CBN Story

G.A.S. BARBECUE

They Pig Out and Get Sauced
Seth Sears
College Boulevard News

The history of literature in the western world is salted liberally, like a good slab of ribs, with tales of travel. From the Odyssey, to Canterbury Tales and more recently of local origin, Blue Highways, readers have numerous sources of wisdom collected from a journey. The journey provides tales of adventure, friendship and offers a unique insight into the places one has left behind.

One travel tale in the making is being written by a group of barbecue connoisseurs from Johnson County Community College, 12345 College. The Gastronomic Appreciation Society, G.A.S, for short, was born while on an expedition into the heart of Missouri, to Bates City Bar-B-Que.

G.A.S. sprung, like Athena from the head of Zeus, from casual joking among a small group of JCCC employees from the Career Center.

The original member list included Jeff "Sauce" Anderson, Dave "Portions" Ellis and Rick "Napkins" Moehring.
"We would always go to Hayward's, we had been going there for years because it was close, on the boulevard. I don't think we went to any other place," said "Napkins" Moehring, JCCC counselor and the group's Odysseus. "And then Jeffrey ("It's gotta be smoked, baby") Couch joined us ..."

It is here that the adventure began.

"We were at Hayward's and it was the only thing we had eaten together on our lunches, and we were talking about how good it was," Moehring said. "Jeffrey challenged us to go to Bates City and try their barbecue."

It was on the road, while traveling, that G.A.S. began to form.

"On the way to Bates City we started thinking about the ridiculous extent to which we could take this tour. After brainstorming we decided to do a monthly tour of different barbecue restaurants," Moehring said.

The troupe of gastronomes banded together not to merely consume, which is certainly a passion, but to evaluate as well - an eat and critique methodology.

The barbecue voyage had not been underway long when ' the members knew they would have to keep a log of their travels and exploits. The G.A.S. home page (http://www.gasbbq.net) was created to record the evaluations and divulge the ongoing mission of its members. Currently, the web site has been linked by Yahoo and is receiving approximately 50 hits a day.

Each restaurant on the tour is graded (from 1 to 10) according to different criteria including BBQ sauce, ribs, sandwiches, fries and beans. Then, these barbecue arbiters give the restaurant a final rating. Thus far, LC's Bar-B-Que (5800 Blue Parkway in Kansas City, Mo.) has received the highest rating with a 9.1

"The BEST BBQ in Kansas City. This is it baby!" reads one of the quotes about the trip to LC's,

Fourteen months and fourteen barbecue joints after their initial rendezvous, G.A.S. was gathering in the Stilwell Smokehouse. Some new faces had joined the group and fellowship has been one of the treasures found along the journey.

"A neat thing about it has been having new people join us from other areas of the campus, including teaching faculty and administrators," said "Sauce" Anderson. "It is bringing people together from different areas who normally wouldn't meet. We have been able to get to know people at different levels and see a different side of them away from work."

The future of G.A.S. undoubtedly includes jaunts into rarely traveled areas of Kansas City where new sights and tastes await. A natural progression would be more cooperation with restaurants as people become more aware of the power and reach of G.A.S.

Recently, the group received an e-mail from Minnesota. Eleven employees of Sprint are coming to Overland Park and want a chaperoned tour to the best rib joint around. Certainly, G.A.S. can expect the tab to be picked as up by a grateful group of honorary members.