The story of U.S. 301 can be told in several ways. Running from northeast to central Florida, from speed trap to speed trap, the highway is a path through Florida history, passing rivers, creeks, railroad tracks and trails where Seminole Indian Chief Alligator played his historic part in the Second Seminole War.
But the hundred miles of 301 from Coleman to Wimauma can also be described through taste – the taste of barbecue. U.S. 301 is Florida's tender inner thigh, its languorous curves alive with barbecue shacks, joints, trailers and stands. While Florida, like Texas, lies below the traditional "barbecue belt" of Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas, this potent peninsula throbs with the hot blood of those who practice their barbecue faith their way.
D. W. Soul Food Restaurant
2428 U.S. 301 S., Coleman, 352-748-3300
The approach to D. W. Soul on U. S. 301 is lined with oaks. Old and young oaks covered in fungus, mildew and tiny ferns. Oaks covered in that old parasite mistletoe, folk remedy for women's cramps. Oaks that play a key role in the tastes along this road.
A board painted white with red letters spelling out "BBQ" is the only indication you're about to enter the realm of legend. I've hit D. W. Soul Food numerous times road-tripping up to the Ocala National Forest. The worst days are the ones when it's closed because it has sold out… before noon.
I'm eaten up with lust over Cindy Key's pulled pork sandwich. Slathered with soft orange sauce, her pork is picked with such precision that the sauce achieves orgasmic dimensionality with each mouthful. The bun is really just a tease; it never makes it to your mouth, rather falling into sauce-soaked oblivion, staining hands and rendering the steering wheel a lethal weapon.
As with most barbecue stands, indoor seating at D.W. Soul Food is slim; it's housed in an augmented beige trailer. The main attraction is the pit barbecue, built over two decades ago by a barbecue man named Willett from Kentucky.
Key is an anomaly. She is an African-American multi-generational Florida native female pit boss, the sole proprietor of a barbecue shack. At 6 a.m. she can be found hauling oak into the pit, stoking up the fire until the grill screens glow cherry red.
So the sauce? "Honey, I'm not going to tell you that. It took me my whole life to get my daddy to tell me what was in my grandma's sauce."
I can tell you it is tomato-based. I can tell you it has lived in Florida decades longer than I have. And I can tell you that it's more than just some sauced-up meat, but a family tradition. A hard-won tradition, at that.
Susie Q'S
729 U.S. 301 S., Sumterville, 352-793-7874
People have long wrestled over what makes barbecue authentic. Wet. Dry. Rubbed. Sauced. Grilled. Indirect heat. Smoke. Pork. Beef. How long, how slow and how marinated. Then there is the mud-wrestle of regionalized styles, from the vinegar of the Carolinas and the brisket of Texas to the rubs of Memphis.
Frankly, I judge it barbecue by the smiling pink pig face on the sign.
Sumpterville's Susie Q's would be judged harshly by the pit bosses of the world. Proprietress Leslie Strickland's barbecue is made in a crockpot. A crockpot, liquid smoke and "canned sauce." Or so she claims. Barbecue people offer deceptively simple explanations. Her pork sandwich rivals any pit-cooked pork on U.S. 301.
The first bite into sandwich pork that's done right is an evolutionary déjà vu – like identifying a rattlesnake rattle from just being warned about it all of your life. The subtle crunch in Strickland's pork reveals a master pit boss at work, someone who knows how to include trace amounts of crackly skin and slight charred bits in her pulled/chopped meat.
If Strickland's sandwich is like an artifact from a repressed genetic memory, her pork and beans is utter pornography. Served in B cup-size side servings, it produces the same emotional effect as eating milk chocolate frosting. Rich burgundy in color, obviously loaded in various sugars, this is a side dish with the formidable power of a hug from your mother after too much time away from home.
George & Gladys' Bar-B-Que
19215 U.S. 301, Dade City, 352-567-6229
On the way from Susie Q's to family-owned 48-year-old George and Gladys' Bar-B-Que, fences follow the rolling hills with the undulations of an exotic serpent – a serpent that gives way to the uniform rust ribbons of railroad tracks. Back in the day, these tracks would have held the Orange Blossom Express.
The restaurant sports nine sets of mounted bullhorns, four largemouth bass, a stuffed mallard duck and a bracelet of boar snouts around a column, and it's across the road from a rather popular firearms salesman. While the AA cup-size sides here are nothing to get worked up about, I've nearly fought to the death for the last garbanzo in the three-bean salad. At $12.25 the combo plate is just right for sharing. White bread slices on the side are perfect for soaking, sopping and related things Emily Post would reprimand.
From the covered wagon out front to the plethora of Texa-cana objects, it is clear that the big yummy here is going to be the barbecued beef. Chopped down from brisket and cooked with a light but sweet sauce, this dish sends a clear message to the pork-centric barbecue snob.
Mike's Southern Classic BBQ
7117 U.S. 301 N., Tampa, 813-626-5222
From Dade City down to Tampa, the land gives way to Chinese buffets sandwiched by strip malls that finally ease back into hammocks of oaks, the lushness of Hillsborough State Park and pastures full of white-faced cows. A permanently startled-looking bunch of moos gives way to houses and the stark man-made beeline of Bypass Canal Park. The sign over the oasis of Mike's Southern BBQ announces a welcome and permanent $1 draft.
Calling Mike's an oasis isn't hype. This is an exotic place with a waterwheel pouring water into a well-kept fish pond full of fat, lazy koi. There's seating inside, outside and on the porch in between. A huge tiki hut rises up in a field to the left under two heavily moss-draped oaks. To the west, the broken and chopped remains of the oaks' brethren are stacked high against the firebox. Over it all, a simple red tin roof.
Mike's isn't just show. Here the beef is serious. No sauce. No rub. Just slow-smoked on oak.
The pork, rib and chicken get rubs, but the emphasis here is a dry barbecue that treats the meat like the centerfold and the sauce as a not so necessary dressing. A carefully worded table placard explains the pinkness of real barbecue's smoke ring to ease the blood fears of the barbecue virgin.
If a full stomach isn't enough of a souvenir, the $15 Mike's shirts that read "From Rooter to Tooter" are the sign of a true barbecue devotee.
Hog Wild Bar-B-Q
10715 U.S. 301 S., Riverview, 813-629-4138
Through the grasping tendrils of the manic growth that is Brandon, U.S. 301 cuts straight through strip malls over the black beauty of the Alafia River past feed stores interlaced with the broken ground of new development, where the road narrows and eases between trailer parks.
Here in Riverview I look out for the smiling pink pig cutout with "Open" on its porcine belly.
"BBQ Bob Rauchmiller," owner of Hog Wild Bar-B-Q, is not only one of the most lively purveyors of slow-cooked pig and foul, he's also a scholar of barbecue history. He picked up his stand from a man who had practiced the vinegar and mustard Carolina method. Rauchmiller calls his contribution to the craft Riverview BBQ.
His method: a dry marinade, followed by three and a half hours of persistent 225 degree heat from a mix of charcoal and oak. After cutting up the meat, he adds his sauce.
"It is ketchup-based with some brown sugar," he says, in the fashion I've begun not to trust. The oral tradition surrounding barbecue seems to be oversimplification.
When you order at his trailer, you order from an unused shuffleboard court with a pig totem to your right. I couldn't resist the Sloppy Pig, a Memphis-influenced mix of chopped pork and coleslaw. You can't drive down the road eating this sauce-soused behemoth. Rauchmiller tried a barbecue pork burrito to help out drivers who pig out and drive, but it simply didn't work.
Perhaps the larger part of barbecue craving is the unrepentant mess of it all.
El Nortena Tacqueria @ The Little Store
18130 U.S. 301 S., Wimauma, 813-633-8327
When I tell Rauchmiller I'm headed for Wimauma to the El Nortena Tacqueria for barbacoa, he asks if it's goat or cow head. Apparently there's a method of barbecue in Brownsville, Texas, where entire heads of livestock are cooked slow in open pits.
Barbecue scholar that he is, Rauchmiller turned out to be at least part right.
From here U.S. 301 threads past yards that morph from azalea landscaping to cactus gardens. Stopping at an Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine on the left, in front of a cathedral that honors her name, I pause to consider the end of my journey. The shrine has many offerings, including work gloves, a ball of white string, a potted begonia, assorted flowers (some silk with plastic tears) and Ziploc bags of food.
The shrine honors an apparition of the Virgin Mary that appeared in Mexico in simple Indian dress speaking the language of commoners. It wasn't a message of doom that she delivered but one of compassion, companionship and consolation.
Close by the El Norteno Tacqueria at the Little Store in Wimauma is a canoe rental place on Little Manatee River. The notable landmark is a canoe-shaped sign that looks like a Viagra advertisement.
The El Norteno Tacqueria is an aqua and white trailer under a metal shelter that houses four tables, each with a paper towel roll centerpiece. Inside is one cheerful man who speaks as much English as I do Spanish. The kitchen and grill are spotless. A big bowl is full of carefully separated cilantro. To the right, a cutting board with a single onion and lime.
Barbacoa is served on a freshly made corn taco. The consistency of an authentic taco versus a Taco Bell taco is that of a home fry versus a potato chip. The lacy beef strip is pulled and tender. It is cachete, long-cooked meat from the cheeks of a cow's head. Served up on a tiny taco with grilled onions and sprinkles of cilantro, the barbacoa should be slightly juiced with a lime squeeze and dipped into fresh, hot chile verde sauce.
This is road barbecue at its finest. Portable. Fresh. Simple. The joy of driving while intoxicated with life itself.
At the end of the 100 miles, it is clear that barbecue is a language. A personalized but shared adventure for artists, dabblers, devotees, purists and saints. If I had to say what Florida barbecue is, I'd answer that it's all of us – all the roads that brought us here and all the roads we travel together.
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.