he says. “It’s not like Louisiana oysters or something that’s better closer to the source. If you have the right meat, the right wood, the right smoke, you can do it anywhere, so why not here?”
tale. Originally from the Dallas area, he brings a Texas sensibility to his barbecue. “It’s all dry rub, so if you want to ruin it with sauce that’s up to you,” he quips. But when it comes to Hurricane’s business model in general, there is a lot more flexibility. The menu includes shrimp and catfish, and the restaurant boils up hundreds of pounds of crawfish each Friday, Saturday and Sunday during the season. “It’s a total hybrid,” Boyd allows. “It’s still south Louisiana and especially during Lent people will want seafood options.” At the same time, New Orleans influences are working their way into the very grain of some of the new barbecue emerging around town. “I don’t have the ego to say I’m creating a New Orleans style barbecue, but all of my rubs are Creolebased,” McClure says. “None of them come out of the barbecue world. They’re based on the rubs that have been in the kitchens at every New Orleans restaurant I’ve worked in, and that stuff just makes meat taste real good.” The idea of New Orleans-style barbecue, at least as a branding concept, is beginning to spread around the region thanks to the franchising efforts of VooDoo BBQ & Grill, a chain founded in New Orleans in 2002 and now based in Prairieville, La. From its first 11 locations, all in Louisiana, the company is now in the process of adding eight franchises in the Carolinas, five in Austin, Texas, and it has plans for 26 more restaurants across Florida, says Chad Tramuta, the company’s senior director of franchise development. More are in the works for Houston, and he says a group in Washington Neil McClure serves his barbecued D.C. has plans to open 40 locations around the Mid-Atlantic. chicken at Dante’s Kitchen Uptown “Our first two (out-of-state) franchises are in Texas and South during lunchtime. Carolina, two places known for their