John Tanner

Although the site's name focuses on barbecue, the Blog has morphed into a wide-ranging travel blog. I'm a great believer in eating local specialties, so the Blog covers all sorts of food --seafood and Cuban food when I'm in Florida, French cuisine when I'm in France, and so forth. And it's expanded to cover hotels and other aspects of travel. I hope you'll use the "search" function before you take a trip. And take advantage of the "Where to eat...(Near the Louvre, In Southwest Florida, etc.)" posts and "Best Places to Eat Near I-95 Between Washington, DC, and Miami, and on to Key West." Barbecue certainly is a recurring theme. I grew up in Alabama eating barbecue. Although I live in DC, which until recently has been a barbecue desert, I was able to continue eating barbecue during a long career with the Justice Department, mainly litigating voting rights cases. I spent much of my time on the road in Alabama and Mississippi, but the cases took me to barbecue places all over the country, from Boston to San Diego and from Miami to Seattle. And it led me t experience all sorts of local cuisines. I was ... I am always looking for good restaurants. For a long time kept a list divided into two parts: "barbecue" and "other." I also have lots of relatives in North Carolina, which happens to be the nearest place to DC with good barbecue. And I spent several months in Texas, teaching at Baylor Law School, during which time I ate a whole lot of barbecue, guided mainly by the Texas Monthly magazine's list of the 50 best places there. There are many different style of barbecue, and I try to appreciate each on its own terms. That's part of eating local specialties. I have been making barbecue on my Weber grills -- pork butts cooked very slowly over direct heat with lots of hickory smoke -- since ...1976. I do a lot of other cooking, as you'll find if you check the "Recipes" tag. They're all very good, if I do say so. My wife, Nancy, set up this blog for me for Fathers' Day a while back, and it has helped me focus much more thoughtfully on the elements of each meal and exactly why I like it ... or don't. I've enjoyed travel even more than before, and it's an ongoing pleasure to share my experiences. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I do.