Now, it's a yearly thing, with a spiffy new logo and everything! Pigs replace stars in the new D.C. flag motif. "That was the animal that we had the highest resolution graphic of," says co-organizer, Mr. Capital Spice, Mike Bober. "And we tried it with three different animals in place of the stars. It didn't speak to the D.C. flag the same way that a repetition of three did."

Tonight, the 'cue carnival converges at Hill Country. Then, it's off to Pork Barrel, Smoke & Barrel, and even a few non-barrel-titled venues, too. See the full agenda below:

Monday, Jan. 30, 6:30 PM
Hill Country, 410 7th St. NW
www.hillcountrywdc.com

*Specials: All you can eat Brisket, Pork Ribs, Barbecue Chicken and all the Sides for $20. Drink Specials: $2 PBRs & $20 Pitchers of Shiner all night; $5 well drinks and margaritas til 7 PM.

Tuesday, Jan. 31, 7 PM
Pork Barrel BBQ Restaurant,
2312 Mt. Vernon Ave., Alexandria
www.porkbarrelbbq.com

*Specials: Meat Week Sampler Platter for $20.12.
1/4 pound Pulled Pork, 1/4 pound Brisket, 3 Ribs, 1/4 Chicken, 1 Brisket Sausage, 2 Sides

Wednesday, Feb. 1, 7 p.m.
PORC (Purveyors of Rolling Cuisine – hosted by Torries @ Wilson), 700 V Street, NW
www.porcmobile.com

Please RSVP here.

*Specials: $25 All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, including pulled pork, Smokey Joe (PORC’’s take on the sloppy joe), Goat BBQ, PORC Hot Links (debut item!), Mac and Cheese, BBQ Beans, Coleslaw, Collard Greens, Chocolate Truffles on a Stick.

Thursday, Feb. 2, 7 p.m.
Smoke & Barrel, 2471 18th Street, NW
smokeandbarreldc.com

SORRY – THIS EVENT IS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT. NO WALK-INS CAN BE ACCOMMODATED.
*Specials: Meat Week Buffet for $22.95

Friday, Feb. 3, 7 PM
Memphis BBQ, 320 S. 23rd St., Arlington

*Specials: Free dessert with a minimum $15 purchase of food and beverage (including alcohol)

Saturday, Feb. 4, 1 PM
Mr. P’s Ribs & Fish, 566 25th Pl. NE (in the Rhode Island Avenue Safeway parking lot – look for the converted school bus)

Sunday, Feb. 5, 11AM to 2PM
Rocklands BBQ, 2418 Wisconsin Ave NW
www.rocklands.com

*Specials: PB&E Sandwich (pulled pork, bacon & fried egg) for $7.99
Southern Chicken Sandwich with white sauce for $6.99
Brunswick Stew with cornbread – single serving for $3.49, pint for $5.99

You've been Spiked. Y&H Nation couldn't get enough of Spike Mendelsohn last week. The news that Herr Burgermeister was close to opening his We, The Pizza enticed hundreds of you to read more about his Big Apple pie plans — and to re-read about his past troubles with a Capitol Hill landlord.

Take a look at last week's Top 5:

• 'D.C. Cupcakes' Debuts on July 16 on TLC
• Spike Mendelsohn's We, The Pizza to Open on July 19
• Mike Isabella Is Leaving Zaytinya to Open His Own  Place (*)
• Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House
• Smoking Out the Area's Best Barbecue for Summer

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

If your Independence Day weekend was anything like mine, you ate a lot of smoke: smoked brisket, smoked ribs, smoked sausages, smoked corn. By the time our Fourth of July feast was ready on Sunday afternoon, I smelled like a crank shaft in an overheated Ford on a lonely stretch of Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

I took two showers in less than 24 hours, the water moratorium be damned.

All that time standing next to a barrel smoker got me thinking about barbecue in D.C. Unlike some urban markets, D.C. still struggles to produce high-quality 'cue. Urban Bar-B-Que continues to produce my favorite brisket in the area, a slice of low-and-slow Texas-style goodness right in Rockville, while Mr. P's continues to smoke my favorite ribs. The rest of our smoked-meats market is a crap shoot at best, turning out sub-par barbecue far more often than anything worth recommending.

As we head into the teeth of summer, though, I wanted to point you in the direction of some reliable barbecue outlets as well as point out a newcomer perhaps worth a visit.

Aside from Urban and Mr. P's, I think you'll find plenty to satisfy your smoking needs at, of all places, the WFM Smokehouse inside the Fair Lakes Whole Foods. Aside from the holy trinity of beef, ribs, and sausage, the grocery store also offers whole chickens and these delectable smoked wings, almost as good as the ones Ann Cashion turns out at Johnny's Half Shell.

Then there's Branded '72, which is an outgrowth of O'Brien's Pit Barbecue in Rockville; the son-in-law of founder Ken O'Brien Sr. has given the old smokehouse a new name and a renewed sense of purpose. I can't vouch for the ribs here, but I think the brisket shows considerable promise. I have hopes that, under new management, Branded '72 will only get better with time.

The newbie is a place called Blue Ribbon BBQ and, interestingly enough, it's also located in Rockville. (So when did this town become the metro area's 'cue capital?) Blue Ribbon is the product of three college friends who bought the old smokehouse and injected it with new blood. The owners boast a 600-pound capacity Southern Pride unit in which they toss seasoned hickory logs to smoke their Texas-style brisket, Memphis-style dry ribs, and Carolina-style pork. But the most unusual item at Blue Ribbon has to be the hot dog.

That's right, I said hot dog.

Blue Ribbon takes an all-beef, natural casing link and smokes it for a few minutes, just long enough to perfume it with hickory. The dog is then deep-fried, placed in a toasted bun, and smothered in chopped smoked brisket. It's like a chili dog, only better because it's covered in smoky meat.

"We invented it," says co-owner Nick Rossi. "We tried as many things as we could to see what was delicious. And this came out the best."

Blue Ribbon, like most barbecue outlets in the area, is no pure breed but more of a mutt, combining the influences from a number of different regional forebears.  But we do have a pure breed coming our way, or at least as close to one as we get around these parts. It's called Hill Country, a D.C. offshoot of the NYC original. Its influence is, as the name implies, pure central Texas. It's supposed to open this month at 410 Seventh St. NW.

What about you, Y&H Nation? Where are you eating barbecue this summer?

The opening night of Meat Week apparently surpassed the local organizer's expectations, which perhaps wasn't hard, since they hovered somewhere near rock bottom. But 24 people showed up last night at Urban Bar-B-Que, which stayed open late to handle all the carnivores.

"I was really impressed at the way Urban Bar-B-Que stepped up to handle our mob of two dozen Meat Weekers," e-mails organizer and Capital Spice's Mike Bober.

"This was definitely the right way to kick things off, and it bodes well for the rest of our get-togethers," he adds. "People are really excited about the Pork Barrel BBQ event on Wednesday night and they're ready to brave the cold to sample Mr. P's ribs in the Safeway parking lot on Saturday."

Remember, Meat Week goes 'til Saturday. Tonight's meat and greet is at Rocklands in Glover Park. The full schedule is here.

Photo illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Meat Week, if I'm truly honest with myself, is not designed for cities like Washington D.C., where barbecue joints have to cater to the many different styles of American smoked meats. The smokehouse that dares to specialize in, say, Texas 'cue or Carolina pulled pork is the smokehouse destined to fail in the District. At least that's what a veteran restaurant consultant once told me.

This more than explains the mediocre barbecue we have in the metro area. Perfecting one style of barbecue is hard enough; perfecting them all is a task more impossible than landing an unauthorized helicopter on the White House lawn.

The best pit men we have are those who try (if not always succeed) to master a particular style, like Fate Pittman who specializes in western North Carolina 'cue at Mr. P's Ribs and Fish or David Calkins who fell in love with Texas barbecue and has been working hard to duplicate Lone Star State brisket at Urban.

But after those two places (as well as the smokehouse in Clinton and possibly, with more visits, Branded '72), my interest in local barbecue drops off significantly. I don't think I could ever muster enough interest, let alone appetite, to hit seven straight local smokehouses. (In Texas, by contrast, I think I could eat the stuff straight for a month and not tire of it.)

The beauty of Meat Week, though, is that you don't have to attend all of the gatherings — not unless you're Mr. Capital Spice, Mike Bober, who's leading the charge for the D.C. Chapter of Meat Week. Talk about talking a bullet for the team.

Of course, I'm not saying anything that Bober doesn't already know.

"The biggest headache I ran into was trying to set the schedule," Bober e-mailed Y&H earlier today. "[U]nless you're willing to drive outside the Beltway, it's hard to find seven really good barbecue joints in the area. I went with a few of the names everyone knows because they really are representative of what's available in DC right now (for better AND for worse), but I also tried to balance them out with some of the less well-known establishments."

Bober certainly knows good 'cue when he tastes it. He's a Kansas City Barbecue Society-certified judge. To his palate, the 'cue offerings are on the uptick in the area.

"Thankfully, it seems like DC's barbecue prospects are improving as we speak. Washington may not be a world-class barbecue city yet, but we've already got a few places that are doing it right and there are a couple of big names on the horizon. I'm really excited that we were able to work something out with the guys from Pork Barrel BBQ to get a sneak peek at what they'll be bringing to Del Ray this year."

The best way to judge for yourself is to take part in one, or all, of the Meat Week 2010 gatherings.

Meat Week 2010 Schedule

Jan. 31: Urban Bar-B-Cue (Rockville) 7 p.m.

Feb. 1: Rocklands Barbeque & Grilling (Glover Park) 7 p.m.

Feb. 2: Red Hot & Blue (Arlington) 7 p.m.

Feb. 3: Pork Barrel BBQ at Mango Mike's (Alexandria) 7 p.m.

Feb. 4: Capital Q (Penn Quarter/Chinatown) 7 p.m.

Feb. 5: Branded 72 Pit Barbecue (Rockville) 7 p.m.

Feb. 6: Mr. P's Ribs and Fish (Safeway parking lot at 5th St., NE) 3pm

Feb. 7:  Free Day. Enjoy your favorite 'cue at a Super Bowl Party. 6 p.m.

Photo illustration by Brooke Hatfield

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

Three different vehicles have taken up residence at the back end of a massive parking lot that serves the Safeway grocery store at 514 Rhode Island Ave. NE. One is a converted 1995 school bus now outfitted with deep-fryers, prep tables, and coolers. The second is a square white panel truck that hauls around a giant generator, and the final is a beat-up red Chevy 1500 pickup with an equally well-used Southern Pride smoker propped up on cinder blocks in the bed.

This sprawling mobile barbecue empire belongs to Fate Pittman, a 73-year-old pitmaster who has been smoking pork, beef, and chicken for more than 30 years. Except no one calls Pittman by his family name. Everyone knows him by the handle painted onto his vehicles: Mr. P.

Mr. P is a large graying man, his fingers as plump as sausages. He doesn’t move around that well anymore. He blames it on a bad back, which he injured decades ago while working in the auto-body repair business before he turned to barbecue. It’s with some reluctance that I ask Mr. P to extract himself from his comfortable perch inside his school bus to show me around. I tell him that I’m sorry, but I only half mean it. The fact is, I’m on a mission. A guy who makes pork ribs this good needs some love from the local food press.

The barbecue man sells a number of items from the main window on the side of his bus. He sells fried whiting, barbecue chicken, oversized sections of smoked beef ribs, and a whole mess of side dishes, from coleslaw to collards. The chicken is pretty fine, both smoky and moist, but his beef ribs are chewy and dehydrated—and yet shockingly still edible, like a good meaty jerky. (I’ve heard tell that on his better days, Mr. P’s beef ribs are a work of art, which gives you an idea of how fickle barbecue is.)

But the main reason to hop aboard Mr. P’s bus is to order his pork ribs. They are, without any doubt in my mind, the best pork ribs in the area. They’re charred. They’re crispy around the edges. They’re moist and pink inside. They’re smoky and salty and meaty and, goddamn it, I want a whole rack right now! Because Mr. P is from western North Carolina, he serves his meats with a ketchup-based barbecue sauce. I wouldn’t bother with it; like good Texas ’cue, his meats don’t need the extra flavor.

Mr. P didn’t always used to work out of a school bus. At one point in his barbecue career, he says, he had real brick-and-mortar stores, mostly takeout oriented. But then he got into the mobile smoke business up in Chillum, which was a thriving concern, as Mr. P describes it, until Prince George’s County started cracking down on street food vendors. That’s how he ended up in this godforsaken Safeway parking lot.

Because of his age, Mr. P has plenty of help with his business. Victor “Preacher Man” Wilson is his day-to-day pitmaster, tending to the hickory and oak logs that fuel the Southern Pride. Wilson is also the one who makes sure the meats, especially those simple spice-rubbed ribs, don’t smoke too long. But Mr. P also has Belinda Roberson, who works the window and prepares all the sides, including the baked beans and potato salad, which she says are the bestsellers. Roberson has been working with Mr. P, she says, for 30 years.

“We’re two of his secret weapons to keep it going,” says Preacher Man, who’s been working with Mr. P, off and on, for 10 years. “We’re him when he’s not here.”

Except that may not be the case in the near future. Mr. P is thinking about retiring. “Don’t you think it’s time?” he asks me rhetorically. The problem is, he may not have anyone left to carry on the business, including his four children. “They don’t want to mess with it,” Mr. P says. “They got their own things.” Even worse, neither Roberson nor Preacher Man think they can afford to buy out the business.

All three of them—Mr. P, Preacher Man, and Roberson—seem to sense that the business is on its last legs. Which may explain why they’re pushing so hard for one last request. They really want me to try to get a message to President Obama: Go visit Mr. P’s Ribs and shake the owner’s hand.

“He tried Five Guys,” Preacher Man says, “Tell him to try this here.”

Mr. P’s Ribs and Fish is located in the Safeway parking lot at 514 Rhode Island Ave. NE. It operates from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Let's assume for a moment that you don't want to grill and that you don't have any friends kind enough to invite you to their barbecue drunk-a-thon on the Fourth. Where do you turn? Well, Y&H has some options, including a couple with smoked meats for those who just can't celebrated America's birthday without an animal sacrifice.

Mmmm, animal sacrifice.

• Jamie Stachowski will be grilling his artisan sausages at Red, White & Bleu in Falls Church from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The charcuterie master will be tending the charcoal grill at the wine and gourmet food shop, cooking up veal bratwurst, kielbasa, merguez, and linguiça for customers to sample. Stachowski will also have some rabbit terrine, country pate, and other "meat surprises" to try. All samples will be free, but the shop is hoping, of course, that you'll be enticed into buying some of Stachowski's meats to take home — and maybe a bottle or two of wine to go with it.
• Mr. P, one of the top 50 performers on Y&H's 2009 Dining Guide, will be working the Fourth at his usual spot: the Safeway parking lot at Rhode Island Ave. NE. Aside from his amazing spare ribs, which are smoked to a charred, crispy, and succulent state, Mr. P will also trot out a new item: barbecued short ribs. He tells me they will be a permanent part of his menu.

• Asia Nine not only has some patriotic rolls available — the red-white-and-blue tinted Firecracker Roll and Independence Roll — but also a special BBQ Grab-n-Go Menu. The latter features such entrees as Thai barbecue chicken and Laos grilled steak, which you can have boxed with sides and ready for transport to the Mall. The specials run through July 9.
• Cashion's Eat Place is not taking any holiday on the Fourth. From 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., chef John Manolatos will be serving up a picnic spread of hamburgers, brisket sandwiches, and Maryland blue crabs. You can also call ahead and order a picnic basket for two for $40. Call (202) 797-1819.

Speaking of picnics, the Post has compiled a list of restaurants that will be packaging their food for carryout on the Fourth. And if you're looking for more Fourth-oriented restaurant specials, the Washingtonian has an authoritative list.

Happy Fourth, everyone.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery