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New generation dons apron at Johnnie's Bar-Be-Que
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer DADE CITY -- In September of last year, a local barbecue kingpin stumbled. A month later, he died. In the year after that, the family of barbecue mogul Johnnie Clower has picked up where he left off. His son, Aaron, left a Tampa desk job and donned the apron. And Clower's widow, Betty, has immersed herself in the family business. Johnnie's Bar-Be-Que is still at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fifth Street. The catering business runs seven days a week, and the plan is to expand the restaurant from two to five days a week. "It's been a little hectic at times," Betty Clower said. "But we managed to pull through. We always knew how to do all the cooking that was needed, but now we're learning about all the other things." Johnnie Clower was 56 when he fell to the ground as he walked across a grocery store parking lot on Sept. 11 of last year. He struggled to get up, but rescue crews summoned to the scene realized something was seriously wrong. He had suffered a stroke. The former auto mechanic, who had opened his restaurant 10 years earlier, was hospitalized more than a month before dying Oct. 21, 2000. "It was good to have all the community support we had," his widow said. "People came by, they stopped in to see us, they offered to help, and that made us feel good. It made us want to go on." Aaron Clower, who grew up cooking by his father's side, had left the business and had a good job in Tampa overseeing the shipping dock at a wholesale operation. The money was nice, and the job didn't involve standing around a hot kitchen or peering into the smoke of a barbecue pit. But something was missing. "I have this picture of me and my father cooking. I kept it on my dashboard and I'd look at it," said Clower, 26. "He used to say, "All this could be yours.' I decided this was something I had to try. I had to come back." The picture he still carries in his truck shows a teenage boy by his father's side, a slab of ribs between them. Aaron Clower said it reminds him of why he sticks with the familybusiness. "It's funny, he used to come out in the dining room, joke with the customers, talk sports, things like that," Aaron Clower said. "Now I'm doing that." His mother said she still hasn't given up the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily job she has had for 24 years at the nearby juice plant, but her days start between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. so she can stop by the restaurant and help prepare for the day's catering job or buffet. After work, she comes back by to clean up and get ready for the next day. Fridays, when the locally famous buffet is open, mean a lot of extra work, she said. The buffet is always piled high with ribs and the family's secret sauce, but Aaron Clower said he has started experimenting, looking for ways to do things more efficiently and adding some new things to the ribs, chicken, catfish and greens. The traditional banana pudding is sometimes replaced with peach cobbler, and the sacred barbecue sauce is a tad spicier. Catering continues to be the backbone of the operation, Aaron Clower said. But the restaurant, currently open only Fridays and Saturdays, will open Wednesdays through Sundays starting Jan. 2. For Aaron Clower, working with family -- especially his mother -- has been rewarding, he said. "I thought I was going to get away from this. I thought I didn't want to do it. "But my father, I guess he found a way to get me back here."
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From the Times |
