If this article were a medication, it would come with a warning label. If it were a television ad, it would come with a message: Don’t try this at home.

What you are about to read is not for the faint of stomach, nor for vegetarians, nor those who balk at licking their own fingers.

Our goal was harmless enough: to explore Southern Maryland’s myriad barbecue restaurants. In case you don’t know it, Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary’s counties are a veritable Wonderland of Barbecue, with at least one smoker going round the clock in seemingly every town or hamlet.

So we mapped our targets—mainly the eateries that line Routes 4, 5, and 301—stocked up on Tums, and left home without breakfast. But what initially had been an innocuous idea between colleagues suddenly became an all-out gastronomic challenge.

It’s a warm and sunny April day as we head south on Route 4 through Calvert County. Our first stop: Flavor of the South Café in Huntingtown. FSC looks like the prototypical barbecue shack, with a brick façade, glowing sign that announces “Open,” and on top of the building, a simple, white wooden board with black letters reading BAR-B-Q.

FSC is purely a take-out joint, and there’s a steady stream of customers stopping by on the way home from work to pick up dinner. We order up the house specialty, pulled pork. It’s purely North Carolina-style ‘cue, the meat’s appropriately minced, if a little mushy, and tastes of pepper
and vinegar.

Side dishes here are varied and tasty. In addition to the standard baked beans and coleslaw, there’s collard greens, country potatoes, cajun rice, spiced apples, and, behind the counter, a tray of deviled eggs sprinkled with paprika that looks like something out of a 1960s Rotary Club picnic. Next time, we might even be tempted to try owner David Barrett’s colossal crab cakes, which are the size of a boxer’s fist and a bargain at $9.99 each.

We motor past Red Hot and Blue in Prince Frederick and Adam’s The Place for Ribs in St. Leonard (sorry, no chains) to our next saucy destination: Solomons. The small Calvert County town has become a miniature mecca of barbecue, with three restaurants specializing in ‘cue. Boomerangs Original Ribs is the largest of the trio and reportedly boasts a rollicking outside deck during summer months. We poke our heads inside the restaurant, but can’t get past the heavy smoke in the entryway bar. (Marlboro, not mesquite.)

So we head a quarter mile down the road to Jethro’s BBQ. (Any place named Jethro’s has to have good ‘cue, right?) From the outside, it looks like the sort of place you wouldn’t feel comfortable bringing your prudish Aunt Sally, but inside, it’s about as family friendly as a barbecue hall can get: pastel walls with colorful murals of Solomons scenes, a “kids’ bar” boasting a half-dozen seats and a TV tuned to cartoons, and a full-service ice cream operation.

We dive into Jethro’s barbecue sampler, which is enough for two and includes brisket, pork ribs, spare ribs, fries, slaw and beans for $19.95. By far the best meat is the chicken, pink in color (from the smoke) and about as juicy and flavorful as a bird can get.

Unfortunately, the third Solomons eatery, The Grill Sergeant BBQ, isn’t open yet, but we hear from locals that this could be the best of the bunch. Owner Mike Theesen, who day jobs as a criminal investigator for the U.S. Department of Defense, has earned a reputation for catering throughout Southern Maryland, and his Memphis-style dry rub is supposedly a dusty ambrosia. (Update: Since our visit, The Grill Sergeant has opened adjacent to the Tiki Bar for carry-out only, and Mike Theesen has since been promoted to lieutenant, but as he says, The Grill Lieu-tenant just doesn’t have the same ring.)

Smelling slightly of sauce and still picking our teeth, we bunk down for the night at Solomon Island’s Blue Heron Bed and Breakfast. Tomorrow, Southern Maryland’s barbecue legends await.

It’s 11 a.m. and there’s already a line at Bear Creek Open Pit Bar-B-Q in Callaway on Route 5. The place is a vegan’s nightmare. Not only is the crowded barbecue pit front and center when customers walk in, the mountain lodge-like dining room is a zoo of taxidermed beasts big and small, most of them shot—and eaten—by owner Curtis Shreve and/or his son. ("We don’t kill anything we don’t eat,” says Shreve.) Our vegetarian photographer winces, but the rest of us lick our lips.

And indeed, Bear Creek, which has been in the same location for eleven years, does not disappoint. Shreve’s Texas-style dry rubbed ribs are fat and tasty, but it’s his pulled beef that commands our attention. The meat is perfectly cooked, with a hint of hickory smoke, and as tender as an Elvis Presley love song. We don’t even mind the fact that the stuffed white ram nearby seems to be eyeing us warily. 

Shreve is from Louisiana and spent time in Texas, so don’t overlook his chili, which is also available as part of a Frito pie—chili, cheese, and onions served over a pile of Frito’s corn chips. 

We drive on past Leonardtown and Loveville and horse-drawn Amish buggies to Hughesville, the home of Randy’s Ribs and Barbecue. Randy Keeton has been serving up award-winning ‘cue at the carryout since 1981, and he just opened another outlet in Dunkirk with inside seating. His beige-sided shack looks more like a big roadside ice cream stand, but the smell from the heavy, cast-iron smokers out back says otherwise.

At this point, the thought of eating more barbecue is about as appealing as coconuts to an island castaway, but we press on and order the pulled pork platter, which comes with coleslaw and baked beans. We chow down at one of the picnic tables along the noisy highway, dreaming of leafy salads. The pulled pork is perhaps the best we’ve had on our sojourn thus far—spicy and flavorful with excellent texture. The slaw is crisp, with an untraditional tang, which Keeton later reveals to be apple cider vinegar.

In his twenty-six years in Hughesville, Keeton tells us he’s attracted his fair share of regular customers, including one feisty woman in her eighties who insists on ordering the spiciest barbecue Keeton can make—"‘Give me the hot now. Make sure it’s hot,’ she tells me"—and a guy who passed through town years ago and regularly requests overnight shipments of Keeton’s ‘cue sent to his home—in Hawaii. We consider having Keeton send us our own shipment of his pulled pork, but we have another Southern Maryland institution to visit first: Johnny Boy’s Ribs.

The La Plata landmark has been in business along Route 301 since 1980, but owner John Katsouros, a Greek immigrant, opened his first barbecue joint in Southeast Washington, D.C., way back in 1961. We ask Katsouros’s daughter, Alexandra, how a Greek immigrant got into the barbecue business in the first place. “He always said, ‘If somebody else can do it, I can do it, too,’” she tells us. So he borrowed $3,000 from an uncle, got himself a smoker, and started cookin’ ‘cue. Alexandra’s grandmother, “Mama” Sophie came up with the recipe for the sauce, and the entire family still pitches in today. Katsouros has since retired, but Alexandra, who was “ringing the cash register before she could reach it,” and a niece, Katerina, oversee the operation today.

Johnny Boy’s is another idyllic barbecue stand—a yellow wooden building with a tin roof and fifteen or so picnic tables set up outside. Most of us would rather eat shoes than barbecue by now, but Johnny Boy’s ribs prove too good to resist—the meat is tender and full of flavor and falls off the bone into our tired mouths. Side dishes at Johnny Boy’s are also worthy—the coleslaw and potato salad are light on the mayonnaise and the lemonade freshly squeezed. 

Feeling bloated and running low on antacid, we head north up Route 301 to our seventh and final stop of the tour: Lefty’s Barbecue Unlimited. Located in a Waldorf strip mall next to a medical clinic (which might come in handy), Lefty’s is the least atmospheric of the places we’ve visited, but the blues soundtrack that greets us sets a more appropriate mood inside.

It’s dinnertime, and the restaurant’s two dozen tables are packed, while a steady stream of customers wait at the take-out counter. Lefty’s has a huge variety of items on its menu, ranging from a twenty-ounce porterhouse steak grilled over hickory wood to fried wing dings, served with a choice of sauces. There’s also an amazing seventeen side dishes. (Fried corn nuggets, anyone?) The certified Angus beef brisket platter sounds good in theory and surely, the baby back ribs would undoubtedly make a Memphis mama proud, but we just can’t stomach anymore ‘cue.

Punch drunk on sauce, we stumble to the counter and order the closest thing to dessert we can find: the sweet potato soufflé. It’s deliciously sweet and spiked with tiny marshmallows—the perfect panacea for our angry bellies.

So there it is: seven barbecue restaurants in twenty-four hours. We’d like to believe that no pigs were harmed in this little experiment, but indeed they were. And while our road trip was a fun experience, as we head back to our respective homes—sauce caked under our nails—we all have to wonder: Will we ever be able to eat barbecue again?

Contacts

Flavor of the South Cafe
3920 Old Town Rd.
Huntingtown, Md. 410-414-9407

Bear Creek Open Pit Bar-B-Q
21030 Point Lookout Rd.
Callaway, Md. 301-994-1030

Boomerangs Original Ribs
13820 H. G. Trueman Rd.
Solomons, Md.
410-326-6050, http://www.loveribs.com

Jethro’s BBQ/Annie’s Ice Cream
13880 North Solomons Island Rd.
Solomons, Md. 410-394-6700

The Grill Sergeant BBQ
77 Charles St.
Solomons Island, Md.
410-394-6000, http://www.thegrillsgtbbq.com

Johnny Boy’s Ribs
7530 Crain Hwy.
La Plata, Md. 301-392-3086

Randy’s Ribs
Leonardtown Rd.
Hughesville, Md.
301-274-3525, http://www.randysribs.com

Lefty’s Barbecue Unlimited
2064 Crain Hwy. 
Waldorf, Md.
301-638-3813, http://www.leftysbarbecue.com