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History moved to americanpastimebbq.com If you are looking for good barbeque with a sports bar atmosphere, American Pastime in Hutchinson, Minnesota is the place for you. Since they are located on Main Street, parking is limited. I suggest parking in the back parking lot, which is accessible by an alley. When I first entered the establishment I was pleasantly greeted by staff. The restaraunt was very clean and very busy. I especially liked the layout of the building. There is a nice bar with plenty of beer on tap, dining tables, video games (Golden Tee, Buck Hunter and some bowling game), flat panel televisions, music and even legal gambling in the form of pull tabs. The main restaraunt is separated by a wall from the bar. Although they are very close to each other, the bar and main dining area have two completely different atmospheres. It’s nice to enjoy a quality dinner with others without the distractions of the bar crowd. October, 2007 September 15, 2007 – for the KC BullSheet ( administrator's note... this article also ran in October 2007 in the highly prestigious "National Barbecue New", a staple read in Infamous David's famed Raymond "Joint" Thanks to Remus who was one of the few, including the "money-guys" that "got it"...much thanks to you and you alone.) AUGUST, 2007 Things cooking at Hutchinson restaurantsAugust 13, 2007 - 3:45pm — Terry Davis Filed under: Business July, 2007 American Pastime Barbeque opens in July, 2007 - 2:49pm — Terry Davis Filed under: Business
February, 2007
Peggy Sue's BBQ (Factual side note to the above mentioned "stealing"... I was on a R&D trip to Texas for Lone Star Grill & Bar and was given a behind the scenes tour, and received no recipes, but a wealth of info from the owner who was the most "scientific" of all BBQ'ers I met while in Texas... Infamous David) December, 2006 The following was extracted from "CHOWHOUND" a well respected "Foodies" web-based information site: on Dec 04, 2006 shadowfax replied most of the restaurants in Willmar are junk. The best in the area is American Pastime Grill & BBQ Ave in Raymond. Take highway 23 south out of Willmar. 10 minute drive. Best BBQ I've had in MN. Still doesn't beat the stuff you get down south, but nothing does, and these guys are actually very good. I was really surprised that the brisquet was done right - most places screw that up. I'll second John Hardy's. If you like KC style (vinegary) BBQ you'll love this place. If you like hot BBQ sauce, you'll really love this place - they've got several mild, several medium, and several hots, including one that, especially for Minnesota, is freakin' HOT. The following was a thread located in the Hutchinson Leader discussing the lack of good Restaurants available to locals. Thanks to "whomever!" "Hopefully the addition of American Pastime(a sit-down restuarant opening next to Quizno's) will alleviate any frustrations local folks have regarding the lack of decent non-fast food eating establishments in town. Rumor has it that they serve good BBQ food which is something unique to our town. Plus they cater! Hey boss, do I hear catered lunches being served at work for your loyal, hard working employees?" November, 2006 omitted by administrator August, 2006 Time has run out for any gift certificate redemption at our Raymond Location. Look for "gift card" certificates coming soon redeemable for Catering & Dine in use at our Cornerstone Commons location. If you have any remaining gift certificates from the holiday season, contact our catering line @ 320 220-4BBQ for a extension. All unused certificates will become null & void September 1, 2006. February,2006 Thank you to those who sampled our Sunday Buffet this Fall & Winter. Unfortunately with the higher cost of offering a buffet combined with sporatic business, (due in part to the Holidays falling on Sundays this year, we have decided to discontinue our Sunday Hours for the present time.
WHAT OUR BBQ FANS ARE SAYING ABOUT AMERICAN PASTIME B.B.Q. SUMMER/2004 "A member of our Dinner party said your sauce is good enough to drink" "you guys are good enough... you should enter MIM (Memphis in May BBQ fest)" Customers attending week-end 25 year class reunion in Clara City visiting from Memphis, Tennessee
RIBFEST 2005 FUNDRAISER FOR THE AMERICAN RED CROSS & HURRICANE RELIEF SEPTEMBER 3RD & 4TH, 2005 Over 500 people were served our St. Louis Pork Ribs, Sweet Corn, Cole Slaw & our finger licken good BBQ sauce on Green Lake in Spicer Minnesota. Organized & hosted by Dave Baker of Melvin's on the Lake, the two day event was highlighted by great live music, (Killer Hayseed's on Saturday & Big Walter Smith on Sunday) a variety of weather changes, (including an ironic heavy wind Storm including water spouts & funnel clouds) & last but not least, a very worthy cause. Well over $5000 was raised for Hurricane relief & a good time was had by all. Sunday's great weather & blues & Jazz artist Walter Smith only added to the great smell of Hickory in the air. Big Walter, a former Kansas City native who, by my own assessment, eats great BBQ as a way of life, not a quest, none the less responded when asked how are Ribs were, by saying, "These are real good," in a way that spoke to the notion that they were a surprise coming from a small west-central Minnesota town. I enjoyed there music so much I asked if they would perform at our First annual Barbeque competition in the works for next June. They have performed at "the other Dave" competition & said that they would love to. Look for pix of the event soon. FIRST ANNUAL TEAM STRANGE MEMORIAL POKER RUN JULY 30TH, 2005 Over fourty Rider's came out from the Twin Cities & beyond over the week-end for Team Strange's "Mac" Clair Memorial Poker Run, co-sponsored by Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly & and American Pastime Barbeque. What a great day & a super group of "Bikers" to cater to. We believe a great time was had by all & to there credit have seen a few of them back at the Rib-Shack since then. Remember to those few who did not make it out your meal credit is still valuable untill the end of August! Hope to see you all next year at the "second annual" event. Thanks again to MMM & Vic . We will be calling on all of you "certified" KC BBQ judges in the near future. WILLMAR CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AMBASSADOR'S MIXER JUNE 4, 2005 Over 275 guest came out to beautiful Green Lake in Spicer Minnesota for it's annual mixer. The weather eventually cooperated and all enjoyed American Pastime BBQ's Pulled Piggy Sandwiches, Potato Salad, Assorted Brownies & ice cold Lemonade. Special thanks to my wife, Janae, and Staff.... Heidi, Jason & Steph!
June 2005 Events It's Coming.... You have been asking for it...... June brings much anticipation for our BBQ family as well as countless events already booked for the Summer months. Weddings, Graduations, confirmations & more are scheduled. Infamous David's Smokehouse "Pit" will be smoking over-time in the coming weeks. Look for an events page highlighting our clients events with pictures & testimonials coming soon! May anniversary Looms near: Look for valuable coupons coming soon to the west-central tribune marking our first year anniversary, and signifying the start of National Barbeque Month. $2 DOLLARS OFF A SLAB OF OUR INFAMOUS ST.LOUIS PORK SPARE RIBS! BBQ Roadtrip 2005 January On our trip to Ohio to bring back our delivery vehicle, we of course had to visit a local Barbecue establishment. We should have (in hindsight) tried to find the local "Shack" but instead were swayed by the imagery of the local Smoky Bones "BBQ" Restaurant in Indiana.(You know who you are!) With all the precursor implied by my above statement we none the less stopped by with an open mind and empty gullets. I had knowingly stated to my wife, Janae that I was hoping to be impressed and envious after our visit. To see or experience something inspirational. I would settle for a good time and a subtle reminder that our own place is pretty good too. Where do I begin..... Should I focus on a personal diatribe exhorting the horrors of "chain-style" fill-in-the-blank Restaurants or just give an honest appraisal. I can always get on the bully-pulpit later so here goes the objective review. To begin with, our adventure began before ever stepping foot in the Grand Palace known as Smoky Bones. Being travelers, we phoned ahead to get directions. After a 10 minute wait on the phone, a young, college aged voice explained that "No one on staff knew how to give directions from our Hotel. We are all College students from out of town and our two managers are from out of state". This should have been our first clue of things to come. As it turns out we were no more than 5 minutes away and could have stumbled upon it faster than waiting for the answer. The place was busy at our arrival yet had the din of an establishment winding down from something. As I soon realized, the Colts had just gotten there you-know-what's handed to them in the Pro Football playoff's against New England, and the place was slowing down. As a 25 year pro at the sights 'n sounds of a Restaurant it took me but 5 minutes, (which of course for anyone who has ever waited to be greeted or served knows it FELT LIKE 15 minutes. I knew something was not kosher so the best way I know short of flapping my arms like an Idiot is to go pretend I'm lost and try to go into the kitchen, (Open Display kitchen Motif) Worked like a charm. Had someone swoop up to me like white-on-rice. "Can I help you find something?", she asked. "Yes, I replied curtly, You can help me find a server" I will say, that from this point on the foillowing events took on an almost comical example of "going too far" and "smooching ones hiney" for my taste. I say that now as I emphasis that at this point we had only been misplaced as customers for 5 minutes. We were not served flies in our soup, nor had beer spilled on us by a uncoordinated waiter. We simple had to sit too long without being acknowledged. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't great, but the response was over the top and unnesessary. I tell our staff all the time to convey confidence. We do not for example, allow our staff to sheepishly ask, "how does everything taste" upon first visiting a table after being served there meal. Back to the review...From this point on in our meal, we were pandered to like we were ohhh, lets say Jennifer Anniston & Brad Pitt (B4 there break-up...its so sad) . Heres the nuts 'n bolts of the food experience from here: Early in our visit I had remarked to my wife, how i was surprised it did not smell like barbecue or faint wood smoke at all. I would later suspect why. I love Brunswick stew. I Wanted it on our menu. We ordered it as an appetizer with a side of cornbread. review... Stew was like "stew-concentrate" I think I could have turned it into a gallon of Brunswick Soup if I had to. I eventually had to pour a little (a lot actually) of my Dr. pepper, (thats right) to cut the acid-reflux-disease I was getting on each painfull gulp. As a side note, when I mentioned it to our "server" (we never really had a server, the bartender hopped over and helped) she acted as if my mentioning that the stew was like "stew-concentrate" was some sort of compliment. I stopped with the attempts to inform & enlighten at that point. The cornbread was nicely presented in a "cast-iron-type" pot with steak knife and a truly wonderful honey-pecan butter. The cornbread howevery could have been Jiffy or Pillsbury or General Mills, as in run-of-the mill blah!!! We both ordered combo's so we could sample the most. Cole Slaw appeared to be freshly mixed, an odd sort of Mier Poix rough chop blend with a non-discript flavor profile. Baked beans were nothing to write home about (or for that matter write in a web-thread) but i would not expect them to be. All of the Meats had a common thread in there flavor profile...none! Brisket sans lifter meat for texture, bark for flavor, and any visible signs of tender-rendering fat was a surprise. In other word, a thin strip of Pot Roast-like meat with a suspicious looking "smoke-ring" tinge. Reminded me of that Chinese barbecue seasoning (I forget the name) but without the flavor. The half chicken looked as good as it should at a place of this prominence but again lacked any flavor within the meat, let alone that precious skin, which anyone worth there barbecue-loving salt not on a fat-free diet would love to sink there teeth into. I will say the flesh showed a legit pinkness mindful of proper smoking technique. The pulled Pork had a good texture, nice size chop to it, but again, no flavor to speak of, no random "morsels" of bark-infused-pork rub-seasoned chunks. To there credit though, at least it wasn't drowning in sauce ala' Minnesota-scandinavia tribute style where it would not have mattered if it was camel meat. Smoked link sausage was as generic as it gets and any Wisconsin meat market would have had better. but it was flavorful, perhaps because they did not "process" or smoke it themself. Lastly, but more importantly the most disappointing were the St. Louis Spareribs. Now before giving my humble opinion I will remind my readership that I know as well as the next open-minded BBQ lover that what is truly great and unique about BBQ is it's regional twists. Anyone saying this kind of BBQ or that sauce style is the best does not understand the beauty of the product or its inherent, sometimes volatile subjectivity. Our BBQ is of course no exception. Our guest hopefully hear upon there first visit the details of our ribs and how they are prepared and what texture to expect. We will always attempt to educate and if they want "fall-off-the-bone" ribs we will with out fail recommend our "Pulled Piggy" Southern Pork butt as an alternative because chances are high that they will not care for our ribs. Unfortunately having a very rural customer base (and being in Minnesota) allot of customers take us up on our "recommendation"and have the Pork Butt. I digress. The Ribs we had at Smoky Bones I am sure are loved by thousands. For sure more people than have had an opportunity to love our ribs. I however will never enjoy a hickory-only-smoked to the bone-ham-on-a-stick style rib. I in fact always tell our staff that very fact about my own personal belief about great King of Rib Spares. "If I want Ham I will order it but I don't want ham on a stick. I contend that it is (in the hands of amateurs at least) a basic lack of understanding of what makes a rib good. You should still recognize it as pork. Preferable not ham. Hickory is a wonderful wood but in moderation, and in my opinion, tempered with other more subtle woods. I will get off the soap-box now. The simple yet satisfying item we did have was another side-dish. A crisp, palate cleaning baked apple dish. Very germain yet much appreciated. In closing let me say that the evening was not solely based on these printed words beforehand. I still have in my fridge as I write this two large take-out boxes from our dinner that night. We left that evening carrying out more food than we had ordered to begin with. This wasn't do to us not consuming or attempting to consume but due to a continued (company culture) pandering regime that was finalized by the Restaurant manager himself. At an appropriate point in the Managers "If they don't like the food we will give them plenty of it to take home" cooler cleaning, I took the opportunity to constructively criticize our meal (ribs specific) I was stopped in my tracks once again as I used my Ham-on-a-stick comparison and I sensed that he to, thought it was a term of endearment. Home Catering BBQ news & Reviews About us B.B.Q. & A.
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The following "review" was extracted from a Dallas area food review of "Peggy Sue BBQ" which may be referenced on this website. I have talked lovingly about this place since I first visited it in the early '90's. I BELIEVE THE REFERENCE YOU WILL SEE BELOW TO MINNESOTA PEOPLE IS ME,ME,ME! (this place was mentioned in a famous VISA commercial about 6 months after my visit...see text that follows) 
