World's End pub, 60-61 London Road, Brighton (01273 275 757). Meal for two, including wine and service: £45
I am not an obsessive, but some of my behaviour might be. I once flew to Geneva to buy a specific brand of Swiss vinegar only to discover the city was closed. It was a bank holiday. On another occasion I was so thrilled by the dishes listed on a menu that had been sent to me – local langoustine, wild morels from the Scottish hillsides above the restaurant – that I immediately booked a flight to Inverness. From there it was a mere three-hour drive to my table, my dinner and, naturally enough, my soul-destroying disappointment.
By these standards, getting an early evening train to Brighton for a bit of serious spare-rib action looks like the actions of a rational, sane man. Except that where the promise of US barbecue is concerned, I'm not entirely sure I am all that sound of mind. The prospect of the real deal makes me dribble.
The story so far: earlier this year I visited Barbecoa, the glossy, glass-and-steel newcomer in the City of London backed by Jamie Oliver and showcasing the skills of American chef Adam Perry Lang. It had things to recommend it, but nowhere near enough of them. It didn't pose a challenge to London barbecue stalwart Bodean's, which does a solid if unexceptional job.
Next up the Red Dog Saloon in Hoxton. They too promised to do it properly, until the moment we arrived, when it turned out they didn't have enough capacity in their smoker to produce ribs for the lunch service, so they gave us tired specimens from the day before and tried to grin their way through it. Before admitting that no, actually, they'd never been to America.
On the day that review was published I was at Feastival, the boisterous food-meets-music jamboree staged for charity on Clapham Common by Jamie Oliver. (Yes, him again.) And there, in the middle of the site, was a marquee occupied by the British BBQ Society: big sauce-stained men with forearms like railway sleepers, some with beards that stoats could nest in, all of them fretting over their portable smoke pits as though their very lives depended upon it. Here at last was what I had been searching for. It was Southern US barbecue as it is meant to be: thick-cut, deep-lacquered ribs that had been in the smoker most of the night; glorious, heavily sauced burnt ends, the pointed end of the smoked beef brisket gently rendered until all the fat and collagen had melted away; whole pork shoulders rubbed and injected with mystery liquors to keep them moist, then rubbed again and cooked out until they fell apart. It was one long display of filthy man-on-meat action.
Between playing compere for various chefs' demos I would sneak back across the showground for a little more of what they had to offer. Which was how I came to meet John Hargate, a solidly built Lancashire-born man with a shaven head, dungarees bowing cheerfully at the belly, and a wide grin.
Hargate has an interesting story. He began his working life as a chef for the likes of Gary Rhodes and later, when he was at Mezzo, John Torode. London was just getting a taste for Thai food back then, and Hargate was one of the few people in Torode's kitchen who had spent much time there. After that he mislaid seven years of his life as a follower of the sometimes controversial Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's in Poona – "An interesting time," Hargate tells me. "I don't regret a moment of it, not even the vegetarianism" – before ending up in America DJing with the free party sound system Spiral Tribe. As you do. Eventually, needing to make a living, he returned to the kitchen, this time in Texas, which was where he learnt his barbecue chops. And learnt well. He has won the last three British barbecue titles.
For the past four months he has been cooking out of the World's End, a Brighton pub, hence the train journey. Brighton is a place of self-consciously bohemian lanes and alleyways stuffed full of cutesy shops and cafés. The World's End is nowhere near any of them. It is, depending on your point of view, either on the way out of town or on the way into it. A colleague of mine used to buy his contraband baccie there. It has a pool table. It has TV screens for the footie. It is a local boozer, which is exactly as it should be. In its natural habitat the best barbecue is found at roadside shacks off the arse end of nowhere, not in glossy and primped joints that have been the victims of endless frottage by design consultants. Proper barbecue is dirty food.
What Hargate is serving at the World's End is dirty food, and I mean that in a very good way. The menu is long – a lot of burgers and sandwiches – but at its heart is the product of the smoke pits, which work hour after hour from a unit nearby. The ribs are listed as "meaty", and they aren't joking. These are proper, thick-cut numbers, but with the tinge of pink all the way through that you only get from long contact with smoke. They are tender, but not so that they fall away from the bone. And they are properly sauced, in the sticky Texas style. A plate of those is a six-napkin job at least. At £11.50 they are pretty much the most expensive thing on the menu. Sandwiches are around £6, sides about half that.
The chicken has crisp skin and flesh that laughs in the face of dry. An armadillo egg – a cream-cheese stuffed jalapeño, wrapped in spiced sausage meat and then held together with bacon, the whole roasted to a crisp shell – is apparently about as close as Texas gets to a delicacy, and is outrageously moreish. Dirty rice comes stacked with cumin and cracked black pepper; the stewed pinto beans punch through with chipotle, and the mac and cheese has exactly the right texture, the sauce and pasta becoming one without turning into a stodge. The béchamel has a proper acidity which speaks of serious cheese. Incidentally, burnt ends are not listed but are usually available.
What's most obvious is the attention to detail. Hargate makes his own barbecue sauce and then punches it up to serve it on the side with a chipotle, a smoked jalapeño and a golden mustard: his sauce and a dollop of French's. The sesame-seed buns come from a local baker, the coleslaw is made from scratch, and he's just managed to source some USDA beef brisket. The nearest we could come to a criticism was to point out the lack of any sauce in the high-piled pulled-pork sandwich. "In Texas the sauce is always served on the side with the pulled pork," Hargate says with a shrug. "And all I know is Texas barbecue." Fair enough; as far as I'm concerned he doesn't need to know any more. So much better to do this one thing very well indeed than a bunch of them sloppily.
My obsessive search is over. Real barbecue has been found. All is right with the world.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
