Under Jinx's Spell

One fine day last summer, my roommate and I set out on a quest to find the finest, grimiest, porkiest pork barbecue establishment here in C-Vegas. This is the story of how we finally succeeded.

Working in a confined, chilly research lab all summer with little contact to the outside world had left me starving for adventure. One afternoon, while devoid of much "work" to do, I found myself in the midst of an in-depth discussion of (what else?) pork barbecue with a co-worker who lives on the other side of Charlottesville and is apparently in tight with the locals here. He told me about several fine establishments in town before finally mentioning the "legendary" Jinx’s Pit’s Top Barbecue, home to Maxim’s "Best Pork Barbecue Sandwich". He warned me that this place was somewhat, ahem, grimy, and probably unlike any place I’ve ever eaten before, describing it as a shack on the side of the road owned and operated by a crazy old guy (Mr. Jinx himself) who refers to his sandwiches as "Sammiches". I was pumped. A grimy, semi-disgusting, "legendary" pork barbecue shack! What’s not to like about that?

That evening, my roommate and I, stoked about the idea of such a place, went for the kill and set out down Market Street to find Jinx’s shack. It wasn’t hard to find - we unfortunately ran into one minor problem: it was Wednesday night, and apparently Jinx shuts down shop at 3:30 on Wednesdays. At least that’s what his makeshift "Hours of Operation" sign outside said – it had several days with their “old” hours crossed out in permanent marker and replaced with new hours. I’m not even really sure what his hours are right now; at the time, I remember Thursday had the shack scheduled to be open until 7:30.

We therefore returned the following night after long, grueling days at work, excited to actually eat barbecue this time. Except this time, we were greeted at the door with a piece of paper with "Done run out of BBQ" scribbled on it. Ouch. We returned earlier in the evening the next night, confident that Jinx would not have run out of barbecue. Well, we were right that he hadn’t run out yet – we managed to finally walk inside this palace and see Jinx himself – who informed us that he had a catering job for the evening and that we should come back the next day. Sweet Jesus. Were we ever going to savor the sweet nectar of the gods, Jinx’s barbecue Sammich?

After putting our quest off for a few days to regain our composure, my roommate and I again set out to Jinx’s, this time during our lunch break, nearly certain (but with a lingering sense of doubt) that we would finally Live the Dream. We entered the dilapidated, two-tabled shack, this time marveling at the walls covered in pig paraphernalia (and a really awesome topographic map of only the western half of Virginia), and Jinx welcomed us into his domain. He alerted us to the menu on his marker board, as if we needed any options.

A Sammich and double baked beans on the side for each of us, please.

My my, this WAS unlike any barbecue sandwich I’d eaten before. Home boy smokes his pork slabs all night in a hickory smoker outside the shack so it’s mad tender come eatin’ time. He adds a small dash of a special ketchup-based barbecue sauce and serves the meat on two pieces of toasted white bread. And that’s your Sammich. No slaw (“You don’t do slaw on this barbecue,” he explained). Well, actually, you can get the Sammich with slaw – for $15.79. Without, it’s $6.59 for a sammich and two sides. Trust me, you don’t need the slaw.

Since that glorious afternoon, I have since returned to Jinx’s lair (it’s generally more of a hit with my dude friends, let’s say) and found barbecue there each time. So yeah, I guess that’s the catch – you have to catch Jinx if you want to actually eat at this place, which is sometimes difficult. If you don’t mind the ridiculous, semi-grimy hobo-shack look to this place, and, of course, if you dig barbecue as much as I do, you need to go get Jinxed for yourself.