Some local BBQ restaurants stay open for July 4

JACKSON, Tenn. — Two barbecue restaurants in Jackson continue holiday traditions by staying open for July 4.

For more than 50 years, Paul Latham’s Barbecue in north Jackson has been filling Fourth of July orders.

“Business is about 10 times more than normal. It’s around-the-clock cooking,” general manager Tim Throne said.

They really mean around the clock. They cook their meat the old-fashioned way — on pits at 150 degrees, 24/7.

“We take hickory, we burn it down to coals, put it up underneath the meat, and smoke it that way to cook it,” Throne said.

They can cook more than two dozen racks of ribs and 32 chickens on each pit.

“You taste that hickory smoke hardwood in the meat, and it’s just juicy, and you crave it,” Throne said.

One BBQ restaurant farther south is making the holiday a family affair.

“If it were a dining room, it would be like a family gathering, but it’s a drive-thru, so it’s more like a family conversation,” said Kyle Clifton, co-owner of The Pig House. “With everybody that comes through, you pretty much say, ‘Hey! How’s everybody doing?’ They get their food, catch up for a minute or two, then you’ll see them again in a week or two.”

The Clifton Family at The Pig House has been smoking meat for 32 years.

“Our specialty is pork, but everything else is really good too,” Kyle said.

Even before 10 a.m., their phones are ringing almost non-stop.

“We’ve got people who have come up here for many years,” said Tyler Clifton, the other co-owner of The Pig House. “We see a lot of the same faces, so we kind of know what they want, but we also have a lot of new people we try to keep coming back. So we do our best, and we have a family of people who work as hard as they can.”

Like past years, Paul Latham’s Barbecue and The Pig House will both be open for July 4.