In the Southwest, Native peoples cooked in outdoor pit ovens for thousands of years. Archaeologists have excavated remnants of agave, prickly pear cactus and bighorn sheep from these roasting pits. Barbecue gets its name from the Spanish word barbacoa, which Columbus’ crew used to describe cooking over a wood frame that they saw upon landing in the Caribbean. “The word didn’t exist until old Europe came to the New World and encountered the Americas and started appropriating Indigenous language and cooking tech- niques,” Miller says. Enslaved Africans brought to the Americas had their own barbecuing tradi- tions, but more notably, Miller writes in “Black Smoke,” they brought knowledge of spices, seasoning and saucing. That skill met Indigenous cooking. In antebellum America, barbecues were manned by Black pitmasters. Immigration and the confluence of cultures evolved barbecue in the Southwest. By the late 1800s, cooks in the region wrapped large hunks of beef in moistened burlap and placed them in earth ovens. The technique was known as Spanish barbecue, cowboy barbecue or Western barbecue, erasing the connection to its Indigenous roots. That style of barbecue started falling out of favor in the 1930s, Miller says, but endures today as barbacoa. Distinctive cooking styles took off throughout Texas and in Kansas City and Memphis, big cities ready to mythologize and evangelize tooth- some but tender, saucy ribs and juicy brisket with mahogany smoke rings. Arizona, still a calf in the herd of our United States, was admitted to the union in 1912 with just 217,000 residents — smaller at that time than Kansas City alone. Sparsely populated Arizona barely got in on the Great Migration, a 60-year period that saw about 5 million Black Americans move out of the South during Jim Crow. Most headed north, not to the Southwest. Between 1910 and 1970, Arizona’s Black population increased from 2,000 to about 54,000. Today, Arizona’s Black population accounts for less than 6% of the state’s residents. America was growing, and Black Americans were on the move. But Arizona didn’t begin to truly blossom until cheap air conditioners helped to spur a migration boom. That brought more dining demand writ large. In the early days of the Valley’s dining scene, barbecue showed up as the occasional dish at steakhouses or taquerias. Without a dedicated focus on barbecue, the results weren’t always astounding, but they began to offer a reference point. Places promising new residents a taste of their old home followed the influx of new people: East Coast red sauce joints. Chicago-style pizzerias. Barbecue. Those smokehouses are what Miller calls “transplant barbecue,” and it’s common in places that found their footing as cities later in the country’s history. Arizona was starting to have its own barbecue identity, at long last. But in those early days, it was just an imitation of what you’d find further east. PUTTING BARBECUE FRONT AND CENTER Joe Berman, the general manager of Scottsdale eatery The Thumb, can rattle off bygone Valley barbecue joints with reverence. As a kid, he dove into massive beef ribs amid the cowboy camp and sawdust- covered floors of Bill Johnson’s Big Apple. When he got older, he sought out no-frills strip mall smoke- houses like A & J Chicago- Style Bar-B-Q. He talks quickly across one of The Thumb’s long community tables. A mounted red neon light casts a glow into his wide-rimmed black frames while he remi- nisces about the ribs from Bill Johnson’s. “I just remember the sauce, the quality of the meat, the mouth pull,” he says. “You’re taking it off the bone, but it’s not falling off the bone. You’re not chewing forever … you don’t have sauce all over your face, you have sauce on your fingers.” Before Berman ever dreamed of running the show of the quirky north Scottsdale road stop that is equal parts gas station, gift shop and Food Network-famous barbecue pit, it seems he ate at every place in town. He found that those early mom-and-pop shops helped people develop a taste for barbecue. The Thumb opened in 2012, and just like every other barbecue crew in town, it credits Honey Bear’s BBQ as a pioneer. Founder and pitmaster Mark Smith laid “stepping stones to where we are today,” Berman says. Before he moved to Phoenix from Iowa, Smith spent his childhood summers at family reunions in Tennessee. He learned by watching his uncles stay up all night tending a pit with whole hogs and sides of beef. Smith’s mother and grandmother taught him how to smoke chicken and ribs and mix tangy vinegar-based sauces. When he arrived in Phoenix at 18, he saw an opportunity. “I saw there was only one barbecue restaurant, and that was Grumpy John’s up in Scottsdale,” Smith recalls while sitting in a curved wood booth in Honey Bear’s red-and-corrugated metal-clad dining room. “I said, ‘I can do this.’” For two years before he and founding business partner Gary Clark opened Honey Bear’s, they hosted barbecue parties from their apartment. Their guests paid $10 to dine on ribs and chicken with scoops of potato salad and coleslaw. Smith and Clark opened their smoke- house in 1986 on Van Buren and 50th streets, 12 blocks east of Bill Johnson’s and just north of Phoenix’s historic stockyards. The cattle were gone by then. “The neigh- borhood was a different kind of neighbor- hood,” Smith says. “You might see anything on Van Buren.” In its 40 years, the restaurant received local accolades and the distinction of catering to the cast and crew during the filming of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Smith’s team has nearly 100 years of experience working together in the kitchen and around the horseshoe of smokers arranged on a back patio. Smith, who is now 64, is still in the restaurant every day, hitting ribs with the same vinegar basting sauce he learned in Tennessee and greeting customers. Those have included future pitmasters like Scott Holmes, another link in an Arizona tradi- tion that was starting to catch on. RAISING THE TEMPERATURE Before Holmes and his wife, Bekke, would redefine the Valley’s barbecue scene with their Central Texas-centric Little Miss BBQ, he was a 21-year-old culinary school student with a routine. Every Monday, Holmes stopped into Honey Bear’s for “fantastic” smoked wings and sweet potato pie. Though Holmes loved to cook, no single cuisine spoke to him. He didn’t last long at his kitchen gig at Havana Cafe. So he began a winding career. Holmes shilled medical supplies. He remediated buildings riddled with asbestos, mold and lead. He kept wandering. A fateful trip to Texas in 2007 pointed Holmes to his true calling. Sitting in Little Miss BBQ’s original Phoenix location on University Drive, his eyes light up as he sets the scene. The Tempe native made a trip to Texas to meet Bekke’s parents, who promptly whisked the young couple to The Salt Lick BBQ outside of Austin. It was unlike anything Holmes had experienced. His childhood barbecue ideal was ribs from the Americana chain Tony Roma’s. Pulling up, he saw a couple of low-slung limestone buildings surrounded by oak trees. People at picnic tables sipped on bring-your-own beers. “You walk in, and they have this big round pit, and there’s just splits of wood burning underneath this big grate,” he says. “They have briskets on there, ribs, sausages hanging down. I thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world.” Driving around Texas, Holmes noticed smokers softly billowing smoke from what seemed like every third house. People there go out for barbecue with the same devotion they have for Sunday service. “It’s just a different culture,” he says, “and we don’t have that culture.” That hasn’t stopped Holmes from trying to build it. The trip sparked the couple’s years-long quest to master barbecue, first for themselves, then at a competition level, and finally by opening their own restaurant in 2014. “I love the science of it. I love the chal- lenge of it. I love trying to figure it out, the seasoning, how it reacts in the smoker, how it breaks down,” Holmes says. “All that stuff, I can geek out on. I go to bed thinking about this stuff.” Little Miss pays homage to the smoke- houses of Central Texas. As in the Lone Star State, diners line up, with some >> p 14 Mark Smith drew from family barbecue traditions in Tennessee for Honey Bear’s BBQ recipes. (Sara Crocker) The Thumb general manager Joe Berman and chef Michael Magda. (Sara Crocker) Little Miss BBQ is known for its brisket but serves a bounty of pulled pork, ribs, pork belly and turkey. (Sara Crocker) Little Miss BBQ owner Scott Holmes. (Sara Crocker)
