"alabama" news and stories

A Birmingham restaurateur is putting a gourmet spin on a barbecue tradition that's thus far remained fiercely regional.

Sweet Bones Alabama, a downtown 'cue joint, last week began bottling its version of Alabama white sauce, a mayonnaise-based concoction pioneered in 1925 by Decatur's legendary pitmaster Big Bob Gibson, who liberally slathered the stuff on chicken. The sauce has since become a favorite dressing for just about anything fried or smoked in North Alabama, including pickles, tomatoes and venison.

"It's a very versatile sauce," Sweet Bones' owner John Cowan says.

While many white sauce fans make their own batches of Big Bob's famous sauce – an authorized cookbook published last year revealed the exact proportions of mayonnaise to pepper to vinegar -- Cowan thinks he's improved on the original. Among the first artisanal barbecue sauce makers to tackle white sauce, Cowan's crafted a recipe he describes as "much more complex, with more layered flavors."

Intrepid diners who were nervously approaching the final suggestions on Alabama's official "100 Dishes to Eat Before Your Die" list now have 67 new reasons to keep on eating.

The state's department of tourism this month issued a third edition of its phenomenally popular brochure, which now features 215 signature plates. While a few dishes have dropped off the list since its first printing in 2005, the department has understandably refused to let go of favorites like Dreamland's ribs and white bread, Ezell's catfish and Irondale Café's fried green tomatoes.

"We'd like everyone to try all 215 dishes," department spokeswoman Edith Parten says.

This year's new additions span the state, from Huntsville – where the Cotton Row Restaurant serves up peanut butter and jelly in phylo – to Mobile, home of NoJa's ginger donut. As the brochure's adjoining cover photos of high-end chef Frank Stitt and cheeseburger maven Lucy Buffett suggest, the showcased dishes run the gamut from homespun to hoity-toity: The 2010 list includes smoked meat and homemade stew, slaw dogs, green beans, strawberry salad, prime rib and day boat scallops with wild mushroom risotto.

A Minnesota native is challenging the accepted orthodoxy surrounding Mardi Gras moon pie throws in Mobile, Ala.

While the city's Chamber of Commerce insists the tradition is rooted in a group of Mobile mothers' concerns for the safety of their children, who were getting beaned by sharp-edged Cracker Jack boxes, researcher Emily Blejwas counters there's no evidence suggesting a bunch of well-meaning women introduced the soft, round cookies.

"I've heard several different stories," says Blejwas, a recent Auburn grad who's writing a book about Alabama food history. But most of the stories have the same punch line, she adds: "Everyone I talked to said, 'After I threw a moon pie, the next year, everybody threw them.' "

Younger Mobilians tell the story with a slightly different twist, says Blejwas: "They say, 'For sure, my dad threw the first pie. That's a fact.' "

When Mobile city councilman Fred Richardson last year revealed he'd spent $9,000 of taxpayer's money on a 12-foot-tall mechanical banana moon pie, there were some skeptics. But Harriet Sharer of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau says the crowd at the city's first "MoonPie Over Mobile" celebration silenced all doubters.

"Some people thought people would make fun of us," Sharer recalls. "But we had 15,000 people show up and it's going to grow exponentially."

Mobile recently upped its commitment to the dessert, making the MoonPie hoist the Southeast's preeminent New Year's Eve celebration and dedicating an additional $25,000 to marketing the event. This year's festivities include live music, a gala ball and the slow rise of the snack.

"Everyone we knew does drops," Sharer says, explaining why Mobile's MoonPie defies New Year's Eve gravity. "Since the moon does rise, we decided to rise it up over the city."

Photo: Mykl Roventine, flickr.

Alabama's struggling farmers, many of whom have converted their fields into miniature golf courses and petting zoos in hopes of boosting their revenue, are pressing the state to direct highway travelers to their entertainment complexes.

The Alabama Agri-Tourism Association will meet next month with the state's Department of Transportation to craft a plan for erecting interstate signs pointing drivers to agri-attractions, a category that encompasses everything from ice cream counters and produce stands to u-pick blueberry patches and Christmas-tree farms.

"Obviously, our attractions are way off the interstate," says Auburn University tourism specialist J. Thomas Chesnutt, emphasizing the need for signs.

Chesnutt concedes that signs are a rather old-fashioned solution to the newfangled problem of rural economic development. As he says, few tourists today load their family in a station wagon and head down the road in search of impromptu fun. Most modern vacations are plotted online.