I smoked some ribs for a friend of mine for a family cookout of about 20 people. He wanted me to do ribs and He'd do some hotdogs and burgers "onsite" for those who didn't eat ribs (there were a lot of younger kids coming).
He came and picked up the ribs and earlier this week called me and said one of his wife's relatives wanted me to smoke him some ribs because he liked them so much. So I told him to give the guy my # and when he's ready to give me a call or email or whatever. So the guy gives me a call (almost immediately) and I smoke him two slabs and he comes by to pick them up yesterday evening. Got to talking with him and realized that he wasn't really a guy who cooked bbq but loved to eat it. He's born and raised in Texas and he asked me where I was originally from. I told him Mississippi. He asked if I did a lot of chopped beef sammiches and I told him not really because I prefer pulled pork sammiches. He looked at me like I just put a turd in his mouth.
He was like "Oh my god you're kidding me?" I was like "Nooo, I'm not kidding. The further east you go from here the more you see pork and the less you see of beef BBQ." I asked him if he'd ever tried a pulled pork sammy and he said "No and don't want to. That doesn't even sound good." I told him it was pork, just like those ribs he liked so much that he wanted me to smoke for him and that I had some in the fridge I could heat up if he wanted to try it. He absolutely refused to try it and continued on to tell me that "chopped beef" was the "real bbq sammich" not pork. But I asked him "How do you know if you like or don't like something that you've never even tasted?" He just responded "Texas folks don't eat that stuff. Beef is BBQ around here."
So I let it go and asked him for my money to cover my cost in the meat and supplies to do his ribs, and sent him on his way. I just don't get the "regional" loyalty when it comes to bbq, especially to the point of boycotting even trying something from another region. The more I cook for different folks and the more I talk to different folks from different regions the more I see of this. Hell, it's food for crying out loud not your mother's reputation. :crazy: