By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROSCOE — Homegrown pitmaster Will Hendrickson had one beef from customers during his debut season with the Whiskey Hotel Barbecue food truck: It proved so popular that you had to line up early to make sure you could get it before it sold out.
Now, Hendrickson is preparing to grow his barbecue business into its first restaurant space at 5522 Elevator Road, which is roughly a mile from where the food truck was stationed this fall outside of Schnucks. He hopes to open by spring.
“We were absolutely slammed. The first day we opened up we sold out in three hours,” he said. “The latest we ever made it to was six o’clock, and that’s with being sold out of a lot of stuff.”
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Whiskey Hotel Barbecue launched this summer at county fairs and other special events before operating as a food truck until winter hit the region.
Hendrickson was initially looking for a larger commissary kitchen to keep pace with the demand when he found the former Sabor Bar & Grill, which he will remodel for the new home of the restaurant.
Customers took note this summer of the care Hendrickson and his team put into the Texas beef brisket, Kansas City brisket burnt ends, South Carolina pulled pork and bacon burnt ends, which he refers to as meat candy. They also knew you had to arrive early most days to assure you could get it before it runs out.
“Will has a deep passion for BBQ and it shows in all aspects of Whiskey Hotel Barbecue. The food is worth all the hype,” Molly Fuchs wrote in a five-star review on Google. “Go and get in line early before he sells out for the day.”
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That was one of 44 reviews left via Google for Whiskey Hotel Barbecue. All are five stars, even from some who preferred to keep the food truck a secret.
“The problem is though, if I leave a 5-star review about all their awesome food, then I’ll have to get there earlier to beat the line every time or risk them selling out again. Nope. Not gonna tell anyone about this place,” Michele Miller wrote in a Google review.
Hendrickson hopes to open by March, weather pending, but he plans to have special catering service for Super Bowl weekend on Feb. 11.
The Poplar Grove native, who now lives in South Beloit, is a former Army infantryman who served two tours in Iraq. After he was medically retired, he became a social studies teacher in Chicago.
He bought his first smoker after a trip to Kansas City introduced him to burnt ends, and he was determined to recreate the taste at home. He honed his skills with a smoker through hours of studying experts and his own experimentation, with the resulting barbecue initially served to friends and family.
“Then when COVID hit I had nothing else to do, so I sat in my backyard staring at fires and just cooking for my neighbors and actually got good at it,” he said. “Not too much later we decided to go ahead and do it professionally.”
He runs the business with his longtime partner, Amy Bayliss, and a small team of employees that includes John Bunger, a former industrial equipment mechanic at the Belvidere Assembly Plant, and Cory McNease, who worked at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, which is a top-ranked barbecue restaurant in Texas.
“Franklin Barbecue is the tippy top of the highest mountain of barbecue. They’re the joint by which all others are judged,” Hendrickson said. “To find somebody in Rockford who has any experience from anywhere on the Texas Monthly Top 50 is crazy. To find talent from the top of that is fantastic. ”
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The name Whiskey Hotel is derived from a phonetic representation of the owner’s initials – W.H. – which is often used in the military. Doing so gave Hendrickson a connection to his past military service in his new venture.
Hendrickson describes himself as an old-fashioned pitmaster who believes good barbecue is cooked with a hardwood fire. He and his team cook each piece of hand-trimmed meat in one of three pits, including a massive smoker nicknamed L-Block that Hendrickson made with his cousin David Hendrickson from an 1,140-gallon anhydrous tank.
“It’s one of the finest running smokers you could have,” Hendrickson said. “It’s been cooked on by two Top 5 Texas barbecue joints out at the Windy City Smokeout. It’s an impressive machine.”
The sauces Whiskey Hotel uses include both original recipes and selections made to pair with the meats. Some of the most popular items this season were the South Carolina pulled pork and the beef brisket sandwich, which Hendrickson tinkered with in order to render down the collagen so it would have the right tender texture.
He said part of his team’s goal is to elevate the reputation the Midwest and the Rockford region has for barbecue. He said everybody at Whiskey Hotel believes the Midwest can have just as good of a barbecue reputation as traditional barbecue havens such as Texas.
“We try to bring as much of that respect for the craft as we can,” Hendrickson said. “Everybody that works for me, they all love barbecue. In this way we’re sort of all these barbecue nerds getting together and trying to make the best that we possibly can.”
Follow | Whiskey Hotel Barbecue
Future home: 5522 Elevator Road, Roscoe
Website: whiskeyhotelbbq.com
On social media: facebook.com/whiskeyhotelbbq
Contact: whiskeyhotelbbq@gmail.com
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas