The manly art of grilling

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF MASCULINE CHEFS LIKE MARIO BATALI AND TOM COLICCHIO HAS TURNED A GENERATION OF MEN INTO FOODIES.

REGION^ ~w.-..,_3-NO MATTER HC, -,^PPY-HAVE BECOME CURIOSITIES FOR THE MO,, .vrn^il-CATED OF PALATES. FOR THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES, WE SEND THE PLAYBOY GOURMAND TO MCCLARD'S IN HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS TO LEARN THE ART OF GRILLING PORK RIBS. MASTER THESE

In gangsterspeak it was a "wide-open city." Leniency on the part of lawmen in Hot Springs, Arkansas lured the country's most notorious wiseguys during the most heralded era of gang-sterdom: Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky. Al Capone based his bootlegging operation here, running moonshine in railroad cars marked mountain valley water. In 1928 a restaurant that catered to these men and their moneyed ilk opened. The McClard family made its bones cooking meat and sauce so good they should have been illegal.

Bible-thumpers have long since replaced the goons in this sleepy back­water town, but McClard's is still in business. It has been called the most authentic restaurant in America. Bill Clinton grew up less than a mile away. "The chopped beef and beans are his favorite," says Scott McClard, great-grandson of the founder. "When he was governor he would send men down

all the time to pick it up, and when he was president I'd meet him at the air­port and deliver enough barbecue to fill Air Force One." Clinton still stops by when he's in town, as do other McClard's fans like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Aerosmith gui­tarist Joe Perry (who is so into barbe­cue he bottles his own sauce).

On an April morning just before six a.m., Scott and his father, Joe McClard, are in the restaurant's dungeonlike kitchen, tossing hickory logs into the bottom of two fire pits, each the size of a Honda Accord. Hanging on the walls are the tools of the trade: iron meat hooks, a well-worn ax. "We do things pretty archaically down here," Scott says. "This is exactly how my great­grandfather Alex did it in 1928." I have come to master the art of barbecue as only McClard's can do it. Minutes after sunrise I'm in barbecue boot camp.

We start the fire with the logs, newspaper and matches. 1 manage to get one of the pits

going without setting myself ablaze, though it's hard to ignore the smell of singed hair on my wrists. We load the pits with 35 pounds of pig legs, 50-pound "gooseneck" beef cuts and 20 racks of pork ribs. The meat goes into the pits without any dry rub, no splatter of sauce, not even a dash of salt. Hickon' smoke and histon' offer up all the flavor that's needed.

By 6:15 the fire is roaring. Research any barbecue recipe and you'll learn the "correct" temperature at which to cook under the so-called low-and-slow theory: 225 degrees to 250 degrees. McClard's pits are clocking in at a blazing 500. My shirt is covered in pig blood, and my arms are ready to give out from the weight of Flintstones-size cuts of beef. At 6:20 the Godfather arrives.

Silver haired and gregarious, J.D. McClard, son of founder Alex McClard, started working for his dad in 1942. "I remember the first time 1 went to deliver barbecued goat to a gangster's card game," he says. "I knocked on the door and heard

the shotguns lock. When they opened the door I saw all their girls running around in their panties. They gave me a 50-cent tip." J.D. retired three years ago, at the age of 82. Quick to ask when the Play­mates will be showing up, he takes me outside to show off his new Lincoln with plates

reading bar-b-q.

He likes to tell th story of how the res­taurant was born, j In rhe 1920s Alex

was running a little hotel near the entrance to Hot Springs National Park. One guest couldn't come up with the 10 bucks to settle his bill. "My daddy wouldn't let the man off without get­ting something in return," he says, "so the guy offered to give him the recipe for the world's best barbecue sauce and teach him the ropes." Over the next Jtwo weeks the two t men built a pit brick

by brick while J.D.'s mom tinkered with the sauce recipe. "The man took off and never once got in touch to see what we made of the place," J.D. says. The sauce recipe is a secret to this day, locked away in a safe-deposit box at a local bank—the McClard clan won't even reveal which bank it's in.

"There's really no other like it, and I've tasted them all," Joe says. "It's tomato based but with a real fiery kick. I know people who use it in bloody marys."

Finally the time comes to sit down and eat. The dining room looks like it did when Al Capone ate here: red booths, gumball machines. (While "real" barbecue joints have recently enjoyed a renaissance across the coun­try, most places—with their theme decor—are pale imitations of true orig­inals like Kreuz Market in Texas, Pete Jones's Skylight Inn in North Carolina and McClard's.) I dig into a plate of ribs and fries—six pork ribs covered with a pile of hand-cut fries.

"Well," Scott asks, "what do you think?"

What's more simple and perfect than meat on a bone cooked over a wood fire and eaten with the utensils found at the end of your arms?

"Put it this way," I reply. "If I were going to the electric chair, this would be my last meal."

"We've had that before," he deadpans. "There was a guy who was going to get a lethal injection down at the prison in southern Arkansas. They called and said they were coming to pick up his last meal. He wanted a beef sandwich."

I arrive the next morning after a sleepless night brought on by the ingestion of chopped beef, pork shoul­der and McClard's famous tamale spread (a freakishly good concoction of two hand-rolled tamales topped

with Fritos, beans, chopped beef, sauce, onions and cheddar cheese). It's 5:30 A.M. and Joe has already been here for three hours, making the 24 gallons of sauce McClard's goes through every day.

"Dude, you gotta hear this," says Scott, coming out of the kitchen. The last time I saw him it was one a.m. and we had just polished off a case of Budweiser.

He informs me that Mike, one of our photographer's assistants, has just thrown 10 years of vegetarianism out the window. Apparently three days of pho­tographing meat was too much for him.

"So I heard you gave in and had a rib," I later tell Mike.

"I had more than one," he replies.

"And? How were they?"

"Fucking awesome," he says.