CHICAGO — Barbecue has been on my mind for months now, from the newer Texas-style offerings in the suburbs to the saucy South Side classics. As I’ve hopefully made clear, Chicago has a robust barbecue tradition, particularly for a northern city. But after looking through the Tribune’s archives, even I was surprised by how early and often barbecue pops up.
Our reporters have been writing about smoked meat almost since the very beginning. The Chicago Tribune was founded on June 10, 1847, and barbecue shows up regularly by the mid-1850s. This is especially impressive considering our existing records between 1847 and 1852 are incomplete.
The only caveat is that early on, most of the barbecue was being eaten in other parts of Illinois. During this time, barbecue was rarely eaten at a restaurant. Instead, as Adrian Miller writes in his excellent book, “Black Smoke,” political events at the time often attracted large crowds with the promise of barbecue. Cooks would dig long trenches, fill them with lit wood and set poles or sticks across for the meat to rest on.
