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Henry Perry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry Perry (1875-March 22, 1940) was a restaurateur who is considered the "father of Kansas City barbecue."
Perry was born in Shelby County, Tennessee near Memphis, Tennessee and worked on steamboat restaurants on the Mississippi River and Missouri River before moving to Kansas City, Missouri in 1907. In 1908 he began serving smoked meats to workers in the Garment District in Downtown Kansas City from an alley stand.
He then moved his stand to 17th and Lydia [1] in the famed inner city neighborhood of 18th Street and Vine.
He then moved a few blocks away within the neighborhood 19th and Highland where he operated out of an old trolley barn throughout 1920’s and 30’s when the neighborhood became famed for its Kansas City Jazz during the Tom Pendergast era.
Customers paid 25 cents for hot meat smoked over oak and hickory and wrapped in newsprint. Perry's sauce was described as "harsh, peppery" (rather than sweet). Perry’s menu included such barbecue standards of the day as beef, possum, woodchuck, and raccoon.
At his death Charlie Bryant took over the business and sold it to his brother Arthur Bryant (restaurateur) who made the sauce a little sweeter when he opened his restaurant Arthur Bryant's at 1727 Brooklyn in the same neighborhood.
Arthur Pinkard who had worked for Perry helped George Gates found Gates and Sons Bar-B-Q.
Kansas City now has more than 100 barbecue restaurants and the city self proclaims that it is the "world capital of barbecue." In 1979 Rich Davis from suburban Johnson County, Kansas began marketing a sweeter sauce called KC Masterpiece which claims to be the number one premium barbecue sauce in the United States.