This past Sunday was a glorious day in the ATL. Sunny and 80 degrees. The occasion was a outdoor event for the children of the congregation of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Atlanta. David Poe, owner, catering manager, and general genius of Sam and Dave's BBQ called me up and asked if I'd be interested in assisting with the event. It turned out we would be feeding somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 hungry folks.
Arriving at Sam and Dave's BBQ2 at 8:30am on Sunday, the first task of the day was to pull the pork. Let me tell you a little secret. It's quite a special experience to pull 25 steaming hot pork butts that early in the morning. Without a doubt, it will test your love for Q. Once the pork butts were pulled, we moved on to chicken, and then began to pack up for our trip to the church. We took 7 or 8 Cambros worth of pork, chicken, and beans as well as probably 10 gallons of cole slaw and just as much BBQ sauce. We had our A-team of caterers assembled that day. Besides myself, there was David Poe (BBQ Lord) and his daughter Casey, Kevin and Lori, Andrew, and Ann.
When we arrived, I saw there were several inflatable, bouncy, fun things and I knew we were in trouble. I had a bad feeling that I'd be pulling Poe off one of those slides before the end of the day. Luckily, that didn't happen. The A-team quickly got to work and got setup. From that point on, it was good times and smiles. Working for Poe is as easy as it gets. He's relaxed, balanced, and confident and that makes for relaxed, balanced and confident servers. The service went off without a hitch. Compliments flowed from every direction. "This is the best BBQ ever! Where is your restaurant located?" etc. Before you knew it, we had run out of chicken and pork and we had served over 500 folks in what felt like the blink of an eye.
Here's a few pictures of our day. First we have
Lori, Kevin, and Ann enjoying the sun during the calm before the storm. We were waiting for the folks to finish up mass and join us out in the courtyard
Kevin has been working with Poe since he was a child. The best part of the day was listening to him tell us the story about the time that Poe was driving to an event in Marietta, GA and his extremely large cooker came unhooked from his truck and wound up smashing through the front of an antique mall. A testament to his get-it-done attitude, Poe still managed to get his BBQ served that day, telling his crew "Come on! We've got deductable money to earn."
If there is anything David loves more than BBQ, it's his children. Here, he's pictured with his daughter Casey. Casey has inherited her father's gift for the gab and his love of BBQ as well.
Here we haveDavid Poe and Charlie Pero. Charlie provided the other half of the catering that day which was delicious pizza (46 of them total). Charlie owns Pero's Pizza on Northside drive in Atlanta. His Italian food is a fixture of the Buckhead dining scene. These are two gentlemen who know how to make large quantities of food and get it served without breaking a sweat.
Since Sunday's event was focused on the children, the organizers had secured some top shelf entertainment for the families in attendance. I'm pictured here with Lisa Michaelis and Billy Schlosser, the husband/wife team that comprises two thirds of Laughing Pizza. Their 11 year old daughter, Emily, had already made her way to the rides and the face painting at this point of the day. For those of you unfamiliar with Laughing Pizza, they are the Van Halen of the kids music world. You can check them out at their website, Laughing Pizza.
Happy people eating good BBQ.
Smiling faces after a hard day's work and a good job accomplished. This is me and Casey before we stuffed our faces full of some delicious pizza that Charlie Pero graciously cooked for us.
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