A slice of barbecue heaven in Alabama’s Black Belt

Jamie Lee Mitchell was again dwelling in Gainesville, a city of lower than 200 individuals in distant Sumter County, close to the Alabama-Mississippi border.

Mitchell left right here when he was 19 and moved to Boston, the place he met his spouse, raised 4 youngsters, and, for practically 30 years, ran a barbershop.

He had returned to his little hometown on the Tombigbee River in Alabama’s Black Belt in the summertime of 2019 to attend the funeral of an outdated household good friend.

After the service, Mitchell become a pair of shorts and went for a stroll on the land that he had inherited.

That’s when he had his “Discipline of Goals” second.

“I begin strolling across the property like I all the time do,” he remembers, “and this specific day, I heard this voice say: ‘Jamie Lee, that is the place your restaurant must be.’”

Wait. What?

“And I advised the voice, ‘Ain’t no rattling means my restaurant is meant to be in Gainesville.’”

In Boston, Mitchell had began a small catering enterprise as a aspect gig, and phrase had gotten round Beantown about his candy dwelling Alabama barbecue.

Enterprise was so good, the truth is, that he was significantly trying into opening a restaurant up there.

Or so he thought.

“I stored strolling across the property,” he continues the story, “and this voice mentioned once more: ‘That is the place your restaurant must be.’

“I mentioned, ‘Effectively, I’ll be rattling. Ain’t this one thing?’”

He didn’t say something to his spouse and youngsters on the time, however he knew proper then that he could be going again to Alabama to remain.

Sooner reasonably than later.

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‘That is my heaven’

A couple of yr after that voice beckoned him dwelling, Mitchell moved his household to Sumter County on the Fourth of July 2020, just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ten months later, in Might 2021, he opened the Alabama Rib Shack not in Boston however in historic Gainesville, which, within the 1840s, had been a significant port with a inhabitants of greater than 4,000 earlier than a hearth destroyed a lot of downtown.

The A-frame log cabin that homes the restaurant is partly surrounded by a thicket of timber alongside Alabama Freeway 116, a shortcut on the way in which to the casinos in Philadelphia, Miss.

Mitchell — who goes by the title “Pitmaster Jamie Lee’’ — did many of the development work himself, constructing the restaurant from the bottom up.

“I needed my restaurant to be an actual, true log cabin,” he says. “The very best logs they make is these dovetail logs. I mentioned, ‘I gotta have that for my restaurant.’”

A neat row of picnic tables — flanked by freshly planted fig timber — leads from the gravel car parking zone to the aspect door of the restaurant, the place a chalkboard signal greets clients: “Welcome to Alabama Rib Shack. Dwelling of the Pig Tails.”

A small-town Alabama BBQ joint and the little boy who impressed it

Inside, the restaurant is an homage to the individuals who raised Mitchell and the group that formed him.

Framed images of outdated family and friends members cowl one of many partitions. Amongst them are photos of Sarah and William Eddins, the couple who raised him from a child; Lavell Burrell, the gentleman who impressed him to cook dinner barbecue; and the Rev. Lewis Thomas, the preacher who taught him his carpentry expertise.

“That is my Legends Wall,” the 52-year-old Mitchell says. “All people on this wall contributed to creating me the person I’m in the present day.”

He has repurposed church pews from Gainesville’s historic Clark Chapel United Methodist Church to make use of as desk benches, and the china cupboard that belonged to Mitchell’s great-grandmother is a show case for the cocktail glasses for the bar.

The trophy bucks mounted on the partitions are presents from among the deer hunters who eat right here throughout looking season.

“You bought all these hunters, like 148 looking golf equipment (round) right here,” Mitchell says. “Folks from all around the United States that come right here to hunt. And to have a superb restaurant right here, and a bar, they actually respect it.”

The pit room behind the restaurant is Mitchell’s sanctuary, the place he tends to 2 custom-made metal people who smoke, one for the pork and the opposite for the rooster. Rows of white oak and pecan firewood are stacked floor-to-ceiling.

He’s planning so as to add a one-bedroom “pitmaster suite” upstairs so he can babysit his barbecue in a single day.

“It feels so good out right here,” Mitchell says. “I find it irresistible. That is my heaven.”

‘How spectacular is that this?’

Late on a Friday morning, sculptor and restoration artist Dale Chambliss, a former Baptist preacher who moved to Gainesville from Birmingham a dozen or so years in the past, pulls up within the car parking zone to ship some outdated, rusted shovel blades that he figures Mitchell can use to make one thing for the restaurant.

“I assumed you might dangle ‘em up someplace,” Chambliss suggests. “I do know you’re artistic.”

“I’m gonna wait on the calling,” Mitchell says. “I gotta hearken to the spirits inside my soul. They’ll inform me what to do with them.”

Chambliss, who, like Mitchell, is aware of tips on how to take one thing outdated and make one thing new, marvels at what his good friend has constructed.

“How spectacular is that this?” Chambliss says, motioning towards the country log cabin and its weeping willow-shaded patio. “It’s a breath of recent air for this group.”

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Round midday, the lunch crowd begins to trickle in — a gaggle of parents visiting from Texas, two faculty college students from close by Livingston, and a few guys from Tuscaloosa out on their Friday drive.

“Me and my spouse come by (right here) on the way in which to the on line casino,” one of many males, O.V. Garner, says. “We watched them construct, so each time we’d come by, we’d say we have to go.”

Garner ordered the smoked sausage, and his good friend, Norman Davis, acquired the pulled pork. They every acquired a aspect of collard greens.

“It’s well worth the drive,” Garner says. “These are one of the best collard greens I’ve had since I used to be a child.”

Mitchell, in blue Liberty overalls and along with his waist-length dreadlocks piled into an olive-green turban, goes from desk to desk ensuring all people’s blissful.

“How’s all the things?” he asks. “What do you assume?”

Along with Texas, St. Louis and child again ribs, the Alabama Rib Shack menu options pulled pork, smoked sausage, smoked rooster, jerk rooster, rib suggestions and pig tails. Sides embody baked beans, candied yams, potato salad, collards, coleslaw, and mac and cheese.

Phrase of mouth is Mitchell’s finest commercial.

“If 10 individuals come within the door, I do know when these 10 individuals exit that I’m gonna have 20 extra individuals,” he says. “I do know when these 20 individuals exit, it’s gonna be 40 extra individuals. I imagine in my product.”

‘By no means labored for no person’

Born and raised in Gainesville, Jamie Lee Mitchell was adopted at beginning by Sarah and William Eddins, who had been shut associates of his late maternal grandmother. They had been 67 years outdated when he was born.

It’s a sophisticated story, Mitchell says, however his mom was 13 when she had him, and the Eddinses raised each him and his mom.

Though they don’t seem to be associated by blood, Mitchell considers William Eddins to be his grandfather and Sarah Eddins to be his grandmother.

The couple lived in Gainesville however owned some farmland throughout the Tombigbee River in neighboring Greene County, the place they grew peanuts and cucumbers, raised cows and pigs, and taught Jamie Lee the worth of incomes his personal means.

“My grandfather couldn’t learn or write, however he was the neatest man I ever met in my life,” Mitchell says. “He taught me tips on how to use my fingers.

“My grandmama, I feel she mentioned she had a fifth-grade training,” he provides. “However she was a terrific reader and nice speller, and he or she was very profitable.

“They usually had been entrepreneurs. They by no means labored for no person. They had been farmers. They all the time had a option to make their very own cash.”

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When Mitchell was about 11, he says, he went along with his grandmother to a Smith’s Normal Retailer, and he was mesmerized by a set of males’s hair clippers in a show case.

He pleaded together with her to purchase them.

“One thing about them clippers simply fascinated me, man,” he says. “And I advised my grandmama, ‘I can lower hair; I do know I can do it.’’’

She made a cope with him. If he might give you half of the $7 that the clippers value, she would cowl the remaining.

“Earlier than that day was over,” Mitchell says. “I had half of the cash.”

It wasn’t lengthy earlier than their little funding began paying off.

“I used to be chopping hair at 12 years outdated on my grandmother’s porch,” Mitchell says. “I had grown males coming to my grandmother’s home on a Sunday to get haircuts.”

Later, as a teen, Jamie Lee acquired to tag alongside along with his grandfather when he went over to his good friend Lavell Burrell’s all-night, whole-hog barbecue cookouts.

“We known as him Uncle Lavell,” Mitchell remembers. “He would cook dinner pigs at his home, and my grandfather would go over there and hang around with him. I might be proper there with him. I all the time needed to go, simply to see it.

“So, that was my first inspiration, is watching him do the entire hogs.”

Jamie Lee was too younger to understand it on the time, however these two life occasions would form his future.

Barbering would supply a method for him to make a residing after he left Gainesville, and barbecuing could be the rationale for coming again.

‘I really like Alabama’

Because it turned out, convincing his spouse and household to maneuver from metropolitan Boston to tiny Gainesville was surprisingly simple for Mitchell.

Their daughter Jaymie, who’s 19 now and works within the restaurant, was on board from the beginning, though the boys, 14-year-old Jayar and 12-year-old Jesse, wanted just a little convincing. Their different daughter, Jasmyn, the oldest of the 4, stayed in Boston.

But it surely was Mitchell’s spouse, Stephanie, who was born and raised in Boston, who had the final word say.

“Oh, I couldn’t wait (to maneuver),” Stephanie Mitchell says. “I really like the South, however I really like Alabama particularly.

“We’ve been coming backwards and forwards right here for the previous 20 years or so, and we had been all the time like, ‘Oh, at some point this shall be a pleasant place to retire.’

“Then, a possibility offered itself, and I simply couldn’t consider a purpose to not (transfer).”

When she first began coming right here with Jamie Lee within the early 2000s, Stephanie was caught off-guard by simply how distant Gainesville was. Then she grew to find it irresistible.

Of their free time, Jamie Lee and Stephanie go fishing and kayaking on the Tombigbee River.

“At first, I used to be just a little shocked on the infrastructure — or lack thereof — and the way rural and remoted it was,” she says. “That was one of many issues that originally struck me.

“However then, secondarily, was simply the great thing about the place,” she provides. “A part of it being so rural is that it’s untouched, individuals aren’t messing with the character of all of it.”

‘Let my thoughts go wild’

Together with her husband’s assist, Stephanie, an authorized nurse-midwife, is within the last levels of ending a mission of her personal — remodeling a 187-year-old antebellum home on close by Webster Avenue into Alabama’s first freestanding beginning heart. She hopes to open it later this yr.

“It’s coming,” she says. “It’s like a snail’s tempo round right here, but it surely’s transferring.”

Till then, she is pitching in across the restaurant, serving to and supporting Jamie Lee.

“He likes to name me the supervisor,” Stephanie says. “I’ve simply been in a supportive position principally, simply as an additional serving to hand. I’m not a restaurateur or a waitress, however I help him.”

Why this Boston midwife is constructing Alabama’s first freestanding beginning heart

For Jamie Lee — who is just not missing in confidence, imaginative and prescient or persona — the Alabama Rib Shack is all the things that he imagined, after which some.

“I needed to create this wonderful ambiance that no different barbecue restaurant has and simply let my thoughts go wild,” he says.

“So, when individuals are available right here, they simply say, ‘Wow, this simply seems so totally different — and the meals is sweet on prime of that.’”

The voice didn’t steer him fallacious.

He constructed it. They usually have come.

The Alabama Rib Shack is at 9316 State St. in Gainesville, Ala. The cellphone is 205-652-1115. Hours are midday to eight p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and midday to five p.m. Sundays. For extra info, comply with the Alabama Rib Shack on Fb, Instagram and TikTok.

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