Friday, October 8, 2010

Santa Maria-style BBQ

I'm going riding tomorrow and have a few screws loose* so I have to go work on my motorcycle a little.

*If there was ever a setup line...run with it!

I'll leave ya with this article in the EssEffChron that'll make yer mouth water. You carnivores, that is.

I believe I've posted before on the culinary delights in the area Mrs. G is from. The article is about the BBQ style there and covers several restaurants I've been to.

Enjoy. Caution: attach drool bucket before clicking on the link to avoid possible fireworks display from your keyboard!

We were just coming down from the bliss of our first bites of a barbecued fillet, jacketed with a crisp, microscopic crust of seared seasoning, when our waitress came by with the "how is everything" checkup. I declared it was just possibly the best steak I'd ever tasted, adding that I couldn't understand the rest of the country's obsession with barbecue sauce.

"Sauce?" She froze, a blank look on her face, as if the word were in Swahili.

"Where I come from, barbecue is all about the sauce," I said.

"Oh! I've never had ..." her voice trailed off as if she were trying to imagine a strange world in which barbecue was anything other than Santa Maria style.

Early rancheros who settled the Santa Maria Valley had no leisure to fuss with sauce. Their cowboy barbecue was pure: Cut off the best slab of meat you could find, season it and cook it to perfection over a red-oak fire. Serve it with a little salsa, a helping of the small, firm pinquito beans grown only in this valley, and some grilled French bread. Now you have the original California cuisine.

There you have it. 'California cuisine' ain't about overpriced small quantities of artfully arranged rabbit food on square plates.

From Guadalupe, it's a 15-minute drive through farm fields and up a coastal bluff to Nipomo, where Dorothea Lange took one of the most famous Great Depression photos, a portrait of a destitute pea picker titled "Migrant Mother."

This is also where Ralph "Jocko" Knotts turned one end of his service station into a saloon during Prohibition, later adding slot machines and a cardroom for a while. His renegade spirit lives on at Jocko's Restaurant, which moved to its current location in 1962 and is now run by Jocko's descendants.

Jocko's and The Hitching Post, also mentioned in the article, are the Gold Standard for the area's cuisine.

Again, enjoy.

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