Eugene “Hot Sauce” Williams operated perhaps the best barbecue stands in 1950s Cleveland, Ohio. In 1920, Williams, a childhood friend of Louis Armstrong and a one-time fish peddler in Louisiana, migrated from New Orleans to Chicago, where he became a cooper. Four years later he migrated to Cleveland in search of a business opportunity. With no previous professional experience, he started a barbecue rib business after taking out a loan for $58 from “Cleveland’s first barbecue czar,” Henry “the Black King” Burkett. Williams returned to his native New Orleans around 1934, spending days “just drifting among cooks, gathering bits of information here and there on barbecue. One of the city’s oldest chefs took an interest in him and let him in on his personal method of preparing tasty ribs.” Williams returned to Cleveland with the culinary secret of making excellent ribs and developed two thriving rib stands, which employed twenty-five people.
By 1950 he had grossed about $100,000 each year in sales as customers packed the two stands he operated “almost any hour during the six nights” per week they were open. He offered no delivery service, “but his spots often fill large orders from private parties and clubs,” said an article in Ebony magazine. Even Louis Armstrong was said to have phoned in an order for “300 large boxes of the flavory ribs [sic].” Most credited the success of his Cleveland barbecue stands to the secret way in which Williams flavored his ribs with “a dry spice powder and taste-tantalizing hot sauce.” Only Williams knew the formula for the powder, which he personally sprinkled on all his precooked meats. According to Williams, it was not just the ingredients he used: “It’s the cooking that counts. Good cooking comes from proper timing and the right amount of heat.” His further instructions were to cook the ribs slowly over a low-burning charcoal flame, taking care to thoroughly cook them, but not so far as to let them dry out.
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