{"id":502,"date":"2016-04-26T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/?p=502"},"modified":"2016-04-26T07:00:31","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T12:00:31","slug":"ibetihd-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/ibetihd-tennessee\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Been Everywhere & Then I Had Dinner, Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

IBE&TIHD<\/a>, Tennessee Edition<\/h2>\n

By Jessica Conoley<\/p>\n

For this dinner you\u2019ll need a little backstory. 1) I am from Kansas City. 2) Kansas City invented real barbecue. 3) I love barbecue. 4) The rest of the world makes very delicious meats\u2014sometimes they call them barbecue, and they are wrong but to be polite I don\u2019t tell them when I eat it.<\/p>\n

Now lets get to the road-trip part. I had driven to the southeast corner of Missouri to meet my cousin, Glen, and his wife, Linda, for the Tennessee adventure. Glen\u2019s really my mom\u2019s cousin, so he\u2019s got four decades on me\u2014but if you want to go on a road trip with someone, he makes the top three list for sure. He does all the driving, doesn\u2019t care if you take a wrong turn, and he tells the best stories\u2014ever. Serious face, stories that make you laugh and cry and say \u201cno way!\u201d and the real kick in the face is they\u2019re true. (He\u2019s actually one of the reasons I started writing; I thought somebody should write his biography and thought I\u2019d take a stab at it. Then I realized I was too lazy to do the research about what kind of cigarettes people smoked in 1963 and moved on to straight up fantasy.)<\/p>\n

Our plan is to eat in Dyersburg, TN because my Grandpa grew up not too far from there. Glen\u2019s going to show me the town where Grandpa was born, and we\u2019ll traipse around a graveyard. Somewhere the plan went one-hundred-miles awry and we ended up headed to Memphis instead. About forty-five minutes outside of town it hits me\u2014I have entered the mythical and magical threshold of the hallowed Tops Bar-B-Q.<\/a><\/p>\n

For half a decade my boyfriend, and his brothers, and his dad, and everyone I\u2019ve ever met who has anything to do with the lot of them, has spun me the tale of Tops based out of Memphis. They speak of Tops with reverence and surety; letting the world know Tops is paramount\u2014the standard to which all other smoked meats shall be compared.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1:19 pm on Sunday March 13, 2016 and I face the dilemma to tell my boyfriend<\/em> or not to tell<\/em>? Part of me thinks it\u2019s cruel to eat there without him, but really if I have the opportunity I surely shouldn\u2019t waste it. I grab my phone and text him: Let\u2019s say, hypothetically, we were lost and ended up in Memphis eating at Tops. What should I order?<\/em><\/p>\n

We cross over the Mississippi river, once, twice, and on third-times-a-charm land at the exit for Beale Street.<\/a> Glen steers us down the heavily populated block of merriment, where it is clear we will have to walk a mile to get to any restaurant. I suggest we try out Tops. I know there are a couple of locations and one shouldn\u2019t be too far from us. Glen and Linda are game, so I ask my robot phone to lead us there.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sitting at a stop light when Linda says, \u201cThere\u2019s Sun Studios.<\/a>\u201d On the other side of the intersection is a small brick-faced building with the letters S-U-N arched over the door. Glen and Linda tell me that\u2019s the very studio where Johnny Cash<\/a>, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a whole slew of others got their start. And I\u2019m happy we got lost, and ended up on the doorstep of the very place Johnny Cash got his start. The whole reason this IBE&TIHD project exists is because of the I\u2019ve Been Everywhere song<\/a> that Johnny Cash recorded. We couldn\u2019t have planned it any better. The light turns green and we continue on to our real mission.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve just pulled into the parking lot when a text message dings in: 2:30 p.m. Chopped pork sandwich and fries.<\/em> And then order a second. I cruelly respond with a photo of the Tops sign and we head inside. \"Tops

It\u2019s an unassuming place. You order at the counter, and there\u2019s a line half-a-dozen people deep, which is impressive because it\u2019s well after the lunch hour. Booths cram together in the back of the restaurant. I tell Linda what we\u2019re supposed to order and we translate my text to mean the \u201cRegular Pork Shoulder\u201d sandwich. All three of us get the sandwich with fries; I order beans while Glen and Linda get the coleslaw.<\/p>\n

Our tray is laden with wax paper wrapped sandwiches, crinkle fries, and Styrofoam rounds of beans and slaw. I divvy out our supper and take the plastic cover off my beans. Baked beans, but not the doctored up variety I know. I look for chunks of roasted meat, or onions, or anther color of bean but all there is is red kidney beans with the syrupy goo that is the basis of every scoop of baked beans I\u2019ve ever had. They\u2019re sweet, filling, and warm, but they\u2019re just plain old baked beans.<\/p>\n

The fries are crinkle fries; the superior French-fries to all others. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I am an equal opportunity French fry eater. I\u2019ll take them any way they come, except for shoestring fries\u2014those are stupid. (You have to eat twenty-seven of them to make one normal fry.) When I have my choice though, it is the crinkle fry that reigns supreme. Each little ridge provides more surface area for browning and makes for crisp, full fries that showcase everything a fluffy fried potato should be.<\/p>\n

At last I unwrap the venerable chopped pork sandwich. It\u2019s on a white bun with little bits of meat peaking out from the edge. It\u2019s not pulled pork, (shredded-sauced shards that I\u2019ve grown up with) or shaved (long thin slices), it is definitely chopped\u2014small hunks of meat roughly the size of a chic-pea. I don\u2019t lift the top of the bun, because sometimes barbecue sandwiches are carefully sealed with sauce and if you move the bread wrong all the stuffing falls out. I plow right in and take a bite. And I\u2019m chewing and waiting for the spice of the meat-rub and the sweet-tomato sauce, but my sandwich is crunching-a little bit like a pickle and the meat flavor is in there but it\u2019s got some strange cousin tagging along between the buns. I lift off the top bun to confirm my suspicions. Tops has gone and put coleslaw on my barbecue sandwich. I\u2019m not really sure what to think about it, so I take another bite, and another, and another until the sandwich is gone. The slaw was pickle heavy and the vinegary tang was a good compliment to the meat, but if someone had me eat that sandwich and asked me to define it for their menu I never would have said that\u2019s a barbecue sandwich.<\/p>\n

All three of us clean our plates, and all agree we\u2019d come back and try it again\u2014but it\u2019s safe to say none of us are going to wake up dreaming about this meal in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

We get in the car to head back to Missouri, and I report back to my boyfriend:
\n3:05 p.m. They put coleslaw on my sammich.<\/em>
\n4:45 pm. I\u2019m sorry, I should have told you slaw unless you ask otherwise.
\n4:47 p.m. I\u2019m glad I had it. It was weird… I liked it but wouldn\u2019t classify it as BBQ<\/em>
\n5:43 I\u2019d pay to have it overnighted.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the rub of it. If you grew up within the Memphis metro area I can see how Tops would work it\u2019s way into your blood stream like bourbon flows through mine. It\u2019s a distinct taste as unique as Beale Street and Sun Studios, a taste you go back for again and again because it tastes like home.<\/p>\n

But for this girl, the one who was born in Kansas City, raised on burnt ends, and expects great big chunks of meat in her baked beans, Tops is a decent sandwich place that made for a good story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IBE&TIHD, Tennessee Edition By Jessica Conoley For this dinner you\u2019ll need a little backstory. 1) I am from Kansas City. 2) Kansas City invented real barbecue. 3) I love barbecue. 4) The rest of the world makes very delicious meats\u2014sometimes they call them barbecue, and they are wrong but to be polite I don\u2019t tell…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,19,22],"tags":[43,18,21,23,24,25,44,45,46],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nI've Been Everywhere & Then I Had Dinner, Tennessee - Jessica Conoley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A stop in the I've Been Everywhere & Then I Had Dinner series | Jessica Conoley tackles Tennessee barbecue, which is no small feat for a Kansas City girl\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I've Been Everywhere & Then I Had Dinner, Tennessee - 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