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INdulge: Why do dads love to grill? This BBQ dish was best thing I ate in Indy this week
A month after florists and brunch restaurants encouraged us to treat our mothers like the angels they are, the great big capitalist machine offers a different approach to celebrate dad: why not give some meat to the old fart?
The bond between grilled meat and the platonic ideal of an American dad is as strong as his stereotypical monstrous calves and as enduring as the combover he refuses to let die. Ahead of Father's Day, for this week's INdulge I explored that relationship with a hefty portion of:
Drive past the intersection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 25th Streets with your window down, and you'll likely catch a whiff of the all-consuming aroma radiating from the stout white brick building that houses Bar-B-Q Heaven, pitmaster Ronald Jones' 73-year-old Indianapolis institution. One source of that smoky siren call is Bar-B-Q Heaven's turkey ribs, which I shamelessly scarfed down on a recent visit.
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Notably, turkey 'ribs' aren't ribs — the mighty feathered terror that is the turkey doesn't yield chest bones with much meat on them — but rather the bird's shoulder blade. Three such slabs comprise Bar-B-Q Heaven's turkey ribs ($16.49 with two sides), which come doused in a reflective orange-red coating of barbecue sauce.
The faux rib is as tender as white meat gets, practically ejecting itself from the bone. The sauce, which I ordered hot (you can also choose sweet or mild), livens up the turkey with faintly fruity sweetness and a brief yet punishing flash of heat. Whether from the sauce, mid-June humidity or sheer meat consumption, you're unlikely to conclude a meal on Bar-B-Q Heaven's patio with a dry forehead.
We've discussed previously in INdulge how American barbecue is inextricable from Black culture — Bar-B-Q Heaven is one of Indy's oldest Black-owned eateries — dating back to enslaved Africans who adapted the native Jamaican Taíno technique of cooking meat on racks of sticks called barabicu. For today's column, though, I wanted to examine barbecue specifically as it relates to dads.
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In the 1950s, the commercial availability of outdoor gas and Weber charcoal grills offered anyone with a backyard the power of the fire pit. Though many early advertisements for grills marketed the product toward America's homemakers, aka mothers and women, the target audience eventually swung to men.
Researchers have offered several explanations for why that might be, many of which center around the naturalistic fallacy that men were simply made for meat and fire. Brands were quick to lean into that somewhat dubious (today's scholars suspect prehistoric gender roles were much less defined than originally thought) yet widely embraced belief.
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Nowadays, you don't have to search too hard online to find some pseudoscientific dreck about how eating meat connects a man to his primal forefathers. The same corner of social media that instructs men to triple their testosterone by guzzling raw milk often bemoans how far we have fallen from our elite hunter ancestors, as if the fellas were out in the tundra throwing haymakers at woolly mammoths all day.
It may well be that grill makers and meat producers pounced on that vague association, profiting enormously. American psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter, for one, in 1955 encouraged companies to brand foods as tied to gender identity, such as selling men the idea that meat was inherently manly.
Frankly, as someone who grew up in the digital age, I find the line between genuine human experience and manufactured marketing content can blur. There are plenty of so-called masculine activities I do thoroughly enjoy — grilling, drinking beer, reading Hemingway — in a way that feels totally natural, even though I'm pretty sure cavemen never shotgunned a Miller Lite nor read 'A Sun Also Rises.'
Moreover, the exact science behind the phenomena doesn't change the fact that many men, dads certainly included, simply love barbecue. The next chance you get, consider celebrating Pops with a heavy-duty clamshell box of turkey ribs, even if that's a minuscule repayment for someone who helped raise you — which, to me, seems like a terrifying and impossibly difficult task.
Then again, if it nets you free barbecue once a year, perhaps I do see the appeal of this whole fatherhood thing.
What: Turkey ribs, $16.49
Where: Bar-B-Q Heaven, 2515 Dr. MLK Jr. St., (317) 926-1667 and 877 E. 30th St. (closed Sunday and Monday), (317) 283-0035,
In case that's not your thing: If it fits in a roasting tray, there's a decent chance you'll find it at Bar-B-Q Heaven. The eatery's ribs ($16.49 with two side) and pulled pork (listed as BBQ on bun, $13) are the headliners, but you can also find uber-tender pig feet ($10.49) and a treasure trove of sides and desserts including thick macaroni and cheese ($3.59 to $8) and chess pie ($4.29 per slice). Though a bit lacking in options for those with dietary restrictions, Bar-B-Q heaven is never short on nap-inducing comfort food.
