Barbecue restaurants are right up there with horse farms and Mammoth Cave when travelers plan visits to Kentucky. Two small towns in the southeastern part of the state, Tompkinsville and Barbourville, top the list of places to find traditional and tweaked versions of barbecue's tasty delights.
On weekends in the late 1950s, folks in Tompkinsville headed to the town square to do their shopping. A keen entrepreneur, Alex Tooley, correctly guessed that shoppers strolling from the hardware to the five and dime were working up appetites. So Tooley set up a stand at the square's edge, where for years he sold plate after plate loaded with Kentucky's favorite comfort foods: pulled pork, smoked chicken and tangy ribs, with slaw and baked beans on the side, topped off with tall glasses of sweetened iced tea.
Tooley's stand is gone now, and shoppers have moved to the malls. But the smoky scent of barbecue still fills the air in Tompkinsville. Taking their cue from Tooley, several other cooks opened barbecue restaurants (seven of them, by recent count), making this village of 2,754 inhabitants the informal capital of Kentucky barbecue.
"People come from Tennessee and Indiana for Tompkinsville barbeque," boasts Meda Burnette, coordinator of economic development in Monroe County.
A framed letter from Tennessean Al Gore hanging on the wall at Frances' BBQ proves Burnette right. And the tasty platters served there explain the steady lines of customers. But don't expect to leave Frances', or any of Tompkinsville's barbecue restaurants, with cooking tips.
"The basics are vinegar, pepper and sweet spices," Burnette says. "After that, what goes into the sauces, only the owners know. Even the restaurant help aren't given recipes."
So you won't pry anything about paprika from David Arms, manager of Frances' BBQ. But Arms will describe his technique.
"Flip and dip, flip and dip," Arms says. "That's the whole secret of barbecue."
Arms and his staff dip their pork, chicken and beef in Frances' special sauce, then flip it over the even, slow heat from charcoal fires he sets up at 5 a.m. Later in the day, diners slurp and smack away, guessing at secret ingredients when they take an occasional breather.
"Cumin, perhaps?" someone says.
"A dash of Tabasco?" somebody wonders.
"Cooked in lard, I heard," another patron whispers.
Frances' "Mix Plate," a choice of any three meats, offers a good sampling of the restaurant's fare. Meats are seasoned not just on the surface, but down to the bone. Textures are moist and tender. Entree flavors complement, rather than repeat, each other, with sweet, tangy vinegar coleslaw cooling the palate after a smack of pulled pork spicy enough to make a diner sneeze.
Capping a meal at Frances' is the golden nugget cake. The product of another secret family recipe, the cake obviously derives its rich yellow color from vats of butter and may be spiked with a dash of vanilla.
Just up the road from Frances', Anita Hamilton greets visitors to the 30-year-old R&S Bar-B-Q with a broad smile. But her warmth doesn't mean she's giving away any recipe secrets.
"There is no secret, so don't ask," she says, flipping a sizzling half-chicken with her fingers. She doesn't use tongs, she points out, but she just keeps smiling when asked why.
Like David Arms, Hamilton starts fires every morning at 5 a.m., throwing blocks of wood stacked outside into a circular iron oven. When the wood turns to hot coals, she and her staff haul them inside and dump them into a wide, open hearth in the kitchen.
Hamilton's entrees have their own particular sass. The pulled pork first tastes sweet, then kicks out a spicy aftertaste — from hot peppers? A thick, creamy, artery-clogging blend of sugar, mustard and mayonnaise coats the potato salad.
Five additional barbecue restaurants in Tompkinsville serve variations of the standard fare, and customers choose one place or the other depending on their preferences for more or less of whatever goes into their favorite dishes.
"At times the competition gets heated," Burnette says, "especially if one place gets quoted in a paper as the best."
With barbecue so successfully entrenched in Kentucky, it takes gumption to tweak the familiar recipes. But that, indeed, is what Doug Warriner is doing in nearby Corbin, where he opened a new restaurant, the Vintage House, this summer. The establishment is an offshoot of another restaurant Warriner and his wife opened 10 years ago in Barbourville.
"We tried to do things that people recognize," he says, "but do it just a little differently."
Folks in Barbourville were skeptical.
"You won't be able to find portobello mushrooms or goat cheese in Kentucky with a search warrant," a friend advised Warriner.
But Warriner was undaunted. He set to work on the menu, hoping to nudge Kentucky barbecue a step forward. To give a twist to barbecued pork tenderloin, he marinated the meat in apricot chutney, cumin, brown sugar and apple cider vinegar. With traditional mashed potatoes, he mixed in tiny chunks of baked sweet potatoes, then added oregano and cheddar cheese. He laced pole beans with cayenne and molasses. He prepared fried green tomatoes and grilled portobello mushrooms. (He didn't need a search warrant to find them after all.)
The Vintage House features casually dressed tables under a high ceiling and an open kitchen where diners can watch Warriner and his staff rework Kentucky favorites. Anyone for nouvelle barbecue?
Frances' BBQ, 163 S. Celina Rd., Tompkinsville, 270/487-8550. Thurs. 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri.-Sun. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Entrees $4.70-$8.65.
R&S Bar-B-Q, 219 W. Second St., Tompkinsville, 270/487-1008, Tues.-Thur. 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri.- Sat. 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Entrees $4.50-$6.
The Vintage House, 215 Roy Kidd Ave., 606/526-1916, Mon.-Sat. 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Entrees $10-$18.