Rendezvous restaurant 23-year veteran Calvin Bell, who was voted Memphis Flyer’s “Best of Memphis” server for 2018 and 2019, with full orders of Rendezvous ribs.
Photograph by Michael Donahue
What’s more Memphis than Rendezvous barbecue ribs? They’ve only been around since the 1950s, but they’re one of the most recognizable eats of all Bluff City cuisine.
“We feed 400,000 people a year,” says John Vergos, a Rendezvous owner. “That’s local, out-of-towners, and anything in between.”
The Rendezvous, which his dad, the late Charlie Vergos, opened downtown 71 years ago, originally was a tavern, Vergos says, with an old coal chute that led into the basement.
“The ribs didn’t come until somewhat later. When he started, he was trying to do different things with that coal chute. He used to smoke hams in there for ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Then he started fiddling with all types of different things.”Like ribs.
With the exception of a place he thinks was called “Johnny Mills,” Memphis restaurants sold barbecue sandwiches, but they didn’t sell ribs, Vergos says. “They’d eat ribs on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day in their backyard.”
His dad introduced his ribs “sometime in the 1950s,” Vergos says. But, he says, “The Rendezvous was not an overnight success by any stretch of the imagination. It just slowly, slowly, slowly got more popular. I suspect by the mid 1970s he was doing quite a bit of business. If he was being really successful, he certainly kept it from the rest of the family.”
Vergos admits Rendezvous ribs “are so different from anyone else’s. They’re not fall-off-the-bone ribs, but I think when you eat our ribs you taste the smoke, the meat, the crust, and the seasoning. They’re not overwhelmed with sauce.
“I think — and, again, I may be bragging,” he continues, “we’re one of the unique food products in the country. Number one, no one ever cooks ribs like that. And number two, the flavor is just different from any kind of barbecue. My dad invented and created what people now call dry ribs.”
And that was just “hit or miss,” he says. Charlie Vergos originally was “just cooking them with salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic and basting it with a vinegar solution. And sometime in the 1950s, he went to New Orleans and really got into the chili powders, cayenne pepper, all those great Cajun seasonings.”
So, when his father finally got back to Memphis, he mixed the Greek seasoning and Cajun seasoning. “That’s the dry seasoning we use today,” says Vergos. “And we’re still cooking them the exact same way.”
The Rendezvous is located downstairs in the alley behind 52 South Second in Downtown Memphis. The City of Memphis named the alley “Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous Alley.”
(901) 523-2746
