WHAT UP, RIBS in Joburg

I must apologise for the lack of posts yesterday, you see, I was close to death. The weekend was a large one. Rudi, Andre and myself headed up to Joburg for the Jozi Craft Beer Fest, where we planned to serve up a bit of Cape Town awesome to the hungry Joburg crowd. We managed to get just about everything organised in two days, thanks to BRM and NoMU, and headed up. We went to show Joburg what was up, and we did, shortly before it taught us a very big lesson. Sunday and yesterday were spent trying to put my life back together. Now that I’m human again, here’s a bit of the story.

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We started off with a pretty chilled Friday. A breakfast roti at Parker’s in Parkhurst, which I can tell you was absolutely phenomenal. Then a site visit, some basic set-up stuff, followed by a braai, you know, to loosen the wrists and prep us for the 105kg of ribs we had to braai the next day. Saturday started fine, albeit a little late due to the fact that we thought the gates opened at 11am, not at 10. Not a problem though, we were there early enough and besides a bit of last minute panic over stuff we didn’t know we needed, like a fire-hydrant, we were up and ready to serve as the first people came in.

I think we all underestimated just how hungry Joburg is for something like this – our ribs and craft beer, because besides a twenty minute gap between our first and second customers, we had a queue until our ribs sold out. We did not stop the entire day, neither did any of the other stands. It was our first time, so there were a few key learnings. A bigger grill next time, something three times the size woud have been perfect, and we could have served more people. Other than that, it all ran lank smoothly, and our business model worked exactly as we’d expected. A mixture of Chipotle and In n Out burger, a touch of Cape Town, and three dudes who love braaing, it was a great combination.

The crowd was great, and despite some longer waits, no one seemed bleak, and all-in-all they were in an awesome mood, very engaging and interested in our story. A huge thank you to all the people that heard about us and came to tell us. Also, to all the Joburg and Pretoria readers that came up to chat, you dudes rock, and yes, I’ll try feature a bit more content from up there. Anyway, the environment was festive to say the least, and by the time we sold out the adrenalin and beers were flowing. It wasn’t long before we were making plans for the nights adventure.

We hit Greenside first, The Office, for a few beverages. The Jager from the fest (we bought a bottle with some leftover tickets) kicking in nicely, we kept the momentum going. I met one of the largest dudes I’ve ever seen. I was a little drunk, so my logic wasn’t exactly sound when I introduced myself ‘Hi, we just grilled 105kg of ribs. How much do you weigh?’. He weighed 140kg. It wasn’t long before we were off to the next spot, the much talked about Great Dane.

Now, this spot is epic. There’s a secret password, which just about everyone knows anyway, but you still feel rad when you get to the door and a large bouncer asks you for the password, which on our night was ‘Massachusetts’. The place is great. The music awesome, and the hotdogs even better. Gert, the dude behind it, is an absolute legend (he also had a stand at the Jozi Craft Fest – one of the best I’ve seen). He knows how to do shit properly (he started Gin), and the whole vibe of the spot just felt right. So right that we all preceded to celebrate it with copious amounts of tequila. The night got out of hand. I wont lie to you. I may have ended up under a car sometime after midnight.

Needless to say Sunday was challenging, and very uneventful, so I have nothing more to say on it. WHAT UP, RIBS? was a great success, and I think we’ll be doing more with it – not your weekend market stuff, once-off events of awesome, but I’ll be sure to keep you up to speed.

Thanks to BRM for supplying us with top quality ribs, and a huge thank you to NoMU for getting involved, we couldn’t have done it without you.

Nash…
Out.