Over the years, the open pit at the Hot Sauce Williams at East 79th Street and Carnegie, was a sight to count on. Their distinctive open pit outdoor burner and cooker provided the ribs sold at the restaurant. Always there, in that sense it’s taken for granted, as if it’s always gonna be there and that’s a mistake if your mission is to capture before gone.
But by 2017, I would pass, and always remind myself to shoot it, and i‘m glad I did, when I went to set things up, i found out that Hot Sauce on Carnegie was gonna close for good.
The other surprise was that the guy that told me, the chef and cooker, was someone I knew and hadn’t seen since The Bar closed on Buckeye. Hot Sauce was gonna close, and the cook, who, for all these years, was behind the smoking old-style pit, was a guy I knew from Buckeye, Wille, who worked at the Hot Sauce location when it was across the street from the Bar forty years ago. He would walk across the street and sip beer after work, was a regular.
I’ve seen steel, aluminum and copper, amongst many things, being made, and metals being formed, forged and pressed and it compares to slinging ribs in a pit as a job you have to respect, and give credit to, as it’s anonymous toil. Willie’s work satisfies his basic living needs making these ribs that satisfy the customers spending the money from their jobs. A delicious and pleasurable experience for the customer, and, for Wille, it’s smoking, hot work, done in every sort of weather outside the actual restaurant, that he likes to do, has done for countless years, and is now leaving without any fanfare or acknowledgement for all the bellies he and the restaraunt filled.
Willie has the secret recipe for the sauce and was trained by the originator.
When Hot Sauce was on Buckeye Road, across the street from The Bar that was my base, and Willie would always come in after work to drink beer. I also indulged in quite a few dinners, featuring his work, bringing them back to the bar, and here I was flicking up Willie’s last slabs of ribs.
“The smell brings um in.” When Wille would do his cooking for hours at a time, the smell of fresh, cooked ribs would drift all around the neighborhood, and, of course, folks would walk over.
Willie has the real strong work ethic, no slack. After cooking ribs here for 25 years, he didn’t miss a beat and had another job lined up and he would start the next day at a nursing home in the housekeeping department, after he cooked his last slab.
In this town, that had such a wealth of good-paying jobs when manufacturing dominated during the good blue-collar days, the most common mode now is to work in the service industry, more than likely, health care, where problems associated with diet can also be addressed.
Right after they shut it down the last of the Williams brothers, from the original founding family died.
VIEW the slideshow.
The open pit cooker is known as Big Boy.
Slapping on some special ingedients, makes Big Boy sizzle.
Rotisserie got no Smoke Flavor.
When that fire blazes you gotta watch it.
The hot pit, known as Big Boy burns into the night.
