Thanks for the story. Did he seem to be drawing in plenty of customers? Besides the lamb, any other local favorites on the menu for those who aren't in to traditional BBQ?
There was a constant flow of clients, and some take-out. To me, for a Thursday night it was OK. I'm pretty sure if I went there for lunch, it would be very busy with the sandwicch menu. There is an upstairs room that is open on weekends, and I believe it will be opened any time things get busy. The restaurant only opened in September last year so there is a bit of work to do in getting the name out there.
As far as "local stuff", no there is nothing really as Lance appears to be staying true as possible to Southern BBQ standards. This does cause a few problems he admitted to me. As the first "REAL" BBQ place in town, naturally excluding such places as TGI Fridays and Pizza Shops telling you they cook ribs...(Yuk), Lance is right at the coal face / cutting edge of trying to educate clients and moderate expectations, while trying not to deviate from the passion of real BBQ. It's a hard job and I can see that.
One of his main issues is that Australians don't understand "slow" and they wont accept that you can run out of items on the menu. They don't get that ribs take 6 hours... if you run out of items here, it will mean a nasty review in the papers, blogs etc... In the US, in a reall BBQ joint, it is accepted that you can run out if you are late in for dinner. You understand that menu items get crossed off the list and then you have to order something else. Not here.
What that means is that Lance has to stagger cooking in smaller batches and has to hold food for longer than he would like, but he has no choice. He knows that this will always effect the quality of the end product, but quite frankly, it is still that much better than anything else out there by far. He knows there is nothing better than "right off the smoker" but in a restaurant environment in Australia, it just can't be done.
There's no other Southern style food on the menu though to get him by, but I am sure that is going to come. No buttermilk fried chicken, no chicken fried steak, no Mac and Cheese, No beans etc. In the back, there is a commercial kitchen well fitted out, so the possibilities are there. I'm sure its just a matter of time, and when that happens, there may be less of a drain on the BBQ, but now I'm just guessing...
Cheers!
Bill
