Review: Calhoun's

I didn't want my introduction to Tennessee barbecue to come from a chain, but that's the way it happened. Normally I wouldn't even admit to have patronized a chain in this space, but, as you'll see, they earned it.

On Sunday last we were on a wild notary chase, and had been frantically looking for a notary all morning. When 1:30 rolled around and we still hadn't eaten we were a little punchy. We had planned to try a little 'cue joint in Oliver Springs, but they were closed, so when Calhoun's came into view, we stopped there. We had heard decent things about them, and they're a small local chain, so we suborned our principles to our hunger and went on in.

Not bad barbecue. Pleasantly vinegary. Nice smoke ring. They've probably got a skinny white dude tending the corporate-approved ovens, and while he's doing a swell job, he's no 350 lb. guy named "Cincinnati Jefferson" running a smoker on wheels in a gas station parking lot. Overall: very tasty, but not transcendent. About the best you could get from a chain -- certainly better than other chain BBQ I've had.

A high point was the beer selection. As far as I can tell, no macrobrews were offered. They had their own beers, and maybe some other local brews. (I don't recognize the names yet, so I couldn't tell.) But there was no Miller Light to be found; no Bud Select, and no Sam Adams. Even more impressive, when I jokingly asked the waitress for a glass of something cold, amber-colored, and mildly intoxicating, she started listing off the beers that were actually amber-colored. This was no rote list of every beer they had; she filtered out the ones that were too dark or too light and suggested a brew based on my half serious criteria. Most waitrons wouldn't know Select 55 from Old Rasputin if Ol' Raspy jumped up and bit them in the butt -- that's the bartender's job, right? But this waitress was carefully distinguishing between the pale ale and the red ale based on a glib offhand comment. Oh yeah, and the beer was good too.

But wait, there's more!

As we were leaving, refueled, we asked offhand if they had a notary on staff. They didn't -- but within a few minutes we had the general manager, the assistant manager, the hostess, and a waiter all calling people, leafing through phone books, and wracking their brain to figure out where we could find a notary on Sunday afternoon. For fifteen minutes.

Impressed, my wife said she felt like she should buy one of the shirts in the display case to thank them. Pretty soon the GM came over with a shirt.

"I know you said you should buy a shirt," he said; "but I think you should just take one." We were a bit stunned. "But I'm not being selfless here," he cautioned. "Here's why: First, this shirt is a medium. I don't have a lot of guys in the kitchen who are mediums, so I've got a surplus of these. [There goes my skinny white dude theory.] Secondly, this doesn't have the Calhoun's logo on it, and that doesn't make me happy. But it does have the word 'Pitmaster' on it." He asked if we knew what a pitmaster was, and resisting our desire to mention the Sarlacc we told him we did. "Great," he said; "so when someone asks you what a pitmaster is, you can tell them this story." And with that he wrapped up a few of his business cards in the shirt and handed it to us.

I'm guessing he didn't know at the time that he was talking to East Tennessee's most widely read food bloggers (okay, only food bloggers), and that the story would be told to an e-audience of up to three readers. He just did it because he knows that word of mouth is great advertising, and that he had sufficiently wowed us with a spontaneous act of awesomeness that we'd be talking.

So go to Calhoun's. They've got pretty good barbecue, great beer, out-of-this-world service, and an awfully nice system of bribery going, too.