 Van
Sykes was born in 1955, the year before his parents opened their
first place in the Central Park neighborhood of Birmingham. "My
father was the idea person, and my mother had good business sense,"
says Van. " They both loved food and wanted to work together. Dad
had grown up near Clarksville, Tennessee,and learned the barbecue
art there in the 1940s by watching legendary pit man named Buck
Hampton do his thing. So that became his specialty." |
|
 By
the time Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q moved to Bessemer in 1968, the enterprise
had expanded to include a string of 14 franchised pits in northern
Alabama and Tennessee. As a result, Bob was badly overextended and
stressed out. He suffered an incapacitating stroke in 1970, and
never regained his faculties. (He died in 1993.) |
|
 It
was Maxine's lot to save the business. She made a decision to sell
or close all the franchises, and in 1977 she moved the restaurant
to the present location. Van was still a teenager, but he had to
grow up fast, and Dot helped with that as well as with the business."
Dot was really my partner," Maxine recalls. " She shared the responsibility.
We depended on each other." |
|
| " I learned business, barbecue and life from those two strong women," says Van. " They don't work here anymore, but they're both still very much a part of the operation." | |
 |
|
| For
more than a decade, they have been barbecuing pork and chicken the
old-fashioned way, over slow fires of hickory wood. This method gives the meat a truly unique flavor, unlike any pork you've ever tasted: tender and succulent, with a soft and wonderful barbecue flavor that comes through gently in each and every bite. Folks say that it is the best tasting barbecue in the South. |