(bluegrass music)
- Barbecue is a very personal thing.
What's good for you might not be good for me,
and vice versa.
So this is just the James Spann opinion.
Number five, Sho'Nuff barbecue in Alexander City.
I love Alexander City.
Probably about, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago,
somebody took me to lunch at the Sho'Nuff barbecue.
I'm thinking, oh, yeah, right, one of these cute names.
A tourist trap, it's gonna be overrated.
No.
The sauce was beyond good.
I'm sauce guy, I pay attention to the sauce.
It's gotta be good, and I've gotta put the sauce on myself.
Put that sauce on the side.
Let me deal with this.
I know how to paint this thing up right.
Oh, it was so good.
There's no doubt that's number five.
To be number five on my list, that's a pretty big honor.
Number four, the Brick Pit, in Mobile.
Bein' from the other end of the state,
I don't get down to Mobile as often as I should.
But I spoke at the University of South Alabama.
What's the first thing you think I'd do?
I gotta go to the Brick Pit.
Man, this is a barbecue joint everybody down here says
you've gotta go to the Brick Pit.
And, (howling)
They have ribs, the ribs were really good.
And it was jam-packed in there, a lot of college kids,
a lot of business people in there.
You can tell when you get that big crowd in there,
this is gonna be good.
And it surpassed expectations.
Big Bob Gibson's.
Big Bob Gibson's is famous for one thing.
Anybody know what that is?
White sauce, baby.
Oh, the sauce, y'know, it's not for everybody.
For some people, they don't really like the white sauce.
But I love it.
And man, I can just slop that stuff all over that meat.
Just suck that down, it's just good.
They got locations in Huntsville and Decatur.
I think the original one was in Decatur,
so Big Bob's.
Number two is in a small community called Blount Springs.
In Blount County.
This is not far off I=65.
The name of the barbecue joint it's called the Top Hat.
I wanna say I discovered the Top Hat barbecue
maybe in the early 80's.
And I like to drive the roads less traveled.
Why do you always drive the interstate?
When I go to schools,
I like to drive the roads where people live.
I mean, if you drive on the interstate,
all you see is the interstate.
So, get off the interstate, and go up 31 to Garden City,
and Hanceville, and Cullman.
Saw a barbecue joint.
I pulled in there and ooh, it was good.
You could smell that barbecue from probably I-65,
which is eight miles away.
And it's just awesome.
They're friendly in there, you get a lotta laughs in there,
and it's just good.
Top Hat barbecue.
Number One, this is (speaking foreign language)
Of all the barbecue joints in the state,
(speaking foreign language)
Jim's barbecue on US 82 in Billingsley.
It's so good, you might get woozy.
It's fantastic.
You might just pass out, it's so good.
I got to know Jim's when I worked in Montgomery.
And I was driving from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery.
Cause I was still in college.
And I was on that road all the time.
But there was a little shack that said Jim's barbecue.
And I was always hungry.
And everybody said stop at the Twix and Twain in Brent,
which was the big barbecue joint on that road.
But I said, I'm gonna try this one.
And I got some of that barbecue and it was fantastic.
A man named Jim Lenoir was in there, and he owned it.
That was Jim, of Jim's barbecue.
And I got to know him,
and I would stop in there every time I'd be going through.
And here I am all these years later, and it's still there.
And it's too good.
That meat is so tender. So, that's number one.
- [Interviewer] All right, number one.
- I would drive from Los Angeles
to come to Jim's Pit barbecue.
If I'm anywhere close, I will go to Jim's.
(bluegrass music)