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Meet John Stage, CEO and co-founder of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que's beginnings were humble, yet strategic.
In 1983, John Stage, CEO and co-founder of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, and his two partners, began parking their mobile concession stand at motorcycle shows, fairs and festivals throughout the Northeast. He cut a 55-gallon drum in half to smoke his now-nationally acclaimed barbecue, a resourceful move to say the least, as bikers ate it up.
After his time on the road, Stage settled in Syracuse, New York, where he opened his first restaurant location in 1988. Dinosaur BBQ now boasts six locations in N.Y, and two others in Newark, New Jersey and Stamford, Conn.
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
Getting an expert's take on great BBQ
Ahead of our Best Of Mass BBQ search, we caught up with Stage to gain his insight on what makes great barbecue.
What are the key pillars for making great barbecue? It's all about patience and judgment, Stage said.
"If you undercook it, it's rubber," he said. "If you overcook it, it's dog food. You gotta find that sweet spot in that long cooking process."
Q&A edited for clarity.
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
What makes great BBQ?
JS: "It depends a lot what time of day you're getting it. Is the BBQ fresh? If you cook it, serve it and move on, it's usually your best BBQ. If you're reheating and cooling, that's where the BBQ diminishes. You can get great BBQ just about anywhere, as long as they're doing it right."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
What is doing BBQ right?
JS: "Well, it's having a lot of patience. It's starting with a good piece of meat and knowing what to do with it through that long laborious process. So, it starts out with meat selection and how you trim your meat, what your rub is, how long you cook it, because a lot of times, patience is the key with good BBQ.
"It's a lot of repetition. The more you do it, the more intimate you get with your pit and the meat you're serving."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
Which types of meats cannot be missed on the Best Of Mass search?
JS: "Well, brisket is your most difficult meat. If somebody's mastering brisket, usually the rest of everything else is good.
"Brisket, pork shoulder, ribs, we do a lot of smoked chicken wings here. If you concentrate on that big three -- shoulder, ribs and brisket -- you'll be alright."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
How do you rank great BBQ?
JS: "It comes down to the taste and the texture, really, and you work backwards.
"You don't want any one thing overwhelming. You want a perfect balance of smoke, meat, spice and then have your sauce as a condiment. The BBQ, it should be able to stand on its own. You don't want it too smokey; you gotta get it right."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
What are the traditions of southern BBQ?
J.S. "It's cooking with wood. You've gotta cook with wood. You make a cold base and use the wood to feed the fire. Really, it's that low, slow cooking of your meat, and that's the tradition of BBQ. If you're doing that and you've got your fire right, you got your timing right, I don't care if you're in New York or you're in Alabama, we're all kind of doing the same thing.
"There's a timeline, but there's not an exact science to BBQ because every pice of meat is cooked a bit differently. It's being one with your pit, knowing your pit fire, knowing your meat and knowing when it's done.
"It sounds simple, but there's a lot to it. It's a lot of judgement. Good BBQ is a lot of judgement. You know, low and slow: That's traditional BBQ."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
What is your stamp and signature at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que?
JS: "The stamp becomes what your rub is. How do you season that meat? Your signature is your sauce. We like to use the sauce as a condiment. If you're at Dinosaur, you're not getting a real saucy BBQ. It's just kind of used as a condiment.
"You're going for that balance and compliment; nothing to overwhelm it. So, when you put sauce on the meat, we just glaze it with a light little glaze of sauce, so to me, it gives the combination of the meat, smoke, spice and a little bit of sauce just to pop it, which brings a little acidity into it. So, sauce is a condiment. It's not the main driver, but it's a nice condiment. That's not on me if they take that sauce and pour it all over.
"The next thing is your atmosphere, your side dishes, your vibe and that becomes your signature.
"The BBQ, there's your centerpiece. And if you're doing traditional BBQ, you're doing things the right way. Then, it becomes your sauce, your spice, your side dishes, your people, your feel, your vibe, all that."
What are some indicators of inauthentic barbecue?
JS: "Wherever they are, I would drive around and look for a wood pile. If you don't see a wood pile, it's probably not real BBQ. I like to see smoke belching. I like to smell it, you know, before I get there. Take a drive around back. See what the wood situation is.
"You can't really make that call until you see what lands on your plate. Some could be good if its inauthentic, also ... We'll take a ribeye and we'll cold smoke it and then we'll grill it. That's not authentic BBQ, but we're using smoke as a flavor to it. You wouldn't call that ribeye authentic BBQ, but you'd call it good.
"The lines are getting more and more blurred, so I wouldn't get too hung up. What's good is good."
How do you prevent spices and rubs from drowning out the flavors of the meat?
JS: "If you take something like a brisket or pork shoulder, you're just rubbing and seasoning the outside and you've still got another eight inches of meat, so it really forms what we call a bark around it. It's really hard to over season a brisket. You can over season ribs, because they get very thin, but brisket or shoulder, it's really on the outside. The dry spice really doesn't penetrate the interior of the meat.
"Again it's all about balance. You don't want to taste too much salt. You don't want to taste too much sugar. Sugar will make things dark. You don't want anything overwhelming -- whether it's smoke, the spice -- you gotta taste the meat."
Courtesy John Stage / Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
How do you prevent meat from being too smoky?
JS: "Getting the right fire burn and using the right wood, of course. You've got to start with a good hard wood. But, you don't want that acrid smoke. If the smoke is acrid and blackish, you can taste that on your meat.
"Meat will take about two to four hours to absorb your smoke, and then after that, it doesn't do too much. But, the first four hours are critical.
"So, in the first four hours, you gotta make sure you have a nice clean burn, a good smoky chamber. But, really the wood is the driver of the temperature, and the smoke is the byproduct. So, you've gotta have that right cold bed, and then, just don't add too much wood. You just don't want to overdo the wood."
jseft | Flickr Creative Commons
What wood makes the best BBQ?
JS: "It's gotta be hard wood, and it's probably got to be the wood that's closest to you. So, we got a lot of hickory and apple in New York. My restaurants, we get a lot from New Jersy, which has a lot of the same thing.
"In Texas, they got a lot of oak, they cook with oak.
"It's really what's indigenous to your area, and it's gotta be hard wood. Cherry's great. Oak is great. Apple's great. Hickory's great. Stay in those range. 'Conwood' is my favorite, but it's very expensive to get it from the South, so we tend not to mess with that."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
What's difficult about making brisket?
JS: "On one side, it's very thin and on the other side, it's very thick. The muscle and grain changes about three or four times. One side's very neat. One side's fatter.
"If something's thin, it cooks a lot quicker than something that's thick. So, on that one hunk of meat, you've got both thick and thin on the same pice of meat, and you've got all this connective tissue. You have to melt away all that connective tissue and sinew without drying out one side and make sure the other side is done.
"There's no two pieces of brisket that are exactly alike, so there's a lot of judgment in brisket. Ribs are easier. They're more uniform."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
How do you cook your ribs?
JS: "Ribs. I don't want the meat falling off the bone. I want the meat on the bone and easily pulled off. Falling off? That I don't want. That's an overcooked rib. The meat stays on, but when somebody's finished eating it, you can see no trace of meat on that bone."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
How important are sides in balancing the meal?
JS: "I think they're very important. We've got like 10 different side dished to choose from, and I like to do some healthy stuff too with BBQ - salads and specials.
"You know, traditional: Beans, coleslaw, mac and cheese, barbecued fried rice, we do fresh-cut fries. We do different salads. I like a complete meal. I like to have good sides."
Courtesy John Stage/Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
What qualities make a good pitmaster?
JS: "Judgment. I can teach everything. Judgment is the last one, because every piece of meat has to be judged before it's pulled. So, it's patience, it's judgment and then the other stuff you can teach: how to build and maintain a fire.
"Someone who really gives a shit and is very prideful of his work. Judgment's huge and a great work ethic, because it's tough back there. It's hot. It's smokey. It's physical. Someone who loves their craft and prideful of what they put out."
Pictured above is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que's executive chef Leland Avellino.
Sarah Crabill/Getty Images for Texas Motor Speedway
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