Where There’s Smoke There’s Nancy

The Unofficial Queen of Barbecue

By Susan Filson • Photos By Chad Spencer • Illustration By Dennis Heil

When you first meet Nancy Krohngold of Nancy’s Bar- B-Q, you might ask, “What’s a refined, well-educated, nice Jewish girl doing up to her elbows in pork?” That is, until you taste said pork. Then, you wouldn’t care, because one bite of her subtly spicy, smoky, sweet, and divinely succulent barbecue would tell you all you need to know.

For the past seven years Krohngold has been dishing up her trademark “North Carolina–style” barbecue in Sarasota, first from her small backyard Weber grill, and eventually from a large commercial barbecue oven and commissary kitchen. What started out as a passion-fueled hobby quickly morphed into a thriving catering business, including her wildly popular “Stealth Barbecue” traveling lunch events. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on Krohngold, who explains, “Although I am a white Jewish woman of a certain age, in another life I must have been an accomplished African American male barbecue pitmaster in North Carolina.”

An alumna of Alta Vista Elementary, McIntosh Middle School, and Riverview High, Krohngold attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., earning a degree in political science in the early ’70s. After graduation, she took a job working in Congress. The Watergate scandal dampened any political aspirations Krohngold had, however, and she relocated to Boston, trading politics for a job selling life insurance.

After three years, Krohngold had grown “tired of telling people that they were gonna die someday,” and came back home to spend a year and a half working as garde manger at the old Sarasota haunt La Chaumiere. Garde manger, or “keeper of the food,” refers to one who is responsible for preparing and presenting cold foods, typically such items as salads, hors d’oeuvres, cold soups, aspics, and charcuterie. Krohngold had blissfully found her niche. When asked if this was when the seed for a culinary career was planted, Krohngold explains that her love for food and cooking was always there, lurking. “I did all of those other things to make a living, but food was my true passion!” she says.

But a girl not only has to eat. She has to be able to pay the grocery bills too. Eventually, Krohngold moved back to Boston, this time to work for a software startup company by day while attending Suffolk University Law School at night.

In 1989 Krohngold returned to Sarasota for good. Having amassed an extensive knowledge of computers and various software platforms, she opened Character Publishing, a desktop publishing and graphic design firm. There, she toiled for many years, creating everything from company logos and business cards to full-blown marketing packages for her lengthy list of clients.

Krohngold’s foray into the world of the pig began back in the summer of 2003. While surfing through the New York Times one day with her morning coffee, she came upon an article extolling the joys of homemade barbecue written by then food editor Sam Sifton. Something clicked. “I had an epiphany,” she says. “I told myself that I had to try to make this!” So, she picked up a plump, juicy pork butt, dusted off her little kettle grill, and got to work. “That pork took all day long to cook,” she recalls, “but the end result was fantastic. My brother Michael couldn’t stop eating it!” She was hooked.

Soon, Krohngold was spending most of her time tending her grill and dreaming up ways to make her barbecue even more delicious than it already was. She tinkered with various combinations of herbs, spices, and other seasonings to develop her own earthy, bold, dry-rub blend and her zesty signature barbecue sauce. She experimented with different types of wood chunks and ratios of wood to charcoal to find the ideal environment for smoking her butts. Her concoctions received rave reviews from all who sampled them. With the sweet taste of success still in her mouth, Krohngold began taking small catering gigs, mostly for family and close friends. Her big break came when one of those close friends hired her to prepare a dinner basket to bring to a potluck. It was a hit! Word spread and jobs started pouring in. Nancy’s Bar-B-Q was officially launched.

Krohngold’s pulled pork has won over food critics and “good old boy” barbecue lovers alike. Recently, Nancy’s Bar-B-Q was included in Sarasota Magazine’s “The 52 Restaurant Dishes We Love Most this Year,” and was also named “Best Underground Restaurant” in Creative Loafing’s Best of the Suncoast awards. Her food has garnered accolades from the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Sarasota Observer as well. While Krohngold will tell you that the most important ingredient in her barbecue is the love she puts into it, that’s only the beginning.

Her pork butts (the cut comes from the upper shoulder of the pig) are first coated with a generous layer of her special dry rub. Then they are cooked low and slow, a hundred pounds at a time, in her massive Cookshack smoker. The result is a sublimely moist, tender-to-the-bone, delectable cut of meat enveloped in a perfectly seasoned, crispy bark, affectionately referred to as “crack” by Nancy’s Bar-B-Q devotees. To complete the seduction, the pork is pulled from the bone and served with Krohngold’s luxuriously thick, rich, and tangy finishing sauce.

In addition to pulled pork, Krohngold offers a sweet and spicy, slow-cooked barbecue chicken as well as a variety of complementary side dishes, including edamame succotash, a luscious potatoes au gratin, and a creamy, dreamy mac and cheese. For those with a sweet tooth, the Pineapple-Rum Upside Down Cake and Real Deal Banana Pudding will not disappoint. Plans are also in the works for some new menu items like homemade cheese straws and an herbed, oak-smoked fillet of salmon with lemon-dill sour cream sauce.

Krohngold’s success hasn’t come without some snags along the way. In 2008, she was serving her barbecue in a parking lot near Ed Smith Stadium. The state shut her down, even though she was in the process of obtaining the requisite license. Shortly after, Krohngold thought she had found a permanent location for her business in the former home of Kay’s Bar-B-Q in the Rosemary District. But that deal went south when the building went into foreclosure before she could open. Then, Krohngold was closed down again last fall after moving her operation to an abandoned downtown gas station. Indeed, at the moment, the subject of this Back of the House profile doesn’t even have a “House”!

In the midst of adversity, however, Krohngold has built a sizeable and loyal following that will go wherever she does. While she searches for a storefront to call her own, her legion of diehard fans waits with fierce anticipation for email notifications of her lunch events held “by invitation” at various “stealth” locations around town. One is never sure where or when these events will take place, but once revealed, the promise of one of Krohngold’s legendary pulled pork sandwiches always draws a crowd. This feisty Jewish white chick has got it going on.

RECIPE

Nancy’s North Carolina–Style Barbecue Pulled Pork