Weed-Cooked BBQ

Thanks to several alert readers, most notably (for his alias) Mr. “Portly Pirate”, for pulling themselves away from their munchies long enough to point out a highly interesting story from Gaston County.

According to news accounts, the owner of a local barbecue restaurant confused pit-cooking for pot-cooking, as he and three others were arrested on drug charges after an undercover agent bought over 30 pounds of barbecue marijuana on/near the premises.  The restaurant’s name?  Smokey’s BBQ, natch.

I should note that Porky LeSwine generally follows the “judge not lest ye be judged” philosophy.  But 30 pounds is a whole lot of weed.  Perhaps the good folks at Smokey’s caught the spirit of the Campaign for Real Barbecue and were starting a neo-traditional alternative to wood-cooked BBQ: weed-cooked BBQ.  One can only speculate.

Finally, I try not to stereotype folks, but one look at the pictures of the suspects and the only question in my mind is not “Are they really pot dealers” but rather “Where they are hiding their meth stash?”  A quick visit to the restaurant’s Facebook page reveals no answer to that question, but interestingly posts from early April indicate that the restaurant was going out of business.  That seems all but certain now.  I guess my dreams of a barbecue sandwich with a scoop of marijuana slaw are dashed again.

 

 

 

Sex, Drugs and… Bar-B-Q?

Shocking (if not all that surprising) news from the nation’s largest barbecue festival.  “Apparently, you could get a little more than pork shoulder in one tent at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest,” reads the first sentence of a recent article in The Commercial Appeal

Three members of the Shotwell Smokers cooking team were arrested for having some unsanctioned secret ingredients on hand–“just under 2 ounces of marijuana, about a half-ounce of hash, a fraction of an ounce of cocaine, 37 hydrocodone pills, 57 oxycodone pills, three Xanax pills, two morphine pills and one Darvocet.”  Good eats!

Although it’s important to respect that whole innocent till proven guilty thing, I challenge you to take one look at the photos of the three men charged and not conclude they were planning to set up a meth lab too.  Ironically, the guiltiest looking one of the bunch is named James Innocenti.  Needless to say, the Shotwell Smokers will not be favorites to win next year’s Memphis in May competition but their future cellmates may learn a thing or two about barbecue.