Community Corner

Pork Barrel BBQ to Unveil New Sauce During D.C. Meat Week

Eight-day event comes to Del Ray Tuesday

Barbecue lovers, whet your appetites.

D.C. Meat Week 2012 is coming to Del Ray Tuesday, Jan. 31. That evening, Pork Barrel BBQ will debut it’s new Pork Barrel Carolina Vinegar BBQ sauce and offer a special Meat Week Sampler Plate that includes a quarter-pound each of brisket and pulled pork, along with a quarter chicken, three ribs, one Texas brisket sausage link and a choice of two sides for $20.12.

This is the third year Pork Barrel BBQ has participated in D.C. Meat Week, said the event’s founder, Mike Bober.

“They’ve consistently been a favorite of people who have gone year after year, and they offer a great barbecue relative to what is available in the area,” Bober said.

The past two years, the Pork Barrel BBQ company has held its event at Mango Mike’s. The restaurant moved into its own location, at 2312 Mt. Vernon Ave., last year. Pork Barrel BBQ has been a supportive and enthusiastic partner in each year’s culinary celebration, said Jenelle Dennis, D.C. Meat Week captain.

“It’s great to finally see them have a place of their own,” she said.

Heath Hall, Pork Barrel BBQ co-founder and president, said he was looking forward to the upcoming event.

“We’re really excited to be able to host Meat Week at our own location this year,” he said. “We think its going to be really great.”

The new sauce is a Lexington, N.C.-style creation that includes vinegar, tomato, red pepper flakes, hot sauce and spices. The sauce is not yet available in the restaurant.

“The people doing Meat Week will be among the first to sample it,” Hall said. “ … A lot of the folks that come out are hard-core barbecue fans, so it will be great to get some feedback from some hard-core fans for the first time.”

Hall said he plans to offer the sauce on a regular basis within the coming months.

D.C. Meat Week is an eight-day celebration of barbecue in and around Washington. Bober said got the idea to start D.C. Meat Week after a local food columnist wrote about the national Meat Week, which started in 2005 in Tallahassee, Fla., and invited readers to join him for a “meat night” at a Rockville restaurant. The event was so successful that Bober decided to launch a meat week just for the metropolitan Washington area in 2010.

Bober and his wife blog about food, on Capital Spice, so they already had contacts in the industry. Thus D.C. Meat Week was born.

“Our first year was a big success, so we’ve continued to grow year upon year,” he said.

The week features the area’s best barbecue and runs from Sunday, Jan. 29, through Sunday, Feb. 5. It includes restaurants in Washington, Maryland and Virginia. Pork Barrel BBQ will host D.C. Meat Week participants between 7 and 9:30 p.m. Jan. 31.

For more information, visit the Meat Week website.


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