Full-Flavored Meat

Where’s the Beef?

What are you most excited about this upcoming year?
Sourcing local meat. Preparing barbecue everyday means that we cook with a lot of meat at the Roadhouse and always have used really good stuff like Niman Ranch and chickens from the Amish farmers in Indiana. As time goes on, we have opportunities to develop our connections to the community, and it has become more and more important to contribute to our community in any and every way possible. We’re working hard to create change in our own small piece of the food system. Finding local meat sources means that we’re looking for producers whose passion matches our own. We look for individuals who have the ability to produce really full-flavored meat. We work with them to select the breeds–old breeds–whose flavor profile satisfies our specifications. We then look to ensure that they are fed a natural diet and raised in a sustainable and healthy manner.

The Search for the Imperfect Burger

It’s a new thing for me, this interest in imperfection. It just sort of happened. It’s strange how stuff can come together like that sometimes; fate finds funny ways of furnishing the material I need to make mental moves forward: things that unexpectedly open intellectual and emotional doors, stuff that helps me stay away from the stagnation of sitting with the status quo for too long. In this case it was a funny bit of nonfiction; burgers inserted themselves, unexpectedly, into the writing of a business book. One of the best things for me about writing as I get to do it here is that I move very freely from food to business and back again. Usually I have at least one essay on each in the works at the same time. I like that a lot—I live the food and the business work every day. And not that many people get to go from mission statements to wild mushrooms the way I do.

Biscuits and Chocolate (with Bacon) Gravy

I think the already really good American brunch at the Roadhouse got one step better when this one went on the menu. Of course it’s gonna take two years before people are tuned into this dish, but by then it’s going to be a signature item—unless you’re one of the few folks in Ann Arbor who grew up in Appalachia it’s going to sound strange but it’s a very tasty way to start your day. It’s “gravy” made with bacon and cocoa and milk, generously ladled over homemade buttermilk biscuits. You really did read that right—bacon and cocoa combined into one seriously good sauce ladled over those very nice homemade biscuits. I know this is one of the strangest sounding but, for me, most exciting things on our new food front.

Canadian Peameal Bacon

Canadian Bacon is a pickled eye of pork loin, and, seemingly has its origins in the work of Wiltshiremen who came over to Canada. Compared to American bacon, it’s: a) a different cut (a lot leaner than American bacons, which are made from pork belly), b) cured in a wet brine, c) not smoked, d) rolled in cornmeal.

South Carolina Mustard Barbecue at the Roadhouse

In what I’ve come to realize is pretty much a lifelong exploration of this country’s traditional barbecue styles at the RH, I wanted to let you all know that there’s a pair of really good ones on the specials list this week through Thursday. Both have been really well received so I wouldn’t be shocked to see them making more appearances down the road. But for the moment you have a few days to get over there and take a taste of two of the lesser known American barbecue traditions.