Wiley’s Championship BBQ blog is now available at http://wileyschampionshipbbq.com. Visit us there!

Wow! Two days in the restaurant business. Our hours are 11-3 and we have have a steady stream of customers once we open the door at eleven. We even had a repeat customer today!! The bugs are getting worked out…like the cash register from hell and the credit card machine that likes to print reports on its own. Perhaps the biggest compliment we had today…and we had several…was from a very successful caterer here in Savannah.




Our first customers!

A miracle has been accomplished…in four short weeks we have almost completely remodeled Wiley’s! Yesterday some of our plaques, memorabilia and posters went up on the wall. How exciting!
By Monday, we should have the bathrooms back together and a few final items accomplished on the physical building. Without the help of our two heros, none of this would have taken place. Meet Albert and Anthony:

The painting in the kitchen is almost finished…just touching up is left! Laying the kitchen floor tile has begun today. All the walls have been primed, the floor in the FOH has been selected and TLW has finally decided on the placement of the counter.

We bought a 40 foot container. Right now all of the cleaned kitchen equipment is stored in it. When the kitchen is put back together we will have plenty of room for all of our catering equipment, as well as dry and paper storage. This will be the first time in The General’s career when all of my equipment will be located in one place. I’m not sure I will be able to function without running around collecting materials for caterings.

The General never lets his enthusiasm for smoking be deterred by small problems…like having no place to cook lunch. Since Friday was “fish day”I decided to cook lunch for the crew…smoked catfish and trout cooked to perfection along with crunchy coleslaw and some garlic bread. Cooked inside my soon to be smoke house on my competition Weber.

TLW and I may have been lax about blogging the last few months, but it doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy!! We are pleased to announce that at our tender “young” age we are fulfilling a lifelong dream of The General and opening a small BBQ “joint.” We took possession of the spot on Monday and have been hard at work ever since! It will be called “Wiley’s Championship BBQ.” We credit our friend Mike Mills, the BBQ Legend, for the name. He owns several BBQ restaurants in Las Vegas…called Memphis Championship BBQ. He shared with us on one visit that he had a regret that he did not use “Mike” as part of the name of his restaurants. Keeping that in the back of our minds for years, we have concluded that he was correct! Thanks, Mike!
Our joint is located 3 miles away from our house on Whitemarsh Island and is in the former location of another BBQ restaurant called Papa’s. They were so successful that they have moved across the street into a much larger location. Our spot, roughly 1200 sq. ft. will suit us just fine! We have a smokehouse out back and plenty of room for all of our equipment. We had a 40′ container delivered and it is now filled with all of the kitchen equipment (including fryers and stove) and all of the booths and tables from the front of the house.
At the end of week 1 we have made amazing progress as seen in some of the pictures below. With three amazing workers from the Old Savannah City Mission we have accomplished more than our wildest dreams!
We are planning on opening by Labor Day…if we can pull it off.

Janet and Paul Prudhomme are sharing BBQ secrets on the floor of the Catersource 2006 tradeshow!

This is the Word document that Wiley and I used to construct our presentation. All of the info we mention is in here…recipes, phone numbers, etc.

Two weeks from today, Janet and I will be in Las Vegas at the 2006 Catersource Conference and we are the BBQ featured speakers . Our topic is Advanced BBQ: A Recipe for Success. When first asked by Mike we were flummoxed because of the extreme diversity of levels of the attending audience (those who will be in attendance are the small guys all the way up to those who do millions of dollars a year in sales). Even though it is hard to pare down 15 years into 6o minutes, we are going to try. And the good news is that we will be posting all of our information here on our blog.

Welcome! Let’s rev up our grills and smokers and learn together! I plan to lead you on a great gustatory journey!