Your Life - Food

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009

EATS: Great barbecue inside a convenience store?

D’IBERVILLE — I have long seen the Tay’s BBQ sign outside of some convenience stores along the Coast. For some reason, though, I never ventured in to try it.

Call me prejudiced, but I guess I never considered that maybe a barbecue restaurant inside a convenience store could be any good, much less very good.

Call me stupid.

I should’ve learned long ago that convenience stores can have some good food offerings.

After all, everyone around here knows some of the best po-boys on the Coast are served at Fayard’s BP convenience stores, and there are plenty of convenience stores serving fast-food from some of the nation’s top fast-food chains, not to mention some with mom and pop style delis and buffets.

Someone whose taste for good food we respect recently mentioned they believed Tay’s to be among the best barbecue restaurants on the Coast, so I had to check it out.

I’d driven past the Kangaroo Express Chevron station next to Lowe’s on Sangani Boulevard in D’Iberville many times and seen the Tay’s sign out front, so I decided to give that location a try.

I was surprised when I walked in to see the majority of the north side of the store devoted to Tay’s Barbecue, complete with a facade front with a tin roof.

Behind the counter is a large smoker that cooks the ribs, chicken, pork and sausage that is beautifully displayed in a glass case.

All the meat is dry rubbed, slow cooked with hickory smoke and served dry unless ordered smothered in sauce, or the sauce can be served on the side.

I opted for a combination plate featuring half a chicken, three chicken wings, smoked sausage and three ribs with my choice of two side orders from beans, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese or potato salad.

I opted for the potato salad and cole slaw.

By the time I paid at the convenience store counter, my order was ready, so I pulled up a seat at one of the tables and was surprised by the number of customers who were coming in for the barbecue, many of them having called ahead and others who were such regulars the cook and shift manager, Shannon Hall, seemed to know them by name.

As expected the meat was superb, well smoked and falling off the bones. The dry rub was sufficient — spicy without being too hot — to carry the barbecue without the wet sauce, but when the wet sauce was added, wow.

The wet sauce is not too sweet and has a nice vinegary flavor. Very good barbecue.

Hall also told me about Tay’s white (mayonnaise based) barbecue sauce and I got a side cup of that for dunking the ribs and chicken in.

I’ve never had a white barbecue sauce, but it may now be my favorite barbecue sauce ever, and that alone will bring me back to Tay’s barbecue, but the meat, sausage, cole slaw and potato salad are also worth repeated business.

Tay’s co-owner Matthew Mayfield, who owns Tay’s with his brother-in-law Ramsay Taylor, said they based the white barbecue sauce on one that originated in North Alabama, and it has become a favorite at Tay’s.

So now we know, some of the best barbecue on the Coast can be found at convenience stores across the Coast with Tay’s locations, including the Chevron at Dedeaux and Three Rivers Road in Gulfport, 539-4882; the Shell station at Mississippi 63 next to the Pizza Hut in Moss Point, 474-7050; the D’Iberville location on Sangani Boulevard, 396-5464; and inside the BP at Old Pascagoula Road and Theodore-Dawes Road in Theodore, Ala., 251-653-5455.

All the locations are open seven days a week from 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

Mayfield said they recently opened a sit-down location in Madison.

“We hope (customers) like our service,” Mayfield said of Tay’s. “We pride ourselves on treating people the way they want to be treated.”