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The Best Barbecue in the City
COLUMBUS, OHIO-All great dreams have their
defining moment. For City Barbeque, it started
with a bottle of barbeque sauce at a Christmas
party.
That's
when visionary Rick Malir's fantasy of running
his own restaurant materialized. Rick, you see,
had been itching to leave the management world
of John Deere Company for several years to run
his own business. First he thought about selling
tractors. Then he considered business
consulting. But it was his love for food that
won out.
Influenced by his mother's cooking and his
wife's southern roots, Rick determined that what
he wanted to do for a living was work with
food-and in this case, American food.
"Barbecue," Rick realized, "needs a place in
Columbus."
So when
the chance encounter with a friend of a friend's
barbecue sauce landed on his tongue, Rick
thought, "Carpe Diem" and seized the
opportunity. "Where did you get this?" he asked
the woman who furnished the sauce. "From my
boss," she said. The rest is history.
Rick soon
wangled a meeting with the sauce maker, local
financial planner and culinary guru Jim Budros,
who, amazingly, also harbored dreams of running
a barbecue business. So did Jim's friends John
Kean and Mike Taylor, an orthopedic surgeon and
attorney, respectively, who barbecued as a
hobby. The threesome won the barbecued brisket
category at the American Royal Barbecue
Championship in Kansas City in 1997 by besting
350 other teams.
City
Barbeque was born of this relationship of hobby
chefs in December 1999, when the first
restaurant opened in the Columbus suburb of
Upper Arlington. The premise behind "The City,"
as its owners call it, is to invite all the
people in the city to enjoy great
barbecue-America's food.
Rick
became the managing partner and boss-the other
men provided financial backing, recipes and
cooking techniques. Because none of them had
restaurant experience, the barbecue boys hired
Frank Pizzo, a 20-year veteran of the restaurant
industry, as operation manager. Frank moved from
his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania for the first
time in his life to join "The City." He has
since become a fifth partner.
Featuring
beef brisket, pork, and chicken, the restaurant
also emphasizes tantalizing Southern side dishes
made from scratch. The secret barbecue sauce and
pure smoked meats are worth their weight in
taste. The corn pudding, hush puppies and peach
cobbler are to die for. This is not food for the
weight obsessed-this is food for those who have
discriminating barbecue palates and enjoy meat.
"All we do is barbecue," says Rick. "Our goal is
simple-to produce the best barbecue anywhere.
Our goal is to put Columbus on the map for
extraordinary barbecue."
Rick and
his friends are all certified judges sanctioned
by the Kansas City Barbecue Society. Jim, John,
and Mike are Master Certified Barbecue Judges
with the society. Rick continues to study at the
Culinary Institute of America, where Jim and
Mike also honed their craft.
City
Barbeque continues to grow and bring authentic
barbeque to our friends in the city. A full-time
catering service is also in place, and as Rick
says, "We can handle virtually any catering
event, anywhere."
In addition to his partners, Rick's wife, Bonnie
Coley-Malir, works behind the scenes-mainly in
the business sense. Together, the two hope to
pass on the couple's rural Kansas and Tennessee
agricultural heritage via the restaurant. The
red barn board that highlights the interior of
City Barbeque's Upper Arlington location comes
from Bonnie's Tennessee farm.
City
Barbeque's commitment to quality barbecue has
already paid off. The restaurant was named one
of the city's Top 10 Casual Restaurants for 2000
by The Columbus Dispatch. Local WTVN Radio
called it the Number One New Restaurant in
Columbus. And this year, Columbus Monthly placed
City Barbeque on its Top Ten New Restaurants
List.
"The City" welcomes you to try it too. As they
say here in Columbus, "Meat me at The City." |
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