Can good barbeque come out of Montana?
“We’ll take that bet,” said Burke Holmes, owner of Notorious P.I.G. restaurant in Missoula. “People walk in skeptical. We wager that our ribs are the best they ever had. I don’t think we’ve lost yet.”
Raised in St. Louis, Burke grew up eating barbeque.
“I didn’t realize how special it was until I moved away,” he said. Ever since catching a fish on the Gallatin River when he was eight years old, Burke dreamed of living in Montana. He hustled to get back and landed work as a fishing guide. That job fit his social personality.
“Being a guide is all about hospitality. I liked meeting new people, getting their stories, and sharing my story,” he said. After graduating from the University of Montana, Burke decided to stay in Missoula. “There probably wouldn’t be a Notorious P.I.G. in Missoula if the community didn’t exist here first. I love it here.”
However, to bring Missoula his favorite barbeque, Burke had to move again. This time, it was back home to learn from a master. “When you grow up eating barbeque, you’re loyal to it. I went back to learn under pit master, Skip Steele. Most of what I know is from Skip. He was born in West Memphis, so our flavor has a Memphis influence,” he said.
Burke knows barbeque but he isn’t keen to choke over style or worry the bone of culinary pretension.
“My philosophy is to do a couple things really well. Don’t exhaust yourself or pretend like you’re a chef. We have wood. We have fire. We have pigs. If we like the food, then we think our customers will like it, too. The elegance and aptitude come from cooking 100 slabs of ribs in one day and making them all taste the same.”
A “sold out” sign hanging from the front door testifies to that expertise.
“Our goal is to sell out every single day. Someone’s here every morning at 4 a.m., and they’re rolling out of bed to cook your lunch. That’s the level of dedication and responsibility we feel toward our food,” he said.
In 2019, Burke opened a second location on Missoula’s south side. This was his opportunity to refine lessons learned during the downtown build and outsmart new challenges.
“It used to be an old Jiffy Lube,” he said. “We took a full-blown oil change facility and renovated it into a restaurant.” Also, Burke and his staff had to pivot to serve a different demographic from their downtown base. “Our downtown location is what got us started. Those customers shop, work, and recreate downtown. The south side is where our customers live. So, we almost doubled our seating capacity. We serve up a lot of takeout, too. But, we don’t mess with the secret sauce.”
Part of Notorious P.I.G.’s secret sauce is the dedicated staff.
“I’m really, really, really proud of how well our whole staff has handled this pandemic. We never had to close a single day. Everyone had each other’s back. That’s a testament to the leadership I have here and everyone I’m lucky enough to work with. I still wash dishes, though,” he joked.
Customers at both locations often ask the same question: is it pronounced “Notorious “P.I.G.” or “Notorious Pig?”
“It’s however you want to pronounce it,” Burke said. The name came to him while reading a cookbook. One phrase reminded Burke of a song by rapper, The Notorious B.I.G. It read: Good barbeque on the pit is like a dream that shouldn’t be disturbed.
Even tourists from Texas have to admit Notorious P.I.G. makes good B.B.Q. To tease their taste buds a bit, Burke’s crew installed the “Texas bell.”
“We get a lot of folks who are passionate about their state’s barbeque. Texans are the loudest by a significant magnitude,” Burke explained. “Whenever a Texan comes into the restaurant and tells us where they’re from—without us asking—we celebrate by ringing the bell for them. The bell gets rung quite a bit in the summer. It’s basically our way of standing up for Montana and suggesting that good food doesn’t care where state lines are drawn.”