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Darden Restaurants Inc. plans to put up 73 stores for sale, including Smokey Bones at Valley View, which is still open.

Barbecue sauces

CAROLINA STYLE

• 1 cup plain vinegar
• 1 tsp. crushed red pepper
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 3 drops of lemon juice
• Source: H. Kent Craig’s North Carolina-Style BBQ Page

KANSAS CITY STYLE

• 1 tsp. salt
• 3 cups canned beef broth
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1 cup tomato paste
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 Tbsp. chili powder
• 3 Tbsp. paprika
• 1 Tbsp. sage
• 1 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp. tumeric
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• Blend all together in a large saucepan and simmer for 1 12 hours.
• Source: FoodReference.com

TEXAS STYLE

• 2 med. onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups ketchup
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp. prepared mustard
• 1 Tbsp. celery seed, crushed with hammer
• 2 Tbsp. butter
• 1 clove of garlic chopped fine
• 2 Tbsp. chili powder
• 1 cup cider or white vinegar
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 tsp. cumin seed, crushed
• Saute onion, garlic in oil in large saucepan until golden and tender about 10 minutes. Stir in chili powder and cook 1 minute.
• Add all remaining ingredients except butter and bring to boiling. Lower heat and simmer uncovered, stirring often for 30 minutes. Stir in butter. Make about 4 1/2 cups and will keep for months in the refrigerator.
• Source: Cooks.com

MEMPHIS STYLE

• 2 cups cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup (12 stick) margarine or butter
• 2 Tbsp. yellow mustard
• 1 Tbsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp. black pepper
• 1/4 cup molasses, optional
• 1/2 to 1 tsp. red pepper sauce, optional
• In a small saucepan, combine the vinegar, margarine or butter, mustard, salt and pepper. If desired, add the molasses and/or red pepper sauce. Bring to a boil over low heat. Reduce the heat to very low and simmer about 10 minutes. Makes about 3 cups.
• Source: Dotty Griffith’s Celebrating Barbecue

When it comes to barbecue, there's no such thing as simple. Just ask Darden Restaurants Inc., which is closing the Smokey Bones barbecue chain, defeated in an attempt to gain nationwide appeal with a standard set of recipes and grilling techniques.

Darden entered the barbecue business with a reputation for capturing appetites from coast to coast. The company started the nation's largest casual dining seafood chain, Red Lobster, and the biggest name in Italian, Olive Garden.

But you can stick a fork in Smokey Bones. It's finished as a candidate to catch on with the likes of uniform fried shrimp and lasagna.

How could Darden possibly succeed when there's also not even a single definition of barbecue?

"Barbecue" is a broad term, and you can vary a lot of things and still legitimately use the word. The meat could be pork, beef, chicken, or something else, and it could be a cut or ground. It could be cooked over coals -- the proper way, as most people know -- or over gas. It might be fast or slow cooked, smoked or not.

Then there's the sauce, which often sets the tone for the meal. But they're more than just variations on a theme. As restaurateurs have learned, the difference between customers who lick their plates and customers who focus on their french fries might simply be a matter of which sauce they like and which sauce you serve.

Barbecue is a regional thing, which makes creating a nationwide chain all the more difficult. Darden learned the hard way that it isn't easy to please all of the people all the time with barbecue. The company has started closing many of its Smokey Bones restaurants, although not the one in Roanoke, when business didn't pick up as it expected. Those that aren't closed will be sold, if buyers can be found.

There's a reason the vast majority of national chain restaurants serve either fast food or serve the kind of "family-style" American food you find in T.G.I. Fridays and O'Charley's. While most people can agree on what makes a good hamburger or steak, they may not see eye-to-eye on barbecue.

Names and places

Many people divide barbecue sauces and styles into four regional categories: Carolina, Kansas City, Memphis and Texas.

Carolina style is almost always made from slow-cooked pulled pork, and tends to have a sharper taste thanks to its vinegar-based sauce. Sometimes there's a bit more tomato to it, making it sweeter, but "tangy" is the best word.

In Kansas City, barbecue is often pork, but can be beef as well, and the sauce is sweet and thick (think K.C. Masterpiece). It's what most people who get their definition of barbecue from the supermarket's sauce aisle think of.

If it's Memphis-style, the barbecue is probably ribs, with a sweet sauce that's not quite as thick as K.C. style. In some versions there's no sauce at all, just a dry rub.

And Texas-style tends to use more beef than pork, as you might expect. The phrase "Texas-style barbecue" refers more to the method of cooking than the sauce. It's slow, often taking hours over a very low heat. A rub of spices is more common than barbecue sauce. If it is used, that sauce tends towards the lighter tomato variety.

These four styles are what you'll hear a lot of barbecuers referring to, but -- despite the conventional wisdom of separating barbecue with geographic lines -- Lake High, president of the South Carolina Barbeque Association, says it's about sauce, not state.

"There is only one real way to describe it, since the regions have a tendency to overlap, especially at the edges," he said.

For the aficionado, according to High, there are four kinds of barbecue sauce: mustard, vinegar, heavy tomato and light tomato.

"North Carolina has three sauces, so you can't divide that into only one state," he explained. "And South Carolina has four which also defies a state by state division."

These regional differences are the kinds of things that can make a restaurant owner crazy. What's the point of having the best Carolina-style (or vinegar-based) barbecue in the world if your clientele is expecting KC-style, tomato-based food?

That's what some analysts say put Smokey Bones on the block -- the company couldn't handle the regionalism of barbecue tastes. And that's also the reason that, while burger joints and Italian restaurants might have nationwide chains, barbecue doesn't. You can't please all the people all the time.

But maybe not.

Personal touch

Patrick Maggi owns Blues Barbeque, a restaurant in Frederick, Md. He's about to open a branch in downtown Roanoke, and he thinks you can teach an old barbecue dog new tricks.

"In my restaurant, I have Memphis style, Carolina style, Texas style, and I'm doing fine," he said. It's just a matter of getting people to try it.

"I can tell you," he said, "when I had Carolina style here, it was my lowest selling sandwich. It is now probably my most popular sandwich."

In Maggi's area of Maryland, just outside Baltimore, the barbecue of choice is pit beef. It's grilled well-done on the outside and rare on the inside, using a top round sliced thin and served with onion and horseradish sauce on rye bread.

That kind of sandwich might not be popular everywhere. But, as Maggi learned, even where it is popular, customers are willing to experiment.

"We sell a ton of pit beef sandwiches," he said, "but once the people started trying the Carolina style, I couldn't keep the Carolina in."

And he expects Roanokers to have the same reaction.

"When I go down there, people might wonder what 'Carolina[-style]' is, or they might wonder what pit beef is, but they'll try it," he predicted. "And once they try it, it's all about the food. If the food is good, it's good.

Does that mean that Smokey Bones' food wasn't good?

"I can't keep brisket in the restaurant," Maggi said, but "I've never tasted anything quite like their brisket." It could be, he suggested, that people didn't like the chili powder they put on it. But he thinks the real problem is much simpler.

"It's hard to open a chain barbecue place, and the reason is it's so personal," he said. "I can only show somebody about 80 percent how to do it. The rest is feel."

Thus the same factor that gives a chain its appeal can work against it: consistency.

Chain stores are popular in part because people know exactly what to expect. The recipes are created in the corporate headquarters and sent to the individual restaurants. There's no room for a chef's individuality; a Big Mac in New York is identical to one in Roanoke or Los Angeles. Ditto for T.G.I. Friday's Jack Daniels Ribs, or Olive Garden's signature salad.

And that, says Maggi, is why you don't see a chain of barbecue restaurants.

"You've really got to love to do barbecue to do it right," he said. "There's no way a corporate chef could make a bunch of recipes up and do it right. It's really a feel thing."