Celebrating Five Years of The Smoke Sheet

Plus, Top BBQ brunch spots, Texas pitmasters in Finland, the best homemade coleslaw recipe, and more.

This week, we celebrate five years of The Smoke Sheet newsletter. We started this project out of our passion for the barbecue community, and we’re still committed to bringing our readers a look at the national BBQ and grilling landscape with each issue.

Ryan Cooper and Sean Ludwig of The Smoke Sheet are celebrating five years of the newsletter and looking back on trips, interviews, and more.

We’ve traveled all across the country, eating at top-notch restaurants and chronicling the happenings of major competitions and festivals. All along the way, we’ve made many new friends and greatly expanded our palettes.

One of our favorite BBQ legends we’ve spent time with is Hall of Famer and writer Ardie Davis aka Remus Powers.

A few favorite moments from the past five years include:

• Spending a week in Houston, eating at many of the top BBQ joints there

• Interviewing Steven Raichlen about his books, a TV show, and much more

• Talking to Meathead Goldwyn about his storied career as a web publisher, author, and entrepreneur

• Sean getting married at a BBQ joint

• Spending time with Tootsie Tomanetz of Snow’s BBQ fame

• Watching exuberant wins in person at the American Royal, The Jack, and Memphis in May

• Ryan helping to organize a showcase of Kansas City’s brightest BBQ stars

• Highlighting talented women in BBQ and grilling that everyone should know

• Writing about the BBQ scenes that are emerging and evolving across the nation

We greatly enjoyed interviewing AmazingRibs.com founder and author Meathead Goldwyn.

While all of these experiences have provided us with perspective, we’re still growing and hungry for more. That’s why we moved the newsletter to Substack earlier this year and changed it to a paid subscription model. We did this to make the newsletter more sustainable and, with time, open the doors for more writers.