Under the orange and yellow tent, a man with an Australian accent looks at the drawing on the Big Mike's Original Barbecue Sauce label, then looks at Mike.
"Are you the Big Mike?" he finally asks.
Mike McCrea looks down at his impressive belly. "Looks like I am," he replies.
"All right, then, mate, I need five bottles of each: the mild one --"
"It's not mild, exactly."
"Well, yes, and the hot, and the, uh, what do you call the other one?"
"Could be hot, could be extra hot, could be you can't talk for a while after you eat it."
"Well, bag them up. I'm taking this back home by dogsled, by carrier pigeon, whatever it takes."
"When you run out," Big Mike promises, "write me a letter and I'll send you more."
Another victory for word -- and taste -- of mouth, Big Mike's only marketing strategy. Life is good. Standing at farmer's markets peddling sauce beats driving a hazardous waste truck, his profession for the previous fifteen years. In fact, since Mike launched his barbecue-sauce business six months ago, the only thing that hasn't gone according to plan is this: His appetite has been killed by a string of ninety-degree days and long hours in the kitchen. Without even thinking about it, he's dropped fifty pounds over the past two months.
"If this keeps up," he worries, "I won't be Big Mike anymore."
The Origins of Big Mike: Five Points, 1967
Night falls. Mrs. McCrea, Mike's mom, usually makes what she calls goulash for dinner: a conglomeration of leftovers, canned corn and some kind of binder. "Not bad-tasting leftovers, like other people eat," Mike recalls. "My dad always said she could make a great meal out of nothing at all, and, oh, the meat and the potatoes, the meatloaf. I got this thing for meatloaf. I got this thing for anything except for black-eyed peas and lima beans and okra, which are all slimy and make me shiver. Why would you ask anyone to eat a thing like that?"
Tonight Mrs. McCrea is not asking anyone to eat a thing like that; home from her job as a third-grade teacher, she's frying burgers in a huge cast-iron pan. By the time Mr. McCrea comes in from his job -- "He took care of a house and grounds," Mike recalls. "'Butler' might be the correct word for it" -- all six McCrea kids are home, and everyone sits down together. And if they don't eat what's put before them, Mr. McCrea tells them firmly to get UP from the table.
"Later that night, I grab three or four more of those burgers and put them in foil and take them to bed with me," Mike recalls. "I put them under my pillow. They are huge, and I eat them in the middle of the night. I loved both my parents, and I wish they could see me now."
Mr. and Mrs. McCrea have both passed away -- Mrs. McCrea recently. But the recipes she began sharing with Big Mike, her eldest son, live on. He's not above shedding a few tears when he thinks about his parents. "I hear I'm not supposed to cry because I'm a man," he says. "Hogwash."
Ways to Eat Big Mike's Original Barbecue Sauce, as revealed during a summer of customer contact
Dip sushi in it
Slather it on corn on the cob
Apply to pizza crusts
Down one shot glass full several times a day; it will keep you going.
"If you have an etiquette thing," Mike advises, "eat it out of a spoon." Then blink your eyes, blow your nose and shiver a few times as the sauce shoots into your system.
"A lot of the sauce out there is nothing but sweetened ketchup, so you have to be prepared," he explains. "A lot of the stuff on the shelves in the stores is pure ca-ca Kraft."
Geographically speaking, Big Mike's sauce falls between Kansas City/North Carolina sweetness and Texas hottitude. As an officially certified judge with the Kansas City Barbecue Society, he knows this and more, but he can't share sauce specifics for fear of "divulging trade secrets." Since completing a correspondence course with the Denver-based Culinary Institute of Smoked Cooking, however, he's become more opinionated than ever as to the most obvious application of Big Mike's sauce: barbecue.
"Remember these words," he advises, "low and slow. Do not boil or parboil your ribs. Do not boil anything."
Instead, put your ribs or chicken quarters (with or without skin) in a shallow pan, sauce lightly and add about a half-inch of water. Cover with foil to let it steam. Put the pan into a 275-degree oven and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, then turn, re-sauce and cook at least that long again. Then finish your meats on a hot grill, brushing on the sauce whenever you think about it, but you won't have to think -- the smell will remind you.
Bottle It: Commerce City, 1990
Big Mike had been trucking waste oil and solvents all over the country (and eating regional barbecue while he was at it) for most of his adult life when word went out that the next Onyx International Waste Company picnic would be a potluck. The barbecue he whipped up that day became legendary, not just because it disappeared within minutes, but also because it was the first time someone tasted Mike's sauce, then looked him in the eye and said, "Bottle it." The next year, Mike's boss gave him three days off to get ready for the company picnic. After that, all pretense of potluck was dropped, and the gathering became known as Big Mike's Rib Cookoff. He began catering private parties and entered last year's Blues and Bones barbecue contest.
After the constant vibration and heavy lifting of the trucking industry finally got to his back, Mike went on medical leave and started a sauce business with the help of the Denver Enterprise Center, a business incubator run by David Gonzales.
"I can tell which ideas, especially which food ideas, are going to take off, and Mike's is definitely one of them," Gonzales says. "You get in trouble when you quit listening because you think know everything. Mike has not done that, and there is a huge market in this economy for specialty foods. Besides, that sauce is so spicy. I love hot foods."
Since the incubator's 10,000-square-foot kitchen is located within walking distance of his office, Gonzales is a frequent taster. Mike rents kitchen space at the incubator at night and whatever days there isn't a farmer's market. "I don't rest a lot; I learned that from trucking," he says. "I get about five hours a night, kind of like Einstein used to, and I take power naps in the truck. Or I find a spot in the kitchen and pass out."
Big Mike is taking two years to put his company in the black, exactly as specified by his business plan. As predicted -- by Big Mike to Big Mike -- he already has a loyal following and a Web site, right on schedule. More of a surprise was a phone call from one of Jay Leno's producers. "He wanted to be the first to put me on national TV," Mike says. "It turned out I couldn't be scheduled at this time, whatever that means. Oh, well. I'll get there."
Dreams of Nebraska: Sloan Lake Farmer's Market
"So what is this?" asks the thirty-year-old mom at the head of the stroller parade. "Is it hot? I don't like things hot."
"Could be hot, could be extra-hot, could be you --"
"Hey, it's good is what it is," interrupts William Wellisch, who went through a bottle last week and has come back for more. "Big Mike, let me shake the hand that created this masterpiece."
Smile, nod, thanks, thanks and "Get your fingers outta the sauce, little man," Mike says firmly to the toddler who has escaped his stroller. "He sure likes that, doesn't he? Fingers. Out!"
"What are you selling, barbecue sauce?"
"Is it like that place Bennett's? You know that place?"
"I have some KC Masterpiece at home. That stuff's okay."
"But is it hot?"
Once in a while, when there's a break in the farmer's market action, Big Mike flies one of fourteen remote-control helicopters he keeps in his Westminster garage. "My mom didn't want me to fly real helicopters in Vietnam, because she didn't want me to die," he says simply. "So now I am a member of the Front Range Rotary Modellers and the Colorado Rotor Heads. I may get to go to Kimball, Nebraska, for Farmer Days. A lot of the RC [remote control] people get together there.
"I have model trucks too," he muses. "Hey, I have a couple of real trucks. And a '66 GTO in storage. At times I have wished I could pay a woman just to have my son. I mean, look at all I could give him. Actually, I'd like to be married and have six children, just like my mother and father did. I have not been able to find the right woman, I guess. I've heard women don't like fat guys."
"Can I get a rack of ribs?" asks the cop.
"Can I get a jar of original?"
"Can I get a pop to go with that chicken?"
Yes, yes and yes, "because right now this is my love," Big Mike decides. "Feeding people. Knowing they finally got something good to eat."
