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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Texas BBQ

ORAL HISTORY

Joe Sullivan

As a child, Joe Sullivan ate at House Park Bar-B-Que and thought to himself that someday he wanted to own this restaurant or one just like it.  In 1981, he fulfilled his childhood ambition by purchasing House Park, which sits near the Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where he was born and much of his family still lives.   Sullivan cooks all of the restaurant’s meat himself, on the brick pit, which has been in place since 1943.  Most of the restaurant’s patrons are regulars, and those wishing to try their first taste of House Park barbecue need to keep in mind that the doors are open only between 11am and 2:30pm Monday through Friday.

Date of interview:
2007-06-15 00:00

Interviewer:
Lisa Powell

Photographer:
Andrew Busch

Download Transcript

“

"We don’t put anything in that pit but wood. We use oak wood, and we use a little bit of dry mesquite, but it’s got to be cut and dried for about a year before I’ll burn it. And that combination—that smell is just—you could put anything on there, and it will cook and taste wonderful, without any extra. I don’t season the meat at all. I don’t put salt, no pepper, no spices, no rubs, no nothing. And I don’t know many people that do it that way, but we do, and it works pretty good." - Joe Sullivan

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