Sanders BBQ Supply Co. in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago specializes in Texas-inspired new-school barbecue with stunning smoked meat that’s personal and precise, but the restaurant could use a few lessons in old-school service.
Owner James Sanders opened his namesake restaurant in June with a team led by head pitmaster Nick Kleutsch and head chef Bill Jones.
It’s considered one of the first craft barbecue places on the South Side, Sanders said.
That would be along with the pioneering Lexington Betty Smokehouse in Pullman, owned by pitmaster Dominique Leach and her wife Tanisha Griffin Leach.
“We don’t do the typical Chicago barbecue, and I’m not knocking the traditional Chicago barbecue,” Sanders said.
That would be defined by the legendary Lem’s Bar-B-Q in Chatham, owned by Carmen Lemons, whose sister and manager Lynn Walker Harvey worked alongside their father, the late great pitmaster James B. Lemons.
Sanders BBQ Supply does in fact offer the defining Chicago-style barbecue combo of tips and links, but that’s not what has people lining up outside before it opens.
They come for more unusual offerings, including the Texas-style dino beef rib, the Chicago jerk-inspired oxtails and a smoked brisket cheeseburger that tells a personal pitmaster story.
“We only open four days a week,” Sanders said. “So we really take our time with seasoning the meat. We have prep days. We have our smoke days. And it’s just not your traditional barbecue.”
The hilariously huge beef rib is a sign of the untraditional barbecue to come, with meat that’s thoroughly tender but holds to the bone until released with a tug. The cut is widely called a dino rib, and while the etymology is unclear, it clearly looks like it could have been carved from a delicious dinosaur.
The beef rib started as a Saturday special and has become available every day they’re open, but it was always destined for a permanent place on the menu.
“When I used to go to Texas a lot, that would be the first thing I grabbed,” Sanders said. “Because I felt like I could get pork anywhere, and I didn’t know of many places that sell them.”
At his place, he said, they sell about 75 orders a day, but the profit margin on the beef ribs isn’t huge because the cost of the prime-grade meat alone is so expensive.
They’re $38 an order, but my flawlessly finished beef rib was so big that it made my hand look like a comically small doll hand, and I estimate it weighed in with around two pounds of meat.
The transcendent smoked cheeseburger, however, is the first thing I grabbed and would be the first thing I grab again with both hands.
When you first see the burger, it confounds the senses. It’s black on the outside, overly encrusted with rub? And thick, maybe too thick? But then she yields, with just a nibble, revealing a delicately peppery kick and a surprising smoke ring.
A smoke ring is not required for great barbecue, but she wore a perfect shade of pink.
The smoked cheeseburger at Sanders BBQ Supply is unusual among barbecue houses in Chicago, on the South Side or North Side, and tells the personal journey of one pitmaster through a community bonded by smoke and meat.
“Nick used to work in Texas,” Sanders said of his head pitmaster. Kleutsch worked his way through some of the great houses, including the critically acclaimed LeRoy and Lewis BBQ in Austin, Texas, which just won a Michelin star. He eventually opened his own barbecue business (Lucy’s BBQ in Highland, Indiana), but just left in March.
Sanders said he met Kleutsch through Dave Bonner, the renowned pitmaster and partner at Green Street Smoked Meats in the West Loop.
Kleutsch has “really been a godsend,” Sanders said, and the burger “kind of originated from LeRoy and Lewis,” but they added more fat and changed the sauce.
“It starts off with the brisket trimmings,” Sanders said. “We’re probably cooking 30 to 40 briskets a day, and have a lot of trim left over, so we’ll just grind up the brisket trimmings and just make the burger.”
“The day we grind it is the day we sell it,” he added. “Because I don’t like when they sit overnight. It’s a huge taste difference.”
They start by smoking about 30 burgers in the morning, then repeat the process in the afternoon and for dinner. The burgers slow-smoke for an hour and a half at 225 degrees Fahrenheit.
“We still want them to be juicy,” Sanders said. “We definitely want the smoke ring; it builds a crust on it, just like a brisket.”
And that crust is just salt and “a certain type of pepper,” he added, same as their brisket.
They cook with post oak in an MM1000 smoker built by M&M BBQ Company in Tool, Texas.
“There’s not too many of these smokers in Chicago,” Sanders said. South and West Side barbecue houses traditionally use aquarium smokers, like at Lem’s, while on the North Side, you’ll often find Southern Pride, like Smoque BBQ.
Sanders BBQ Supply builds the smoked cheeseburgers on a pillowy potato bun with crisp pickles slices, caramelized onions and American cheese, all finished with its own barbecue sauce reserved just for the burgers.
Served with a side of fries, it’s a deal at $15.
You can also help yourself to four house-made sauces in squeeze bottles on every table, and a dramatic live edge wood sculptural sideboard. Look under the neon sign that glows, “This must be the Place.”
“We make them all day, every day,” Sanders said of the sauce. There’s vinegar-based, his favorite, plus mustard-based, subtly spicy and a sweet sauce, because “Chicago’s more of a sweeter sauce place.”
The reimagined oxtails may take a prized place along with rib tips. Both cuts were once considered byproducts. I used to find oxtails in my neighborhood grocery store as one of the cheapest meats per pound.
“We always kind of want to do something outside the box,” Sanders said. “And I would always see people talk about oxtails.”
In Chicago you can get them from jerk restaurants, he added of the hot Jamaican jerk spiced shops, but he didn’t want to eat jerk cooking all the time.
So Sanders came up with a complex oxtail recipe with his chefs. They rub the oxtails with their house salt and pepper blend, smoke them for about two hours, but sous vide them for around nine hours more.
Their oxtails are so rich and meltingly soft that you can almost spread them on the bread slices with which they’re served, like meatier bone marrow, but more robustly beefy in flavor.
The glazed sweet potato cornbread is not just a side, but a star. Their cornbread is all made from scratch and leans into the sweet school of cornbread, but not too sweet, with savory elements.
“We add ginger to our cornbread to kind of give it a freshness,” Sanders said. “Then chef Bill Jones came up with the cakey glaze that goes on the top of it.”
And the thick slabs are intentionally oversized.
“I love when people see it and they’re shocked,” Sanders said of the size. “We make our own sweet potato puree. We don’t use any cans of anything. Everything is made from scratch.”
The lush collard greens start with turkey tails, house-smoked over post oak and hickory for added flavor. They’re served with a generous pour of highly seasoned pot liquor, the elixir that, to me, is just as important as the leafy vegetable itself.
And the mixed green salad wouldn’t normally rank among my top picks at a barbecue house, but the cornbread croutons had me counting the gloriously crunchy nuggets like a dragon hoards gold.
On my first visit, a staff member said the salad wouldn’t have the tomatoes as mentioned on the menu, which was even better loaded with refreshing cucumbers and feta cheese.
They also said the brown butter bourbon pecan cookies, made with Uncle Nearest 1884 small-batch whiskey, had sold out. I had ordered the cookies online ahead, knowing popular items do sell out. They said I’d need to contact online ordering company Toast for a refund. Really?
The carrot cake also was sold out, but I was able to get the bread pudding — luckily! But I was again informed that I’d need to get the now $4 refund myself.
The refund wasn’t a big deal. But my attempts to contact the restaurant for months before I visited had me in an existential barbecue crisis. They have a phone number, which a lot of businesses don’t anymore, understandably, but no one ever answers. Not even the number that’s on the online ordering receipt. I tried calling, texting and emailing, wondering if it was better just to not have those smoky mirages of hope. After all, the busiest Texas barbecue houses are notorious for just having people show up and wait in long lines for hours.
Someday, I hope to try those cookies made by Al’s Cookie Mixx and the carrot cake made by Sanders’ daughter Nia. The bread pudding, by chef Jones, was lovely and layered, but better as leftovers when reheated much hotter at home.
And I never did bother with that $4 refund. Instead, I asked for some croutons on my second visit. I was rewarded with a whole box, which I am still hoarding like a dragon.
Sanders BBQ Supply is counter service, seats 32 on banquettes and stools in the sleek main dining room and another 30 on the back deck with heat lamps and covered with red sails. The restaurateur just added another 20 seats with a private dining room that was part of his Fuze Catering company, he said, which is still in operation and catered at the Democratic National Convention.
A steady stream of customers picked up takeout orders in big and heavy shopping bags.
Beverages are limited to a few soft drinks, because “it’s been dry on that side of Beverly since like 1912,” said Sanders, but the restaurant is BYOB with no corkage fee.
The business is Black-owned, he said, but the pitmasters are Black, white and Hispanic, mostly men with one woman.
Sanders previously owned three Harold’s locations, he said: one in Fairview Heights, downstate near St. Louis; another in Evergreen Park; and another in the Ashburn neighborhood. But he got out of the chicken shack business 10 years ago.
So why did he decide to open a barbecue restaurant?
“I just always loved barbecuing with my dad when I was younger,” Sanders said. “But I’m gonna be honest, I was in a backyard over-smoking meat.”
When he met Kleutsch, that all changed.
“‘You got to lighten up on the smoke and the wood and everything,’” Sanders said of a lesson from his head pitmaster. “I think I learned a lot of patience in my life.”
Sanders BBQ Supply Co.
1742 W. 99th St.
773-366-3241
Open: Thursday to Sunday, 11 a.m. until sold out; closed Monday to Wednesday
Prices: $38 (beef rib), $30 (oxtails on brioche bread), $15 (smoked cheeseburger with fries), $15 (mixed green salad with cornbread croutons), $6 (sweet potato cornbread), $6 (small collard greens)
Noise: OK (68 dB)
Accessibility: Wheelchair-accessible with restrooms on single level
Tribune rating: Excellent, 3 of 4 stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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