The Shed

When I think of summer I think of BBQ.  We head out to all kinds of BBQ festivals, and my husband smokes out from as soon as it’s bearable to be outside for long periods of time to right around the rainy season we tend to get after Halloween.  He loves to smoke and we love his ribs, pulled pork, pork and beans and grilled potato salad.  He tries to smoke everything!

(Pigs and Peaches BBQ Festival in Kennesaw, GA last weekend)

  If you have followed me for any amount of time then you may have seen a trip or two to Biloxi, Mississippi.  Actually the picture in my header is from Biloxi Beach.  Outside of that Casino town is a quaint little town called Ocean Springs.

 

My in-laws used to have a condo tucked away on a bayou in Ocean Springs.  The down town area is very popular and has lots of  shops and delicious restaurants.  But  the place that is on our “have to do” every trip is “The Shed”.  We had seen a BBQ competition on the Food Network a year before we took our first trip to Biloxi.  The brother and sister team from Mississippi had a great story:

Once there was a guy that spent most of his out-of-class time at Ole Miss scouting out, jumping in, and rummaging through dumpsters and street side garbage piles.  The highlight of his week was the “night before trash day.”  After graduation, he wanted to move back to the Coast.  One sobering morning he surveyed all he had collected over the years.  It was everywhere, it was insane: warped used two by fours, old tin roofing, bent nails, ugly windows, mountains of pure, unadulterated junk!

Not knowing what to do with it and not willing to part with a single plastic bucket or warped record, he built a trailer out of the larger parts and loaded the rest on top of this homemade junk hauler and moved back to Ocean Springs. One evening while dumpster diving on the Coast, the guy, Brad Orrison, knee deep in hardwood flooring had an epiphany: “I’m gonna’ build myself a take out barbeque joint with all this junk!” Brad (24) and his sister Brooke (19) hammered and nailed.  They practiced cooking, smoking, and timing meat to perfection.  A few weeks after opening, Brother Brett (22) just graduating from Full Sail University in Recording Arts and being the sound engineer for the House of Blues in New Orleans, breezed in with all his knowledge and contacts to set up one of the finest Blues venues in the South.  Now, The Shed had all the elements it needed to become a true BBQ & Blues Joint.

– See more at: http://theshedbbq.com/about/the-shed-story/#sthash.ieKdIId8.dpuf

The first time we saw “The Shed” it actually was just as described, a BBQ joint pieced together with plywood, tin and hub caps!  You could tell where they decided to add-on and where it started.  Every growth had been documented in the walls and on the floor.

We heard about a year or so ago the entire thing went up in smoke.  This last July we stopped in for some BBQ on the way home and the place has been rebuilt and looked fabulous.  They could seat people and you weren’t worried about the place falling in on you;)  But now they also have started a show on the Food Network.

 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/the-shed/index.html

The show is a little too rehearsed and corny…but the BBQ is fantastic.  If you ever find yourself driving on I-10 by Ocean Springs, MS…stop at exit #57, and “Get Fed at the Shed”.  You won’t be sorry….I guarantee!

GETTIN’ FED AT THE SHED!

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