Barbecue

It's a beauty, all right, several thousand dollars worth of American barbecue luxury. All that stainless steel gleaming beneath a suburban sky, enough room under the hood to grill a couple of racks of lamb and the side burner for some nice peppers and onions, with steel shelves for sauces, marinade, plates of burgers. On the stage it's a Volkswagen-sized metaphor for life after drugs and rock and roll, a marker of roads not taken.A few years ago, playwright/ actor Eric Bogosian spotted a barbecue grill much like it in a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.

If you spend weekends with Jonny O the BBQ Hobo, you learn things about barbecue.You learn that if you want to eat a 97-pound pig for Sunday supper you start cooking it by Saturday noon. You learn that a good way to get hickory wood, one of the required fuels of authentic barbecue, is to have a friend in the excavating business. He'll keep you in hickory stumps if you cook a few pigs for him.You learn that when you're eating authentic barbecued chicken, you do not get alarmed if the meat is red. It's a sign that the chicken has been smoked, not that it's under-cooked.

California has long been the unrivaled leader in outlandish retail concepts, such as 24-hour, drive-through nail salon-video stores. But a Baltimore stalwart just might put those combos to shame. Cafe Tattoo is a music club cum barbecue joint cum tattoo parlor. The music is hit-and-miss and we have no criteria for judging the tattoos, but the barbecue merits taking the drive out Belair Road.Technically, the tattoo parlor is upstairs from the dark, cavernous bar presided over by its chatty owner, Rick Catalano.

Who says barbecuing has to be routine? It's anything but, if you use a barbecue in the shape of a big pink pig.Manufactured by Traeger Products in Mount Angel, Ore., it's made of solid steel with a hard, heat-resistant coating that keeps its color when properly cared for. It's large enough to cook two 20-pound turkeys at the same time and works as a barbecue, convection oven or smoker, depending on how you set its high-tech controls.If used properly, it can cook without any emissions at all, and its safety features prevent flare-ups or explosions.

Around here, brisket is often pickled and turned into a corned beef or pastrami sandwich. But there is another brisket. One that might be described as corned beef's country-western cousin. Out West, this same cut of beef is treated far differently than in these parts. It is rubbed with seasoning, cooked slowly over a wood fire, sliced against the grain, and served as a sensational supper.Tom Mackin is familiar with the joy of smoked brown brisket. About once a year, Mackin, a transplanted Texan now living outside Baltimore in Howard County cooks about 50 briskets at a summer picnic for parishioners of Christ Church Episcopal in Columbia.

The flavor of pork barbecue, North Carolina style, brings much praise from those who responded to the request made by Bonnie R. Hull of Williamsport, who wrote, "This barbecue is not in a red or tomato-type sauce. It seems to be in its own juices with a slight sweet-sour flavor and served on a soft roll with slaw on top and absolutely delicious. In North Carolina, this is probably open-pit cooked and so could not be re-created exactly at home."Kay P. Bromley of Berlin sent in the recipe selected by our tester, Chef Gilles Syglowski.

It's been voted "Baltimore's Best" for its shredded pork barbecue sauce. But to locals, Ma's Kettle in Savage is the place to go for talk."Hell is six inches of ice covering the land," waitress Metta Lash says to no one in particular.It's the kind of free-flowing talk that characterizes the old restaurant off Baltimore Street across from Savage Guilford Road."It's a slice of home in an otherwise inhuman world," says Pete Dykstra, a Crownsville resident who stops in at least twice a week."People talk to each other here," he said.

A friend from the West Coast called the other day and wanted me to send her some of my favorite barbecue recipes. It was easy for me to come up with recipes for grilled chicken and fish. Basically what I do with chicken and most fish is to marinate them in a solution of citrus juice that has been joined with garlic, olive oil and wine.Coming up with a recipe for barbecuing pork was also easy. I have been barbecuing pork a long time, but did not know until recently that pork cooking was one of the first activities of civilized man.Archaeologists digging in Turkey uncovered this fact recently when they found 10,000-year-old pig bones in the the ruins of a village.

Ko Ryeo Korean Japanese Restaurant, 321 York Rd., Towson, (410) 823-6650. Open every day for lunch and dinner. Major credit cards. No-smoking area: yes. Wheelchair-accessible: yes. Prices: appetizers, $4.95-$7.95; entrees, $7.95-$28.95.My introduction to Korean food came many years ago at the Seoul, which was then the restaurant in the Carlyle Apartments on University Parkway. (It later moved to Towson.) The owners were Korean, but most of the dishes on the menu were Chinese. You could get a Korean beef dish, though, and with it came a dish of pickled cabbage, called kim chee, which we turned up our noses at. (It was like being served a hot dog and assuming that was all there was to Texas barbecue.

It was raining. The kids were hollering about their homework. The wind shook the dogwood tree, flinging down leaves and a warning that fall was on its way. Nevertheless, I planted myself over the barbecue cooker and grilled summer vegetables.Whole green peppers, onion halves, and slices of eggplant sizzled over the coals. Eventually they were sprinkled with olive oil and became a tossed, smoky, side dish to some grilled chicken wings, soaked in a peppery barbecue sauce.I grilled supper for several reasons.

Do people up here in pit-beef country fight over what makes good barbecue? I know many people have strong opinions about barbecue, but often as not, they turn out to be from one of the barbecuing pilgrimage sites like Memphis or the Carolinas, where people will go on about it. I kind of like that we're more relaxed about it here. It leaves the door open for more upstart businesses and more variations on the theme. Which brings us to Harbor Que (rhymes with "barbecue"), which opened around Memorial Day in a free-standing porch-front place on Lawrence Street where Alladin's Cafe used to be. It's just off Fort Avenue, along the eastern boundary of the Riverside neighborhood.

On Nov. 19, 1884, a large crowd of Democrats gathered for the "Barbecue at Belair," celebrating the presidential election of Grover Cleveland. The barbecue was threatened by persistent rains, but 400 to 500 people came to the fairgrounds. Everyone was well fed, and "many of them after polishing the bones carried them home as souvenirs of the first democratic barbecue. ... After the feasting was over the crowd was called to order in the main exhibition hall and addressed by Misters Thomas C. Weeks, Herman Stump and J.T.C.

What is it about barbecue, so that even successful restaurateurs are drawn to opening their own barbecue joints? We saw it in Baltimore with Michael Marx and Rub in South Baltimore. An even more surprising example is Michael Tauraso and his new Black Hog BBQ & Bar (118 S. Market St., 240-436-6080) in Frederick. Tauraso is a name familiar to Baltimore foodies. In its day, Tauraso's, an Italian restaurant, was Frederick's premier fine-dining spot. After he sold it, Michael Tauraso went on to open - and also eventually sell - Luke's, an upscale pizzeria.

Chris Capell has a target on his back. For the past two years, he has competed and won the barbecue competition in Bel Air. Now the heat is really on, he said. "Winning once is a big deal, but winning twice is really unusual. Now everyone wants to beat the Dizzy Pig team," said Capell, 46, of Fairfax, Va. "I think all eyes are going to be on us, to see what we're going to do this year." Started six years ago, the competition - called the Maryland BBQ Bash - is a barbecue street festival that brings in about 20,000 people each year, said coordinator Craig Ward of Bel Air. This year about 49 teams from the Mid-Atlantic area will descend upon downtown Bel Air, where the event will be held Friday and Saturday.

My wife and I are planning to have friends over for a barbecue. I plan on barbecuing some steaks, chicken pieces and shrimp. I'd like to know more about dry rubs for barbecue. How do you use them correctly, and are they better than using a marinade? Also, should I use different dry rubs for each item? It is our opinion that it is better to use a dry rub instead of a marinade for grilled food. Let's break down the real purpose of each. A marinade basically has two functions. One is to tenderize a tough piece of meat.

Barbecued anything definitely gives apple pie a run for its money in the competition for all-American food. More than 17 million barbecues were sold in 2006, according to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association, and 81 percent of Americans own a barbecue. More than half grill year-round, and 47 percent barbecue at least twice weekly in the summer months. The truth is, pretty much anything tastes better hot off the grill. It's something about the flames, the smoke, the tongs, the-meat-on-metal sizzle that no broiler or fry pan can reproduce.

William Ernest Hicks, who sold his homemade pork barbecue to Southwest Baltimore workers from a blue food wagon for a quarter-century, died of dementia Nov. 21 at his Lochearn home. He was 94. Born and raised in Kingstree, S.C., he had only a sixth-grade education but was accomplished in adding numbers in his head, his family said. He moved to Baltimore about 70 years ago, and as a young man worked as a short-order cook. He became a tire mechanic at the W.T. Cowan trucking company on Oldham Street, and retired there at the age of 55 - but only to start his own business.

You say you're a little tired of "unique" cuisines offered at various restaurants downtown? Good ol' American is what you're in the mood for now? Then you might want to check out a new eatery on North Charles Street. Milton's Grill has just opened on Charles Street between Mulberry and Pleasant streets, in the space formerly occupied by Cangialosi's. Brothers and owners Corey Barnes and Shawn Peterson named it after their late grandfather Milton Barnes, who was a cook in the military.

Winter does not stop a serious smoker. You put on a coat, go outside and confront the elements. That is what I did recently on a brisk February afternoon as I ministered to a 5-pound beef brisket on my backyard kettle cooker. The air smelled like smoke, and so did I. Hickory smoke, to be exact. That was the type of water-soaked wood I had tossed onto the ashy charcoal briquettes, part of the process cookbook author Steven Raichlen refers to as "smoke-cooking." The idea is that through this slow, low-heat cooking process, meat is transformed into tender morsels, almost like edible smoke.

Francis E. Gretz, who founded and operated a celebrated Southeast Baltimore drive-in restaurant, died of heart disease Thursday at his Dundalk home. He was 87. Mr. Gretz, the proprietor of the landmark Circle Drive-In, was born in Scottdale, Pa., and was raised by his maternal grandparents after an influenza epidemic claimed his parents. Family members said that he settled in Baltimore in 1929 to live with relatives who had already followed a migration of people from western Pennsylvania to work at the Bethlehem Steel Company's Sparrows Point plant.