ROANOKE, Va. – “He just has always loved BBQ and loves the intricacy of how to smoke meat slowly.”
Andrea Mason’s husband, Tyler, is one of the owners of Crescent City Bourbon and BBQ. In addition to learning the intricacies of smoking meats, he and the team have crafted some awesome homemade sauces.
Of course, if you’re a BBQ joint you have to have the North Carolina and the Kansas City style sauce. They’ve added their own flare with the VA sauce.
Mason describes it as sweet and spicy, paraphrasing her husband by saying, “Since I’m from here, it can be whatever I want it to be.”
Tyler took his talents and passed them onto Jordan Pugh, who tells us, “Everything I learned I learned in like a year’s time.”
Pugh worked his way up to pitmaster and is just that - a master of his craft - showing the intricacy that goes into a good brisket.
He walks us through the process, “We do our own rub on it, a mix of our own spices to make sure we get a good bark on it all.”
Both our photographer, Chase, and I said this was one of the juiciest briskets we’d ever had. That will happen when you leave it in the smoker for 16 hours. As for the pulled pork, Pugh throws it in the smoker for 12 hours with aluminum foil wrapped around the pork butt.
He does this, because, “It traps the juice and makes everything cool all the way through. Like right now even the bone is falling apart in my hand. You can just crack it in half.”
What good is a BBQ joint without some killer sides? Pugh brought us down the line from baked beans to mac n’ cheese; collared greens to green beans; fries, white chicken chili and regular chili
BBQ is only in half the name, though. The other half is, of course, bourbon. As Mason tells us, even the cocktails are homemade too.
“Seven or eight different cocktails that a couple of the bartenders came up with.”
Once we finally break out of our gross weather pattern, you can head outside for the full experience too!
Mason says, “It’s really cool when it’s warm outside and the guys in the kitchen are using the outdoor smoker. Pretty much all of downtown can smell it.”
The crew posts specials to social media. You can find their regular drink and food menus by clicking the highlighted text.