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PUTNAM — Gran’daddy’s Smokehouse and BBQ on Providence Street was recently voted CT Magazines “Best BBQ” Windham County” by its readers for the “Great Food, Attentive Service, and Inviting Atmosphere.”
Owner and a pit-master by trade Ralph Lechausse said, “When you add in the fact that there are many gluten-free items on the menu, and that it is a healthier comfort food to eat, it gets even better.”
Ralph’s favorite on the menu is the beef brisket.
According to Ralph, a real pit-master is measured by his brisket. “It’s the toughest piece of meat on the cow . It took me four years to get that recipe just right. It’s tender and juicy; one of the most popular items on the menu.”
Ralph spent his summers on his Gran’daddy’s farm in Tennessee, where barbecue and smoked foods are everywhere.
When you ask Ralph about those days, he’ll tell you that some of his fondest memories are of when he was a young boy helping his Grandaddy and his Uncle Brown hang hams and turkeys in an old homemade brick smoker. He will also tell you he can still remember his Gran’daddy’s hands and knuckles, gnarled with age, as he fed that perfectly dried hickory wood into the smoker; Grandaddy Tillman would tell him, “Low and slow son, low and slow, that’s the way to smoke it right.
When Ralph, now a retired U.S. Army veteran, was stationed at Fort Benning Ga.,, he and his wife used to go to a little bbq restaurant just off base called Country’s BBQ. He said that it was then that he decided when he retired he wanted to be the KFC of BBQ.” and when he retired he would open his own BBQ restaurant “up home” as he puts it.