The Bullsheet • 2024 May Bullsheet • EAST LONDON BBQ

My experience is far from unique. In my neighborhood of east London, the majority of us are immigrants. More than half of the 300,000 or so people in my neck of the woods were born overseas. Over 100 languages are spoken across the borough, making it one of the most diverse places in Britain and anywhere in the world.

This means, of course, amazing food. Nothing pretentious - there are no Michelin stars anywhere in Newham - but we have the street food of any nation in the world, all on our doorstep. You can eat your way from Afghanistan to Zaire. At dinnertime, the scent of a hundred different styles of home cooking will make you weep with joy.

Frustratingly, proper Kansas City BBQ is one of the few cuisines that is not readily available. Decent BBQ is tough to find; not just in my neighborhood, but in London as a whole. For twenty years, the onus has been on me to help my friends and family fully appreciate what BBQ is, and how it should taste.

BBQ isn’t a stack of frozen, ready-made burgers flung on a grill; it’s a craft that requires preparation, discipline, and specialist equipment (in my case, two oil drum smokers, one egg, and a battered Royals cap).

Between the continuous pillar of smoke and the Chiefs’ Kingdom flag, I’ve been adding my own spice to my neighborhood. I’m far from competition-worthy, but after two decades of playing around, I can at least represent the cuisine without causing it offense.

I firmly believe that BBQ is not a static art form. As BBQ moved around and across the United States, it picked up new flavors and techniques, drawing on local ingredients and traditions wherever it went. I’ve also been adapting to, or taking advantage of, what’s available. One of my favorite local butchers is Brazilian, so my family’s multi-generational secret brisket recipe has been tweaked to work with flavorsome cuts of picanha.

I keep a stash of Zeera biscuits from the Pakistani bakery for whenever I need breadcrumbs. Aleppo pepper, baharat, and dried barberries have found a place in my rubs and mop sauces. Our weekend cookouts have sides like fufu, hispi cabbage, and dukkah.

Pulled lamb in a hot chapati is one of the perfect bites. Worcestershire sauce, cider, and horseradish are already staples of British cuisine that have already found their way into BBQ, and they also find plenty of use.

The cultural exchange goes both ways. Adani kebabi are absolutely delicious, and resting sword-sized skewers on open flames will never get old. Real Adani kebabi are a protected food (the champagne of skewered meat), but my knock-off version defies centuries of history and uses my favorite competition rub. Lamb and mutton are more common here, and higher quality than the beef we get back in KC. There’s a Scottish chap that dumps half a sheep on our front door twice a year.

I use them to make ribs and ‘pulled mutton’ based on recipes from my battered and stained copy of the Kansas City Barbeque Society Cookbook (1996 edition).

I have high standards for sauces, as befits a Kansas Citian. I carefully hoard my dwindling stash of hometown sauces, and I make sure that visitors understand that’s the most important cargo they can smuggle across the Atlantic.

The most sensible approach would be for me to make my own, but I’m afraid this has been an area of consistent and shameful failure. My young son had the honor of naming the last batch: we still have several bottles of ‘Daddy-why-did-you-make-me-eat-that’ sauce left. Still, needs must be, and the commercially available options here are truly dire.

Adrian Miller, the author of Black Smoke and a previous Bullsheet interviewee, emphasizes that the ‘root of BBQ is community’. It brings people together in a shared social experience that both includes and transcends, a plateful of good food. Our regular weekend cookouts and summertime blowouts show off Kansas City (and celebrate the latest Superbowl victory) and bring together friends and neighbors who come from all over the world. Miller describes BBQ as “well poised to play a role in bringing people together in the near future and the far future — maybe more so than other foods.”

As an immigrant in a neighborhood of immigrants in a city of immigrants, I’ve seen how BBQ can connect people and cultures. It ties us together in a recipe, on a plate, and, most importantly, around the fire.