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As a Southern staple, great barbeque is not to be taken lightly. The owners at Due South have embraced–and succeeded at–the challenges in both meat and sauces.
John Park
Due South owners Marie and Jared March
When Marie and Jared March moved from South Carolina to Christiansburg 13 years ago, they loved most everything about the area and its people. But one thing had them scratching their heads: there was no barbeque joint. It was a confusion that Marie set out to remedy almost immediately.
Both Jared and Marie were graduates of Clemson and both were package engineers. After 10 years of the engineering life, Jared decided to pursue his first passion, medicine. He applied and was accepted to Virginia Tech’s Osteopathic School of Medicine, hence the family’s northerly move.
Back in South Carolina, the Marches had learned the fine art of wood-smoked barbeque. Under the careful tutelage of an older gentleman, the couple developed and refined all the finer points of excellent barbeque, from rib cut to mustard rub. With deep generational roots in all things hog, Marie says learning the intricacies of wood-smoked barbeque felt natural to her.
“I’m originally from Kingsport, Tennessee,” explains Marie. “I have ancestors with pig pickin’ roots. Putting up hogs, talking about it … these were always a staple.”
Within months of living in Christiansburg without barbeque, coupled with hitting multiple dead ends in her own job search, Marie began to imagine bringing barbeque to Christiansburg.
John Park
“We made every mistake when we first opened,” laughs Marie, her southern drawl and warm, self-deprecating nature inviting me into the hilarity of those early rough months. Between a severe underestimation of staffing needs, homemade, puffy paint t-shirts, septic issues and an embarrassing snafu with the smoked turkeys the first Thanksgiving they took custom orders, it seems a wonder they stayed open.
Almost.
Until you taste their barbeque. What the Marches learned from their elderly mentor and then spent years perfecting, has certainly made up for any opening day sins. This is the kind of barbeque that infuses the air around it with smoked meat deliciousness. The kind of smell that makes your mouth instantly water as soon as you open your car door. And we haven’t even gotten to the rubs and sauces yet.
Besides their mentor, Marie credits her husband’s “super taster” mouth for much of Due South’s unique rub and sauce flavors.
“[Jared] can come home from a restaurant and recreate anything he falls in love with. He can taste every ingredient of something. Everything.” Marie’s eyes widen as she says this, pride and jealousy mingled together.
John Park
Jared is responsible for Due South’s award-winning Red Hot Sauce (earning first place in a statewide competition). He also developed their Lexington sauce. But it was Marie who developed Sweet Brown. After customers continually requested a “plain ole barbeque sauce,” Marie’s Tennessee heritage kicked in. Understanding they wanted a brown, molasses-based sauce, Marie took to her stove. Within minutes, she had Sweet Brown created and nearly perfected, one of Due South’s best sellers (and my personal favorite).
Any barbeque aficionado considers a barbeque joint’s sides as seriously as the meat. To have great barbeque but awful sides is akin to putting cheap wine (and I don’t mean in dollar amount alone) with fresh, wild-caught Alaskan salmon. I’m happy to say, Due South suffers no such foulness. From their coleslaw (an old family recipe) to their sweet tater casserole, every side is solidly appetizing. My personal favorites are their hushpuppies, baked apples and banana puddin’.
John Park
But, it’s in their smoked hog where my adoration begins and ends. I love the smoked hickory-infused flavor, the hot pink smoke ring centers, the way the bone falls right out of the ribs and the crusted, flavorful outer bark created by their specialty mustard rubs. And then there’s the bird. Due South’s smoked chicken is some of the best I’ve eaten. They use a two-part cooking process that smokes the chicken through without drying it out—leaving the inner meat fully cooked, bright pink and juicy throughout the inside, with this amazing salty-sweet crispness on the outside.
The Marches are committed to using the highest quality ingredients: competition quality cuts of meat, and local and organic ingredients when possible. But what I love most, is being able to taste the time, care and love put into the entire smoked meat process with every single melting bite.
“We’ve had a lot of support from community from day one,” says Marie, as she reflects on the way New River Valley folks have embraced them, even during those first rocky days. “It gives me cold chills. They’ve never treated us like outsiders. My thought on Due South is, we do local.” I
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