ShanghaiBubba here, cheers y'all

[ShanghaiBubba]

Just joined up. I'm Ken (aka Bubba) and I opened the first ever Texas barbecue joint here in Shanghai in 2006. The military reclaimed my location three years ago, but this year I found a new spot and have just recently re-opened. Three weeks in to opening now in fact, so still sort of soft open.

For smoking, I built my own brick beast and test burned it yesterday. Went pretty well but needs a few tweaks here and there, which was anticipated of course. For the past few weeks I've been using a GBE as a "stand in" while I finish my pit. What a nice piece of equipment that thing is. First time to use one and I'm a fan. It just can't do restaurant volume. I'm anticipating a large outdoor offset too in the near future.

Anyway, howdy to all and look forward to browsing the threads. KJ

 

[chef jimmyj]

Welcome...Good luck and success with you new adventure. Are the Locals into the Smoked Meat, or more of the biz to Expats?...JJ

 

[ShanghaiBubba]

Welcome...Good luck and success with you new adventure. Are the Locals into the Smoked Meat, or more of the biz to Expats?...JJ

Before was mostly expats but trying for a better ratio this time around. The original Bubba's was a true bbq "joint"....deer heads, sports penants, license plates...all sorts of shit covering the walls that customers gave me. Was a little intimidating for locals and loud at times. There are less expats now so we'll bank more on Chinese social media to draw in some folks. They like barbecue for sure.

 

[SmokinAl]

Welcome to SMF!
Good luck with your new business!
Al

 

[bbqbrett]

That sounds pretty cool. You should post some pics of your place and your food.

 

[ShanghaiBubba]

That sounds pretty cool. You should post some pics of your place and your food.

Yea I will for sure once I get my smoker dialed in. We have fired it twice and I'm having a hard time getting past 200F for an extended period of time. I've modified the firebox chamber twice now (basically cutting down it's size, which I knew was too big to begin with but we can go smaller on it...going bigger if it were too small would be very difficult). The third fire will happen tomorrow as today I'm doing an event to wrap up the mid-Autumn festival and national day. Here are some pics of the cooker. The second modification to the firebox, which we did yesterday, is also attached. We used extra fire bricks to cut down the space by 50% and got a piece of sheet metal to serve as a directional plate.

I also ordered components for making our own barbecue blower, which we'll install once the control board arrives. That's gonna be a nice feature to have. I'll send pics...but is there a better forum for this? Haven't had much time to surf around the boards...

KJ

 

[JC in GB]

Welcome from Wisconsin.

JC