The Memphis Spark: How Family, Fire & Flavor Built a Barbecue Legacy

Welcome back to the Barbecue Radio Network.

I'm Freddie Bell.

And today we're spending time with Jonathan Biak.

He's and the name of the company is Just North of Memphis Barbecue.

Thanks for joining us.

And I've got to ask you, first of all, John, tell me the origin of the name Just North of Memphis Barbecue.

Absolutely.

Well, it kind of ties to your background a little bit, Freddie, based on what I just heard is a dear friend of Christy and mine is Chef Eric Simpson, and he's down in Kansas City with his family.

And he used to be the executive chef at Hazeltine Country Club in Minneapolis.

And when he was, we invited him to come out to our place one day, and we went and took a little look at this defunct pizza joint that we thought, well, maybe we could make this little place a barbecue joint.

We got out there and we thought, yeah, we could do this, but what the heck are we going to call it? You know, what's the name of it going to be? And Chef Eric, he piped up and says, well, I got a little section on my menu right now at Hazeltine called A Little Bit North of Memphis.

And so that percolated for a while.

And, you know, about a year later, Just North of Memphis Barbecue was born.

Oh, my goodness.

I mean, just so basic, but so innocent and really interesting.

Now, you're in the business with your wife, Christy.

Tell us a little bit about the two of you.

How did you you meet? I'm going to I'm taking you way back.

Yes, so I told you that I spent my high school years in Indiana, but before that, my dad, I was born in Minnesota, and Christy's a Minnesota girl through and through.

My dad got a wild hair when I turned the age of five in 1969 and moved our family from Belle Plaine, Minnesota, down to Nashville, Tennessee.

and uh nashville was just four hours up the road as you know from memphis and memphis had been the home for many years of my mother's sister and she was married to a guy named john willingham and marge my aunt margie and uncle john lived in memphis for 60 years i still have three girl cousins there and the willingham name is pretty famous in the world of barbecue Uncle John passed away a few years ago, and my Aunt Margie, bless her soul, just passed away this last April.

And she was my mother's sister, so we would spend a lot of time, once we moved to Nashville, we'd take our little family trips, you know, down to Memphis, and they would come up to Nashville and visit.

But my aunt and uncle had several barbecue restaurants in Memphis.

And so the answer to your question is we got into barbecue through family, which is probably fairly common.

Wow.