photograph by michael donahue
Commissary owner Walker Taylor with a hefty barbecue sandwich platter, which always includes beans, slaw, and deviled eggs.
Germantown Commissary went by several names before it became an iconic barbecue restaurant. The cuisine was different, too.
“Lunch meat, souse, hoop cheese, liver cheese, sardines, cans of beanie weenies,” says owner Walker Taylor.
It had been a country store under various owners when his dad bought it in 1973 as “something to do. He just thought it would be fun.”
Taylor’s father kept it strictly as a country store at first. “About that time, the construction boom took off out here,” he says. “They built houses in Farmington and Germantown Park, Dogwood Creek.”
Workers bought lunch at the store, he remembers. “They’d come in and get a Nehi peach or strawberry drink and get 50 cents’ worth of rag bologna and crackers and a Hostess cupcake and spend about $1.25.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY WALKER TAYLOR
Taylor came up with the name “Germantown Commissary” at 15 while at a family reunion at Centennial Island. “There was this old store sitting out in the middle of a bean field. It was called ‘The Commissary.’ And I said, ‘Dad, that’s what you need to name the store.’’’
At first, they carried the typical general store items. “We sold snuff, of course,” Taylor says. “Rope chewing tobacco, flints for lighters, gloves. It was just a little sundry store.”
Barbecue was an accident. “My parents were supposed to go to someone’s house to have dinner and my dad was going to cook a Boston butt in his backyard.” But his dad ended up working at the store because another employee didn’t show up. So, his father cooked that meal at the store. A customer saw what he was doing and asked him if they sold barbecue, and he said it was for somebody else. She wanted to buy it, but he told her he couldn’t cook any until the next weekend.”
“There’s great barbecue all over the city, but I think one thing that sets us apart is that almost everything we have in the restaurant is homemade. The only processing thing we use are the French fries.” — Walker Taylor
That next weekend, his dad cooked six Boston butts. “And sold them all. We added that to the lunch menu — a barbecue sandwich. He started running two or three butts during the week.”
His dad soon began cooking shoulders instead of butts. “He had a big pit built and everything got cooked in the pit — beans, shoulders, ribs.”
He also added four outside picnic tables for his customers, which still included the construction workers.
The original barbecue recipe, which was a family recipe, had “more of a vinegar base.”
The recipe changed after they hired a commercial food processor to make their sauce. “We had to change some things,” says Taylor. “We put preservatives in it and stuff like that. Cut down the vinegar. Upped the sugar.”
Taylor learned to barbecue by watching their old pit master, T. Allen, who cooked the meat in barrels before the pit was built. “They’d sit back there and babysit those shoulders, putting some vinegar water with some peppers and garlic on it.”
After he graduated from then-Memphis State University, Taylor moved to Atlanta and worked for Union Carbide for two years. But, he says, “I wasn’t cut out to be a corporate guy.”
Construction work moved toward Forest Hill Irene Road. Other stores similar to Germantown Commissary opened up and took their business. “My dad was kind of taking his eye off the ball and tired of messing with it.”
Taylor bought out his father in 1981. He decided to open Germantown Commissary as a restaurant instead of a grocery store, but still keep a meat counter, where, like today, they cut meat.
“It was pretty simple then,” he says. “Just shoulders, ribs, beans, and slaw.” Taylor added Brunswick stew, a “tomato-based barbecue stew” that he liked to eat when he lived in Atlanta.
He also decided to renovate the store, “do some major renovations because the old building was 100 years old.”
But the structure was basically destroyed after a pit fire in 1984. Taylor then had an exact replica of the building constructed.
The menu “progressed over the years.” He added barbecue nachos, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, pies, and other items. On Valentine’s Day 2019, he opened a second location; Colliervile Commissary offers the same menu.
“There’s great barbecue all over the city, but I think one thing that sets us apart is that almost everything we have in the restaurant is homemade. The only processing thing we use are the French fries.”
Customers want the crunchy types of fast-food fries, Taylor says. “If it was up to me, I’d be slicing my own potatoes and serving hearty, limp, greasy French fries. I love those kind. You know the kind.”
Germantown Commissary is located at 2290 South Germantown Road. Collierville Commissary is located at 3573 South Houston Levee Road.
