The plan was to go home today, but the weather put the kibosh on that. So, since finding silver linings has been something I've had a lot of practice with lately, I thought, "Hey, that'll give me a chance to try that barbecue shack I drove past the other day!”
Smokin’ Joe’s serves out of a trailer, and has a covered patio with some picnic tables as their dining room. They’re on the same lot as (and affiliated with?) Rick’s Custom Meats, so I figured they might know something about meat.
Even as frigid as it was by Florida standards (I did not have any fear that they’d be turning the fryer off early to keep temperatures down in the trailer, even if my neighbors back home would probably kill for 60 degrees and windy), there was a line five people deep when I got there. Most places near my Mom’s house, that’s not too surprising— Bloomingdale has gotten huge and is almost twice as densely settled as when I moved out in 1990. However, I was down in Pinecrest, FL, across the street from an orange grove. This isn’t the brass-and-wood restaurants and electronics stores section of the county. This is strawberry patches and feed stores. I took a line like that on a day like today in this area as a good omen.
The three people directly in front of me ordered the “Starr Special”, which was chopped pork served over french fries, and you could opt for cheese and peppers as well. When I got in line, I was thinking pork sandwich, but I’ve learned over the years that one should never try to shoehorn a barbecue shack into his own vision: If the locals like the Starr Special, chances are, that’s what this place does well. So that’s what I ordered. Besides, I was probably going to order fries with my pork anyhow.
Now, the purist might note that I said “chopped” instead of “pulled” pork. If that purist had looked into their smokehouse (which, being Florida, was more of a smoke-screen-porch), he’d have seen that they were using a propane-fired smoker, which may have sent him running away in horror. He might have shuddered at his smoked meat being served over a pile of fries. I’m not a purist. If it’s tasty barbecue, I don’t mind chopped instead of pulled. If I can only taste the hickory they smoked it with, I don’t care if they used propane to keep the smoker box at the right temperature.
This was good barbecue. I’d picked their traditional and their sweet sauce and put some in the corners of the to-go container, but I never once wound up dredging my tasty, moist pork through it, that sauce wound up being solely for the fries. When Stephen and I get back into town in a week or so, we'll come back down here. It's definitely worth going back.
The story doesn’t end there, though. As I was polishing off my fries, I heard, “I saw your hat and your ring. What year did you get out?” I looked up and there’s a guy in a black Georgia Tech jacket. We chatted a bit, and then he said, “If you haven’t been in the store yet, you should take a look. They sell all sorts of old-time sodas there.”
Which they did— but that wasn’t the real score. The meat market had a deli counter, and that deli counter’s soup of the day was venison chili. Honestly, even though I hadn’t had breakfast, I really didn’t need anything else after the huge pile of fries and pork and cheese and peppers, but I couldn’t resist; I took a small chili back to the truck.
It was every bit as good as the stuff from the trailer next door. I have a vague recollection of a chocolate-cherry soda I had with it, but the chili was so good that anything that went with it is very hazy in my mind.I'll be back next time I'm down here. And I'll poke my head into the butcher shop to see what the soup of the day is at the deli counter before I order my pork outside...
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