Pork Barrel BBQ Set to Open in March

Pork Barrel co-founder Heath Hall slicing brisket at the 2009 Safeway National Capital Barbecue Battle in DC.

ALEXANDRIA, VA. - Pork Barrel BBQ finally plants its flag in Del Ray next month, Local Kicks has learned.

The first stand-alone restaurant from Alexandria-based Pork Barrel Barbeque is aiming to open in a few weeks at 2300 Mount Vernon Ave. in Del Ray.

Brett Thompson, son Sawyer and Heath Hall accept the trophy for the second best BBQ Sauce in the Nation at the 2009 Safeway Barbecue Battle in DC.

Pork Barrel has teamed up with Mike Anderson and Bill Blackburn, two of the area’s top restaurateurs, to bring a Pork Barrel BBQ Restaurant to Alexandria's Del Ray neighborhood.

The restaurant, which is currently under construction, will be in the heart of Del Ray on Mount Vernon Avenue near St. Elmo's Coffee Pub and The Dairy Godmother.

“We are honored to team with Mike Anderson and Bill Blackburn who have decades of success running restaurants and are leaders in the Alexandria community,” said Brett Thompson, a Del Ray resident and CEO of Pork Barrel BBQ.

“Heath and Brett know award winning BBQ, and Bill and I know how to run great restaurants...this is a perfect combination and we can’t wait for our Pork Barrel BBQ restaurant to open its doors next spring,” said Mike Anderson, founder of Mango Mike’s, which has been operating in Alexandria since 1996.

“Del Ray has been waiting a long time for great BBQ, and we are excited to team with the Del Ray BBQ Boys in bringing Pork Barrel BBQ to the neighborhood,” said Bill Blackburn.
 
In addition, a super-secret reality show scheduled for a major network’s fall line-up has approached Pork Barrel BBQ.

Partners Heath Hall and Brett Thompson, currently waiting for the ink to dry on their contract, swore me to secrecy…at least for the time being.

Heath Hall, Bill Blackburn, Brett Thompson and "Mango" Mike Anderson announce a partnership to open the first Pork Barrel BBQ restaurant in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria.

The show, featuring five multi-millionaire venture capitalists looking for investment opportunities will showcase these and other entrepreneurs and fly them out to the West Coast next month for the filming.

Longtime friends from Kansas City, smack dab in America’s Heartland, they were hired by former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent and assigned to tackle the tough issues…banking, child welfare and the national budget.

Dry stuff indeed, but they were well acquainted with the give and take, the tit for tat that goes on in each session. They had done their homework and knew the drill, and they were in it for the long haul.

One evening, after too many cold pizzas and as the Senate Appropriations Committee was debating the budget into the wee hours, the boys had the inkling of an idea.

They missed home and talk of “pork barrel” spending was snapping their synapses into fond memories of cookouts with family and friends. They began reminiscing about pork shoulder and beef brisket smoked for hours over oak and hickory wood, Kansas City style, with a tomato base and a rich, smoky barbeque sauce, the meat seasoned with secret recipe rubs to seal in the fat and bring out the intensity and cold beers to wash it all down.

In Kansas City it is said that within a radius of 30 miles a fellow could eat in a different barbeque restaurant every night with no repeats.
Folks there take their barbeque dead dog serious and often smoke 50 pounds of meat at a time.

Pork Barrel BBQ preview on the Wednesday night of Meat Week at Mango Mike’s in Alexandria

In his words, Heath’s dad was a ”post office BBQer…out there in rain, snow, sleet and hail.”

The family had six grills, not at all unusual for that part of the country where the stockyards were hailed as the largest in America and the meat went out on railroad cars from Kansas City to Chicago and New York and on across the country.

Some grills were for the smoking, the meat cooking long and slow till it falls off the bone, marrow oozing out, tender and mellow, and creating the most satisfying ancient flavor known to mankind.

Heath and Brett like Weber’s Smokey Mountain Cookers for the slow cooking and grills for chicken giving a fast sear for the charbroiling.
Eight-foot-long smokers get fired up early in the morning and stoked for hours and hours while smoke fills the yard…neighbors and friends rolling in all day to gather, catch up and sit down with a plate of whatever was coming off the heat…beef, pork, sausages, lamb, mutton and chicken.

The boys know barbeque, born and raised on it, and figured they could make their own spice rub and try to sell it. Friends liked it and encouraged them... and in December of 2008 Pork Barrel BBQ All-American Spice Rub, with its all-natural, smoky, and slightly spicy flavor, was born.

They got it in a few local stores, Let’s Meat on the Avenue in Del Ray and the Organic Butcher in McLean  and started to sell it online to immediate success.

They revved up their product line when they entered Safeway’s National Capitol Barbeque Battle last month, creating and presenting a brand new barbeque sauce that hadn’t even been on the market yet.

An artists rendering of the new Pork Barrel BBQ in Del Ray.

“They told us our sauce was one of the final three out of forty four,” Heath declared. “We were stunned!”

After the votes were tallied they wound up with Second Place, beating out longtime barbeque champs. In another category, “Memphis in May”, their Pork Shoulder prepared with their All-American Spice Rub, nailed Fourth Place, forever establishing their reputation in the competitive field of American BBQ.

Their label features a wholesome pig holding a fork twice his size with the iconic capitol landscape in the background echoing the days of their time on The Hill…the words “Monumental Flavor” the motto.

Heath who Twitters and blogs through their website www.porkbarrelbbq.com keeps his followers apprised of their latest endeavors gaining them the number one BBQ blogger spot with over 13,000 hits so far and the number one post in Alexandria.

With over 600 grocery stores in 10 states signing on to carry their products they will be rolling out three new products in addition to the original Spice Rub…their crunch-time success BBQ sauce and a Steak Rub and Chesapeake Bay Rub.  Their distributor told them, “You guys must have leprechauns on your shoulders.”

"Brett and I are excited about the opportunity to bring Pork Barrel BBQ to Del Ray and we can't imagine better partners to do it with than Mike and Bill," said Heath Hall, the president of Pork Barrel BBQ.

For comments and questions contact Jordan@whiskandquill.com