Barry Sorkin, the owner and operator of Smoque BBQ started his Chicago restaurant seven years ago. At that time there were only a handful of barbeque restaurants that did the slow smoke, oven barbecue style.
“We’ve always had our rib joints here, and I think people just accepted that as what is barbecue,” Sorkin says. “I think Chicago thought it was a barbecue town until it got some new places that came along and did what I would call true, regional, American barbecue.”
Twin Anchors, located on N. Sedgwick Street, is in its 82nd year of business and is the fourth–oldest continuously operating restaurant in Chicago.
Chicago-style barbecue, as described by co-owner Paul Tuzi, doesn’t involve smoking the meat. Because of this, Tuzi says that some people wouldn’t even call this barbecue.
“We’ve been doing this a long time – longer than most – so we don’t feel that we have to be concerned if we’re not fitting somebody else’s exact definition,” Tuzi says.
Since the 1930s, Twin Anchors has been slow-cooking its meat for seven hours and then putting it onto the grill with one of the three barbecue sauces. Newer restaurants like Smoque BBQ are basing their barbecue off the Southern scene.
Before Sorkin opened Smoque BBQ he traveled to Kansas City, Memphis and Austin. Sorkin used his experiences in those cities to inspire the flavors in his restaurant, while adding his own spin to the process. For instance, Sorkin says, his brisket is inspired by what he saw in Austin. The emergence of this smoking style in Chicago has led to even more barbecue restaurants.
“Once they got a taste of that, people just kind of ran with it,” Sorkin says.
But Gary Wiviott, author of Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons and pitmaster at Chicago’s Barn & Com- pany, has a different theory altogether about what constitutes Chicago barbecue.
For Wiviott, there are three distinct styles of barbecue in Chicago.
First is Twin Anchors’ style, called “tavern style,” which does not have any interaction between woodsmoke and meat. According to Wiviott, this lack of interaction means it is not actual barbecue.
“Just because something has barbecue sauce on it,” he says, “doesn’t mean that it’s barbecue.”
Second, Smoque BBQ and Barn & Company use “urban barbecue,” where the meat is cooked on commercial smokers with woodsmoke. Wiviott says this type of barbecue is a little more commercialized.
“There certainly may be some established places that smoke their barbecue, and it does seem most of the newer places do,” Tuzi says. “It is always worth noting that there are numerous styles of barbecue, each with passionate followings.”
Then, there’s the third and final style. Common in the South Side and West Side, this style uses aquarium smokers, and the meat interacts with heat, smoke and fire.
“To me, that’s Chicago barbecue,” Wiviott says. “People have been cooking since the 40’s that style of barbecue in Chicago.”
Both Sorkin and Tuzi are confident in the product they put out.
“I think that one of the great things about barbecue is that everybody does it a little bit different,” Sorkin says.