• Michael Gebert
  • Joe Woodel at Husky Hog Bar-B-Que

Yesterday I talked with Husky Hog Bar-B-Que owner Joe Woodel about how he got into competition barbecue—the romance of competing mano a mano with smoke and fire. Well, today’s more about the gritty reality of having a food truck and a stand-alone restaurant and trying to make a living making barbecue. Husky Hog is in Bridgeport, a rare example on the south side of Tennessee-style barbecue, which doesn’t revolve around rib tips and hot links like most south-side barbecue. Instead Woodel’s primary meat is pulled pork shoulder, usually served with a sweet sauce (though he also makes Carolina-style vinegar- and mustard-based sauces). Customers don’t always understand the particulars of different regional styles, and he finds that his very good pulled pork (served dry unless you ask for it to be sauced) and his sliced beef brisket and burnt ends (also good) seem off to some customers, who have their own firm idea of what barbecue should be based on the style in a different part of the country. Nonetheless, he carries on, starting his fire around three each morning to be finished cooking by lunchtime, and building an audience in every way he can. Here’s his frank account of the reality of running a barbecue operation in Chicago.

Initially, I didn’t want the food truck. I wanted a competition trailer, with a closed-in environment and the smokers on a porch. So I tried to get some money up to buy one of those. A competition smoker’s going to cost you seven or eight grand, a trailer’s going to cost you ten grand.

Oh man, when we came out in July, two years ago, it went really really well. I was getting up at two o’clock in the morning, smoking all the meat, shredding it at eight, nine o’clock in the morning, loading it onto the food truck and driving it downtown. When the food truck scene first happened it was pretty easy to get a food-truck spot. And so, yeah, it was really good. But that winter was really tough. Two years ago, that was the worst of the worst.

So the food truck’s making money?

  • Michael Gebert
  • Pulled pork at Husky Hog Bar-B-Que

Let’s talk about your style of barbecue. You do pulled pork, brisket, chicken—where’d you learn your style?

I have traveled to the Carolinas, to Virginia, to Kentucky, to Kansas City, to Texas, to Louisiana, to Florida barbecue. I cook to the taste that, I guess as a kid, or when I was running around Tennessee, when I take a bite of it, I’ll change it to what I grew up with. I’ll tell my cooks that we need a little more of this or a little more of that because all I’m trying to do is a flashback to my childhood. coI don’t eat much barbecue anymore—