About This Blog: Who Runs It and How Recommendations Are Made
This page says who publishes this guide to pizza and barbecue menus in southern New Hampshire and why it exists. It also explains how anything in the guide earns a recommendation, which is the part a reader should check first.
Menu words that are easy to skip and costly to get wrong
Menus in this part of New Hampshire use a short list of cooking words as if every reader already knew them. Wood-fired, rub, burnt ends and smoked each describe a method, and each one changes what reaches the plate and what the reader is paying for. Often a menu does not explain them. So the reader either guesses, or plays it safe and orders the one thing they already know. The cost of guessing wrong is small on a cheap plate and large on a family dinner or a night out with friends. A little reading before the order makes the menu work for you.
This guide exists because those words are easy to skip and expensive to get wrong on a plate you have already paid for. Each entry says what a term means in plain words, what it changes about the food, and when it should change an order. The entries are written for a reader who has never eaten this kind of food, including a reader whose first language is not English. Sentences are kept short, and no slang is left unexplained. Nothing in the guide assumes you have eaten barbecue or wood-fired pizza before. The aim is simple: after reading, you should be able to read any menu in the area and say what you want.
I publish this site under the name Marrow & Ladle Company, a small business. I do not run a restaurant, pizzeria, barbecue kitchen, brewery or taproom. Nothing on these pages describes a menu or a kitchen of my own, and no page is written from behind a counter. That matters for everything below, because a reader should be able to see who is doing the recommending. When I point a reader toward a business, I say why, and I give a reason the reader can check for themselves.
Learn the words on the menu first, and only then choose what you want to eat.
That is the one position this site takes: learn the vocabulary, then choose. A rub is a dry mixture of spices, sometimes with salt and sugar, worked into meat before it cooks. Burnt ends are the cubes cut from the fatty point of a smoked brisket, cooked further until the outside is dark and sticky. A reader who knows both can ask a useful question at the counter, such as whether the rub is sweet or salty. That question tells the cook more than pointing at the one word the reader recognises. The vocabulary is not a test; it is the way to get the plate you wanted.
The state’s restaurant trade body
New Hampshire’s restaurants have a statewide trade association, and it is a good first place to see how the trade organises itself. It speaks for the state’s hospitality industry, covering lodging as well as restaurants. It also runs food safety training and advocacy for its members. This guide does not rely on the association for any claim, and nothing on these pages describes the association as endorsing anything here. You can read its own account at New Hampshire Lodging & Restaurant Association.
The guide follows the choices a reader meets most often: the fire and the oven, the meat and the cut, sauce against rub, and the sides and drinks that go with them. Each page takes one of those choices and works through it in order. That order matters, because the fire shapes the flavour before any sauce is added. A reader can follow the reasoning on the page and check it against the menu in front of them. Where a claim cannot be checked that way, the page says so.
How a recommendation earns its place
Start from a claim a reader can check
Every recommendation here comes down to one statement a reader could test. That statement might be what a term means, what a method does to the food, or what a menu usually means when it uses a particular word. If I cannot put the claim in a single sentence, it does not go on the page. A general sense that a place is good is not a reason to recommend it. It is not a reason to avoid it either, so the page stays silent rather than guessing.
Test it against a published reference
Where a method has a published standard, that standard comes first. A wood-fired margherita can be measured against a published Neapolitan rulebook. A barbecue term can be checked against the rules a competition uses to judge the food. Each check names its source, so a reader can go and read the rule rather than take my word for it. Where no standard exists, the page says so instead of filling the gap with confidence the evidence does not support.
Say what this guide does not show
Nothing here is written from a visit to a business, so I do not describe a meal as though I had eaten it. A reader who wants a meal described from experience will need to find a source that has eaten it. When a recommendation depends on how one particular kitchen works, the page says so. It also says that the reader needs to ask that kitchen directly. The page names the question to ask, so the reader leaves with something to check rather than a verdict to trust.
Ask what the word means before you order
