SMOKE IN THE HOLLER: NEW BBQ DOC

We fell in love with Ridgewood Barbecue in Bluff City, TN, a few years back, when Amy Evans Streeter did an oral history with proprietor Larry Proffit and SFA events maven Melissa Hall staged an SFA Field Trip that included a Ridgewood meal, served from the owner's luxury box at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Now SFA friend and former board member Fred Sauceman has his say in a new film: Smoke in the Holler: the Saucy Story of Ridgewood Barbecue. 

The 26-minute film, produced by ETSU’s Office of University Relations and Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, traces the restaurant’s evolution from beer joint to barbecue house. 

Larry Proffitt, a pharmacist by trade, describes in detail how the restaurant barbecues fresh ham, in a pit with hickory wood.

“Stay with the pig until he makes a hog” was the never-quit philosophy of his mother, the late Grace Proffitt, who opened the Ridgewood Restaurant near Bluff City in 1948 with her husband Jim.

Smoke in the Holler: The Saucy Story of Ridgewood Barbecue is available now.