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“Stay with the pig until he makes a hog,” is the way one long-time BBQ purveyor talks about the challenges to her restaurant. These two dining rooms have long-since proven that axiom to be true.
Trish Royall pulled, minced and chopped barbecue meat for 40 years in her native North Carolina. Now, in Northeast Tennessee, she slices.
In 2016, she was driving down U.S. 421 in Mountain City, Tennessee, when she noticed the lights on once again at Mike’s Bar-B-Q and Sub Shop. Mike Blevins had operated the restaurant for 38 years before closing it down and putting it up for sale.
Royall wasn’t really in the job hunt that day in May, but she made a U-turn on the busy thoroughfare, went inside, and met the new owners, Jason and Codi Pass, who had re-opened the place just four days before.
“When can you start?” Jason Pass asked the barbecue veteran, who is originally from Wilkes County, North Carolina. Royall went to work that very day and stayed until 9:30 in the evening.
At Mike’s, pulling, mincing and chopping aren’t in the cards. Like another East Tennessee barbecue icon, Bluff City’s Ridgewood, Mike’s serves sliced meat only.
“When you slice the meat, it’s got a different texture to it,” says Pass. “You get a good smoky flavor in each bite.”
Jason Pass is an electrician by trade, but he employs no electricity whatsoever when he barbecues. Gas is out of the question, too. Barbecue at Mike’s means hickory wood, smoke and fire. Mike Blevins once told me, “If you don’t see smoke, you’re not eating barbecue. If you see gas or electricity, you’re not eating barbecue.”
For Pass, changing the name of the business was never an option. “A lot of times when you change the name of something, everyone assumes it’s different,” he says. “Mike had a well-established business here.”
Little has changed at this home of real barbecue in the northeast corner of the state. The barbecue pit Blevins designed still stands up to the heat. The garden hoe that he used to drag racks of meat out of the pit is propped against the wall.
Mike Blevins shared his knowledge and recipes freely with Jason and Codi Pass. His most valuable piece of advice was to keep Jeff Tester on the payroll. When he’s not watching over prisoners as a guard at the Northeast Correctional Complex, Tester tends the fires at Mike’s. Of his talented pitmaster and former high school classmate, Jason Pass says, “He’s the best meat smoker I’ve ever seen anywhere.”
Tester watches those Boston butts, also known as pork shoulders, until as late as three or four o’clock in the morning, taking an occasional short nap in his pickup truck. The barbecue method he uses is indirect smoking. Flames never really touch the meat.
Pass recites lessons about barbecue and barometric pressure to me almost verbatim as I remembered them from a 2005 conversation with Blevins. Pass says low barometric pressure is ideal for cooking barbecue because the smoke stays low to the ground and infuses the meat more deeply. And the temperature is more stable.
“When you slice our meat, you can see the smoke ring penetrating it four to six inches deep,” says Pass.
That pork meat is chilled for about 36 hours and then hand-sliced by Trish Royall. Alongside the grill at Mike’s is a pitcher of water, a simple but important element in the serving of barbecue for sandwiches and trays. The sliced pork is reheated on the grill and then steamed with water underneath a pan lid.
The sauce at Mike’s is a 19-ingredient concoction passed down to the new owners by Mike Blevins. Jason Pass describes it as “sweet, ketchup-based, with a little bit of heat to it.” The color is dark reddish-brown.
The exceptional shoulder sandwich at Mike’s consists of five and a half ounces of meat on a five-inch bun, with that East Tennessee-style sauce and Codi Pass’s homemade coleslaw.
“When she started making it, we had Mike come by and taste it,” Jason Pass tells us. “He said, ‘That’s a wonderful slaw. It’ll help your business.’”
He was right. Slaw sales at Mike’s have doubled.
Rolls, fries, and slaw are expected elements at a barbecue joint. The surprise at Mike’s is the popularity of the Italian sub, served cold with six large disks of pepperoni, three slices of provolone cheese, five ounces of deli ham, lettuce, tomato, onion, seasoning, and oil, all on an eight-inch hoagie roll.
Most customers say half that sandwich makes a full meal. “One lady from Ashe County, North Carolina, comes in and buys anywhere from five to 11 subs at a time,” Royall tells us.
Jason and Codi Pass even give credit to Mike for the way they stack the ingredients on that sandwich, which, they say, sells “like crazy.”
About a third of the business at Mike’s comes out of North Carolina, and the town of Damascus, Virginia, a major stop on the Appalachian Trail, is only 14 miles away.
“It’s an old-fashioned method with a lot of tradition,” Jason Pass says of his inherited barbecue style. “With wood, you can infuse more smoke into the meat than you can with electricity or gas.”
As he reflects on the first year of this life-changing business venture, Jason Pass says, “The Lord’s blessed us.”
“That He has,” Codi Pass quickly adds.
Mike’s Bar-B-Q and Sub Shop
Highway 421
Mountain City, Tennessee
423-727-9732
