Craft or Curse? How Barbecue Became Cool

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Craft or Curse?How Barbecue Became Cool Adrian Miller (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Scott's Bar-B-Que, Hemingway, South Carolina, June 20–21, 2012. All photographs from Southern Foodways Alliance, by Denny Culbert unless otherwise noted. i recently visited Dublin, Ireland, and there were several restaurants serving Central Texas–style barbecue. Whether or not they were doing it well is another matter, but the point is that people around the world can't seem to get enough of the cuisine. Barbecue is an ancient and now global method of food preparation whose history has been deeply shaped by place, people, and economies of labor—particularly in the American South. And it's this style of southern barbecue that is particularly hot right now. American barbecue competitions and restaurants are proliferating in the United States and worldwide. Its cooks and writers are famous. But what's making barbecue so trendy? [End Page 102] ________ the seeds for barbecue's current fever pitch were planted in the 1990s when food media types started reframing barbecuing as a craft. Before that time, barbecue was certainly appreciated, but it held on to its working-class roots. With the media reframing, barbecue suddenly became something "cool." Young white men, who might have likely pursued other creative or white-collar professional careers, plunged into the world of barbecue as a vocation or as a side hustle. We've lived with the blatant and subtle consequences of that shift ever since. One unfortunate consequence is that the barbecue boom and boon has been good to white people, especially white men, but not so much to the African American chefs long considered the cuisine's "go-to" cooks. Language played an important role in barbecue's redefinition. We've seen barbecue cooks called many things, and "pitmaster" is the favored title these days. Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn's deft examination of what we should call the barbecue greats found that the term gained currency in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In its most favorable light, the word pitmaster implies expertise, craftsmanship, and mastery. Unfortunately, the term has become so overused that it no longer holds special meaning. As food writer R. L. Reeves aptly noted in Vaughn's article, "If you can butt a Bic lighter up against a Kingsford briquette these days, you've earned the sobriquet 'pitmaster.'" Still, the wide application of the term facilitated the reframing of barbecuing as a craft, which begs the question: what do we mean by "craft," and should it apply to making barbecue?1 In 1990, Janet Kardon, director of the American Craft Museum, defined craft as objects "created by trained professionals or individuals who are carrying on traditions transmitted from their elders. The artist is aware of the historical continuum of craft, either within the ethnic or national community or from the larger mainstream, and [the artist] is often committed to extending and expanding that continuum in inventive ways." Though Kardon wrote in terms better suited for a material object, the definition works well for food and how some barbecue cooks are currently perceived.2 If craft represents the professionalized production of material, then the work of supposedly "untrained" people falls into a catchall category called "folk art." Folk artists aren't valued by mainstream society to the same extent as craftspeople. Folk artists tend to remain anonymous to, and underappreciated by, the larger public. [End Page 103] When African American cooks dominated barbecue until the late twentieth century, it was highly appreciated if menial work. Barbecuing had the trappings of craft, but these cooks clearly fell into a raced category of skilled workers. Barbecue-as-craft, however, opened up a new space that white people could enter and dominate. Though writing about barbers, butchers, and bartenders, Richard E. Ocejo, a leading scholar on contemporary craft culture, adeptly describes the convergence of several factors that allowed this aspect of barbecue craft culture to explode. In an online interview, Ocejo opines on this new generation of craftspeople: Primarily, they pursue the elite versions of these jobs because they allow them to use their heads, hands, and social skills. Like much knowledge-based...