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Allen & Son Barbeque: Keith Allen

Cliff's Meat Market: Cliff Collins

Mama Dip's Traditional Country Cooking: Mildred Council

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Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans.

Keith Allen

Allen & Son Barbeque
6203 Millhouse Rd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 942-7576

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“You know, I’ve never said that my barbecue was good. I’ve always said I was chasing the taste. And I’m looking for a taste like you would a bottle of wine. And I don’t eat barbecue because I look at it the same way as, if I become a wino, I might not be able to taste that wine. So if I eat a taste of barbecue, my taste buds are well aware of what it’s supposed to be like. They’re not numb from overeating, and so I taste that barbecue everyday to achieve the taste.”

– Keith Allen

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Keith Allen grew up working on his grandparents’ farm in Burlington, North Carolina. There he learned to cure hams and make sausages. When Keith was nine years old, his father, James Allen, bought an Amoco station that happened to serve food. A couple of years later, he bought a barbecue restaurant, and Keith’s fate was sealed. One Saturday afternoon when he was in his late twenties, Keith was having a meal with some friends at a barbecue joint in Chapel Hill. He thought he could do a better job of smoking meat and frying hushpuppies, so he bought the place on the spot. That place is Allen & Son Barbeque (named in honor of his father), which has been in business under Keith’s watch since 1970. Keith’s dedication to the craft of ‘cue begins at 3 a.m. each morning. Between stoking fires and turning meat, he makes more than fifteen different desserts from his grandmother’s recipes. Even the ice cream is homemade. But what really brings people back for more is Keith’s dedication to his craft and, of course, that vinegar-based Carolina ‘cue.

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Keith Allen talking about using family recipes and the dying art of barbecue. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Keith Allen
Location: Allen & Son Barbeque – Chapel Hill, NC
Date: May 31, 2007
Interviewer: Amy Evans

Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance on Thursday, May 31, 2007. I’m in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at Allen & Son Barbeque with Mr. Keith Allen. And Mr. Allen, would you state your name and also your birth date for the record, please, sir?

Keith Allen: Yes, my name is Keith Allen and I was born September 7, 1951.

And where were you born?

Burlington, North Carolina.

What did your family do when you were growing up?

First, they worked in the mills. Then my dad [James Allen] was a car salesman, and my mom [Hazel Allen] still continued to work in the mills. And then my grandparents, of course, were on the farm, and that’s where I grew up, on the farm.

How many generations does your family go back in this area?

Oh, five or six…My grandparents [Sally Blanche and Johnson T. O’Daniel] and farmed—that was my mother’s parents—and I grew up right there adjacent to them, and they made their living and truck cropping at the curb markets and selling around the neighborhood and in essence, I grew up there…[They raised] all truck crops—tomatoes, corn, you know, butter beans, watermelons, cantaloupes—whatever would sell. And my grandmother made desserts and those kinds of things to sell at the curb market on Saturday mornings. We’d go up there at four o’clock in the morning and set-up and the city folks would engage her to cook things and she would take them and sell—cakes and pies and cookies and different things.

And I understand you use a lot of her recipes here, is that right?

I do, yeah. I never had formal training in cooking, so whatever I do is inherently given to me by what I watched her do.

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And so let’s do talk about your family in the restaurant business and how that started.

Actually, my dad was a—he liked to drink a little and socialize a little, and he bought a restaurant one night and called the house and said, “I think I’m going into the restaurant business.” And he was a car salesman at that point, and so all of a sudden we were in the restaurant business in the [nineteen] ‘50s—a little grill, gas pumps out front, sold a little beer…We sold hot dogs and hamburgers. We bought barbecue from a distributor, which was not very good. And then the guy that actually owned the building would not renew the lease when he remodeled it, and so we bought another restaurant and moved. And that’s how we got into the restaurant—into the barbecue business was in the late ‘50s.

And that restaurant sold barbecue?

Yes. Henry Hearn was the guy that we bought it from. He was aging out [of the business], and his family was not interested; and my dad bought it from him, and I found myself working in a restaurant from the time I was nine years old until now…The original name [of the restaurant] was Henry Hearn’s [in Bynum, North Carolina], and it was a drive-in…And we bought that kind of on a consignment. If we’d make it a year, you know, then we’d pay rent and then we’d buy it if we could survive. And so we did and we bought it and then we went from there. And it was a drive-in. It was all the people in the community would come there on Saturday nights. They would dance out on the patio and it was a jukebox and it was a drive-in, where you had soft-served ice cream and hot dogs and hamburgers and barbecue. And it was a hot spot in the country setting.

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So when your father bought the restaurant that had been the barbecue restaurant, did he know what he was getting into as far as handmade barbecue?

No, we didn’t know much about it. It was kind of on-the-job training type situation, and we had a pit that would cook sixty shoulders at a time and so we you know—I started cooking then and firing the pits and chopping the barbecue and seasoning it, and it was kind of on-the-job training. And we were chasing the flavor and he—I noticed that he always tasted it every time he got through or when we ever—or when we got through chopping and we were chasing a taste then. We were chasing—still chasing the taste today and that’s the way I know that it’s right.

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So what did you think when your father got in the restaurant business and then you, by default, were in the restaurant business?

Well, like I say, I was a kid, you know. I was eight or nine years old when all this really transpired. And they told me what they wanted me to do, and I did it. And I was used to working on a farm and used to getting up early and used to doing whatever they told me to do. I was—that’s what you did in order to make a living and so you know, as—as anybody, you learn by practice and—and I got a lot of practice because my father was not the hands-on type. He was, you know, he was the guy that could see what to do and—and see that somebody else got it done, but he didn’t want to get into it too much. So after a bit I became a butcher for the A&P store and, unbeknownst to me, my grandfather told me, he said, “That’s an important job. You ought to learn that really well.” And so I did practice it and I learned it really well when I was in high school and college. I did it right on through to make a living, and it really did come in handy to know all the different cuts of all the different animals and all the anatomy that you really learn doing that kind of job. Back then a butcher was truly a butcher, as Cliff [Collins of Cliff’s Meat Market] will tell you, you know. You broke the cows down. You, you know, you got it in—in halves and you took the quarters off and the ribs off and—and the shanks and you did it all. And it was really handy to know, as time progressed through my life. It was nice to know all that.

And you went to college, too, correct?

I did. I went to Southern Pines to Sandhills Community College and then bought this [restaurant] on my lunch hour one summer because I didn’t think the guy was doing a good enough job, and the guy that was eating with me told me that if I thought I could do any better, just buy it, and so I did. I sold my landscaping equipment, which I had bought, and I borrowed $3,000—bought the place on my lunch hour one Saturday. I had to—he told me he would take a personal check and $3,000 in cash. Well when I got here to buy it, he would not take the check; he would—he—he refused. He wanted cash only or a certified check. Well in 1970 the banks were not open on Saturday, and there was no such thing as ATM, and bankers didn’t know you. And so I called the banker, and he was nice enough to meet me at the bank and give me a certified check, and I did buy it on my lunch hour. And the next Monday morning I went to work. And that was what, thirty-seven years ago or something.

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What was the original name of this place when you bought it?

Turner’s Barbecue. The guy that I bought it from, his name was Meaty Turner. Truly, it was Meaty Turner and he was from Carrboro. And he would be open a week or two, and then he’d be closed three or four weeks, if he wanted to. So it was he and his wife that ran it; they were elderly. And, you know, they were not that energetic about it.

So it sounds like, then, they weren’t necessarily very good business people, but did they have good barbecue?

You know, I don’t know about their barbecue. I’ve never eaten their barbecue. I’ve never eaten anybody’s barbecue, matter of fact. The—but, you know, they were—they were really nice people. It just didn’t seem like the application of the restaurant itself was fluent, was—was like it ought to be when I came out to eat on my lunch hour. And I just—I had seen a lot of restaurants ran and—and the overall aspect didn’t seem to be something that would work, in my mind.

So did you see it as a challenge, then, to make it what you thought it could be?

Well I thought I could improve it some. Now I don’t know that I did that, but I thought I could, you know. Of course, the little train thought he could, too. So it’s one of those things you always try to improve whatever you do, at least I—that’s what you start in it for.

When you got this place and it was your own, did you change anything that had been done at your father’s place and anything that you learned coming up in the restaurant business?

I really couldn’t change a lot; I didn’t have any money. I had $452 in the bank; I had $100 payments on a car. It was practically new, and I put the $452 into groceries. I owed $3,000 at the bank, and I owed for my car, and I was broke. So I worked with what I had at the moment, and I basically did then what I’m doing now, cooking with wood and on and on and on. And I did the same thing at my dad’s place. I cooked with wood down there, as well. So the—the only things that I changed, probably, was trying to make everything that I did as right as I could do it, and I could do what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, without being told to change. And if somebody else runs a business and you work for them—I don’t care if it’s your dad or somebody else—you need to do it their way. And until you’re able to do it on your own, you’re not able to do it your way. And you shouldn’t do it your way, unless you’ve discussed it and worked it out. You should do it their way. And so I made up my mind years later that I was going to take what I thought was—we had a lot of frozen food, frozen shrimp, frozen this—frozen that and I, over time, eliminated all items that I could and decided that I would make this restaurant as good as I possibly could for it to be a barbecue restaurant, knowing that a barbecue restaurant does not carry the clout that a—that a steakhouse does. It’s a secondary meat; it’s a secondary restaurant; it’s, you know—it’s never had the glamour or the glitter, the ambiance, the chandeliers—it’s just a basic restaurant. But I wanted it to make the food as good as it could possibly be made for the price that you could charge. So if it took a little more money out of my pocket to make it really good, then I’d make it really good—the pies, the cakes, the desserts, the meats—all fresh as you could find it—pay more for it, it didn’t matter. Quality was everything. The customer was the one, the thing that I was shooting for so that they had a good experience, and that was my driving force between—overall—was making sure that whatever they got was the best that could be gotten.

Did you know immediately that you wanted to or were going to use family recipes for your grandmother’s cakes and things and sides, or did that just kind of fit itself in?

Well, you know, I tried not to get overly involved in the restaurant. I didn’t want the restaurant to depend on me ninety-nine percent of the time. I tried not to cook everything myself…But over time it just evolved to the fact that, in order to make it as right as possible—we lost a culture of really good cooks over the years. We’ve—the whole area—the whole country has lost really good basic ordinary run of the mill, off-the-farm, out-of-the-kitchen cooks. Women went to work; men didn’t know; people didn’t care. It was beginning to be fast food. I couldn’t find anybody that could do anything. So it fell to my shoulders to do whatever needed to be done. If I was going to do it right, then I had to do it. And so it’s kind of caught me up in the draft of what I wound up doing now is sixteen, eighteen different desserts. They’re all homemade. Everything is as good as you can make it, or as good as I can make it. And I’m not a trained chef, so I, you know, I have handicaps. But it fell to me to do it because you couldn’t hire anybody else that was interested to do it right.

So you enjoy cooking?

Well, I did. [Laughs] Yeah, I guess I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here everyday seven days a week, trying to, you know, do it as right as I do. I guess I still do—I still think that I’m chasing the dream, and I’m still chasing the flavor, and I’m still wanting it to be right more than I am enjoying the cooking part of it. I think after a while everything gets to be a job, but I still want—I still have envisioned that, if I was sitting in there in the dining room and ordering a meal and I was going to be on the recipient end, that I would want it right and I—that’s still my driving force. And so in order for that to be satisfied, I still do it the best I can. So I guess enjoyment may come into it; dedication may come into it more.

Can you describe, maybe, the other elements of what you do and what you enjoy about what you do and also keeping traditions alive in barbecue and family recipes and things of that nature?

Well my dad’s recipe worked for the barbecue sauce that we had. I always thought it was the best sauce that could be mixed into a batch of meat. It always turned out really well. So I think that his recipe for the barbecue sauce had nothing to do with me—is undoubtedly perfect. There’s nothing else to do to it; I had nothing to do with it. I haven’t changed it. I just keep duplicating it. My grandmother’s recipes, she was known to be a really good cook in the church, so I just followed practice. Just whatever I saw whenever she was making them, I just practiced it over time. I think that the—from this point forward, the art of cooking with wood is semi-going to be lost. There’s going to be the odd guy that’s going to chase this thing. There ought to be more. When I started, this was not unique; this was the ordinary. This was what everybody did. This is the only way to do it. I think now the only reason that maybe I stand out is because so many people have gotten away from the quality aspect of it and the taste aspect of it and got into the volume aspect of it…And for me, that exchange between the hickory coals and the grease drippings on that hickory coals over a period of a long time—eight to twelve hours—chopping it by hand and not losing the juices and the flavors that you built into it all day, season it properly, looking after it yourself from conception to end is going to be a dying art because nobody wants to put in this kind of volume or labor…There’s just not an everyday guy that’s going to do this kind of stuff. And I’m sure that people can hire people to do these things but are you getting—two, still getting the customer satisfied the way it ought to be? So it’s going to be a dying art.

So what does it mean to you personally, emotionally, and intellectually to spend ten hours a day everyday with hickory, smoke, fire, and pork?

Well basically, it’s pretty dumb. But beyond that [Laughs] and you’re dedicated to it. You’ve told somebody that you would do it, and your word ought to be bound…And for this to carry on and for people to be interested in this—and that’s really what it’s all about is the customer themselves are basically interested in this quality because I have them come back here to the pits everyday from all walks of life, even the local yokels come in here and want to see how it’s done, and they grew up here. They must have seen a dozen pig pickings, you know. You kind of expect a guy from New Jersey not to understand it. Or a person from California. I mean, it’s not what they do there, and you expect to show up, maybe, back here. But I think there is still enough interest in quality and this kind of cooking that would—that would justify anybody that was interested in doing a restaurant to do this and carry it on. I would hope that somebody somewhere would always—there would always be a best in everything somewhere.

What do you love most about what you do here?

The leaving time. [Laughs] I guess I like the splitting of the wood, the cutting of the trees, the recycling of the trees. We do a lot of storm damage stuff; we go out and gather up out of somebody’s yard a tree that’s been a nuisance that somebody don’t want anymore. They cut it down; we haul it off; we burn it; we recycle it; we cook with it; and we turn it into ashes, instead of going to the landfill and filling up things…So I kind of like that aspect of it. I like not wasting things and not taking a big step or a big bite out of Mother Nature. I don’t like to leave a big imprint on Mother Earth. I think that what we’re doing is responsible. I know we put out some emissions over the smoke and—and this hickory wood burning but I think in essence it would outweigh what we’re recycling and what we’re not taking to the landfill and what is not being wasted, I think, would outweigh what we’re putting back in.

And, of course, the smoke is a good thing.

Well the [smoke] is what the customer is chasing. They don’t care about all the smoke or whether we’re doing good things or not. They just want it to taste good…They don’t care whether you live or die as long as you’ve got it cooked right.

Have you, over the years, developed a relationship with the meat? Meaning you’re around it everyday, you know what it needs and what it requires and you’re touching it everyday.

Well, you know, we try to find the best pork we can find to—and we have a small distributor we buy from, and he brings it in, and it’s two days old. And we don’t want it frozen, and we don’t want it dried, and we don’t want it Cryovac-ed, want it fresh. And I know what fresh is because I used to kill them on the farm, and I know what fresh pork looks like. And I was a butcher, so I know what fresh is, and I know what old is. And so I want my pork to be fresh. And when I start out—and when I—there’s no gauges on what I do. There’s no panels, there’s no instrument panels, there’s no controls, there’s no lights, there’s no signals of any kind to tell you whether to turn it off, turn it on, heat it up, cool it down. You either got to know by looking at the meat, or you don’t know. And if you don’t know, it’s going to cost you in the end…You get a good product and you take patience with it and time with it. You can't cook a thick piece of meat in four or five hours. I don’t even like to cook chicken in four or five hours; I like to cook chicken in eight or ten hours. I like for it to be tender all the way through, done all the way through, and you look at it—you feel it. And if you—you can't see it that way, you don’t understand what you’re doing. And you learn those things over time and efforts and being exposed to it, and you don’t get that out of going to school.

And it seems like you have an internal clock, let’s say, to just—I mean thirty minutes for nine hours everyday. You’ve developed this rhythm to what you do.

Well, you know, I come to work at three o’clock [in the morning]. I don’t have an alarm clock, either. I get up and I wake up two o’clock, I take a bath, and I come to work. And I go to work and I don’t stop and have coffee. I don’t stop and have breakfast. I mean I come to work. I light a fire, and I put the meat on. Every thirty minutes after that, I’ve got to fire the pits until that meat is done, and that may take me eight hours, and it may take me nine and, you know, that pretty much—after you turn it over, how long it’s going to take you from that point forward because you can tell by the fill of the meat and the wrinkles in the skin and—and how tender the meat has gotten at that point is how much more time it takes. And you know that coals can be hotter or cooler, the wood can be hotter or cooler, and the temperatures outside you have to overcome. In the wintertime you’re starting out with a pit that—it may be twenty degrees in that kitchen and in that oven, and you’ve got to go from twenty to 190-degrees, and you’ve got to do it pretty quick, if you’re going to get done that day. And you’re working with wood. So there’s a lot to learn and it’s pretty dumb stuff, too, at the same point in time. I mean it’s pretty elementary. I mean you’ve got a metal pit and you’ve got a firebox—a fireplace here with wood burning in it. I mean it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do this.

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Well, and speaking of the meat, where do you think what you do falls into the tradition of North Carolina barbecue?

This is the tradition of North Carolina barbecue. [Laughs] This is all it’s all about. Everybody else is doing it for money or doing it for speed or doing it for accuracy. This is what it’s about. You’re either cooking with wood over a long period of time and trying to get that taste that the customers endure to chase around and to try to find places like this to eat at. If they didn’t do the endeavor, I probably wouldn’t do the endeavor because if they didn’t show up to eat, I wouldn’t show up to cook. So if this is not the original way of doing it—this is not the only way to really get high-quality barbecue—then I’ve missed the base somewhere all these years.

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So what do you think is the future of barbecue, as the tradition that you’ve been describing?

Well North Carolina is destined to be one of the heaviest populated states on the East Coast here in the next ten years, fifteen years most…We’re going to have somebody come out here from EPA one day and say, “Well we’re not going to allow this anymore,” maybe. But that’s been an excuse for a lot of barbecue people to get out of the business, but it’s never been put in law. Nobody has ever really said that you can't have one here or there or whatever. [But] I still believe that there is going to be room enough for the person that wants to do it right—just like there is in pottery, flowers, anything else…In every culture there’s got to be somebody in every aspect of everything that’s going to be the one that does it to the best of his ability. It may not be the best that can be done, but it may be the best of his ability. And I think that there’s always room for that one person.

Well and you’re not talking about restaurants; you’re talking about barbecue as craft and as part of a cultural tradition that is a handwork.

Well it is in North Carolina. North Carolina is known to be the place for truly good southern barbecue. Now everybody has got it; the South has got it and the North has got it; Texas has got it; Memphis has got it. A lot of these boys are trying to catch on, but North Carolina has always been known to have two different kinds of barbecue. Both are really good; both could arguably be the best. North Carolina is the place to have really good vinegar-based barbecue. I’ve tried it in Texas. I thought I could bring that brisket back here and—and make that Texas barbecue everybody talks about. I tried it in several places…It was too saucy, too covered up…There’s too much sauce and not enough meat or too much meat and not enough sauce.

Well and barbecue is so of the place…Do you think that North Carolina barbecue will stay North Carolina barbecue or you think there’s a day where it will be kind of muddied up with things from other places to serve the tastes of people who are coming from other places?

Well people will do most anything for money, and if there’s enough money in it, they’ll make tacos and they’ll make brisket barbecue and most anything, you know, and they’ll sell it. But the true quality of North Carolina lies in the vinegar-based barbecue, and anybody that’s going to try to bring something else here is going to play second fiddle to that. If the barbecue people in this state are smart enough, they will never overwhelm the quality of which we’ve already set forth and the standards in which we go by. And if we’re dumb, we’ll let them overwhelm us, but I don’t think we’re that slow anymore in the South that we will. I think we’re apt enough to be able to always maintain a high quality of North Carolina barbecue in North Carolina. And I don’t really believe that you should try to be something from somewhere else. I think you ought to be what you are where you are, and I’ve always been a Southern cook. I don’t make pastas; I don’t try to make tacos; I don’t do Italian foods; I don’t do French cooking; I don’t do pastries. I do baking; I do basic cooking; I do butter beans and corn. I do sliced tomatoes. I do things from the farm. I do things Southern; that’s what I know. I’m not trying to be something else.

So what’s the future of your place here, then?

Well it’s going to be up to the next generation. You know, somebody has an opportunity to increase it and do better and do more or do it at all. That’s going to be up to another generation to decide that. And I’m sure there’s somebody somewhere that’s interested in [it], as I was…Somebody sometime will carry this on.

So do you have an idea of maybe wanting to seek someone out to apprentice with you and that can work with you and you can show them the ropes, or are you just kind of hopeful that that person will show up?

Well, you know, I was talking to the Agricultural Commissioner yesterday and he was—his son-in-law is an attorney, and they do corporate deals—international/national deals—and he—he needs somebody that can detail and do these things. And I said, “Well God, as many people that’s graduated from law school as there is, there ought to be somebody.” He said he don’t think that’s something that you can learn. You inherently know it, feel it, want it, or you can't do it. And I think maybe that may be true here. I don’t think I can seek them out. I think they’re either going to stumble in here and need an opportunity and want to have a drive and have motivation and be willing to endeavor what it takes to do it, or you’re not going to find them.

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Is there anybody that can do what you do here, if you’re not available?

No, we close the doors and everybody gets to take a day off, and I get to go hunting or I go to Alaska or something, and everybody gets a break. The customers don’t even have to endure this stuff when I’m not here. [Laughs]

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I just if you have anything to add that I haven’t asked you or maybe didn’t know to ask about your business here and barbecue.

Well, not really. I would really like to see this carry on. I would like to see somebody endeavor to always be the best in whatever they do. I would like to see that whatever you chase, whether it be barbecue or whether it be a [clay] pot, that you do your best at it. I would think that that’s always going to be a place in time and a place in every environment that whatever you do, if you’re doing it the best, somebody will recognize you, somebody will thank you for it, and somebody will appreciate it long-term.

[You were] saying that you’re not a barbecue eater and you don’t eat other people’s barbecue. How do you know that your barbecue is so good?

You know, I’ve never said that my barbecue was good. I’ve always said I was chasing the taste. And I’m looking for a taste like you would a bottle of wine. And I don’t eat barbecue because I look at it the same way—is if I become a wino, I might not be able to taste that wine. So if I eat a taste of barbecue, my taste buds are well aware of what it’s supposed to be like. They’re not numb from overeating, and so I taste that barbecue everyday to achieve the taste. I don’t eat other people’s barbecue because their business is their business and not my business, and there’s nothing I can do to change their business. And it’s just like the guy told me when I bought this business, “If you think you know so much, you buy it. You do it.” So if I want to do anything and I have an opinion about it, I buy it and I do it or I keep my mouth shut, and I don’t stick my nose in other people’s stuff…And people grow up with a certain flavor, and people from this town or that town has got a hometown guy that’s doing barbecue that they think is the world’s best, and it ought to be that way. And I’m not trying to say that mine is better or worse than anybody else’s. I’m just sticking my nose where it belongs, and that’s what I do and that’s all I’m going to do.

Can you describe what that taste is that you’re looking for?

Well when—after I chop the barbecue by hand and I put that sauce on it and I put that bite of meat in my mouth and my taste buds start watering and they come alive and that tang reaches out and almost brings tears to your eyes, you know, that you’ve gotten what you’re after. Because if you don’t do all—if it doesn’t do all those things to you, you’ve missed it by a bit. And if—if you come in here and taste that barbecue right off the table, and you put it in your mouth and your taste buds doesn’t just wake up and—and you’re not tasting everything—all aspects about it, not just the sauce but the meat and all—it’s not covered up with really hot—if you’re no tasting all aspects of it, then I’ve missed the boat.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.