By Joel C. Gregory

Charles Vergos knows Memphis and knows ribs. A piece of history himself, the voluble host of Rendezvous has watched Memphis life pass through his doors for 52 years. Just ask Bill Cosby where to find ribs in Elvis’ Town.

Sometimes it is difficult to know whether a place shapes a man or a man shapes a place. Institutions make their founders and founders make the institutions. Exactly what does what to whom in that curious interaction between person and the thing created by the person belongs to the insoluble. For example, to what extent did Picasso make his art and to what extent did the art make Picasso?

Charles Vergos has shaped the Rendezvous for 52 years. Across that time he has watched the face of the city by the Mississippi change, mutate, decline and come back. At the west end of the alley where the doors of Rendezvous open, the historic Peabody Hotel displays its elegant façade. Charles Vergos has watched the Peabody go broke and come back. As downtown Memphis disintegrated, following the well-worn path of most American cities in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Charles Vergos kept his doors open. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain on a motel balcony in Memphis, Vergos’ neighbors told him that he must close. Downtown reeled with riots and demonstrations. Vergos refused to close the doors to the Rendezvous.

Now the Peabody is reopened and its Master Chef Jose Gutierrez creates elegant French cuisine while his neighbors barbecue ribs. Downtown Memphis throbs with life, the blues clubs of Beale Street competing with the downtown lofts and flats that cannot be provided fast enough for the urban settlers. In the city that absorbed the slaying of an American icon, African-Americans and Euro-Americans host one another for dinner at the Vergos restaurant that would not close in the darkest hour of the city. Now, beloved African-American waiters are like family members to three generations of diners.

The ebullient, irrepressible Charles Vergos exudes patriarchal pride over his persistent restaurant. He has created a spot where people know him and are known by him. Generations want to sit in the same room among the many rooms inside, and they want the same waiter that waited on their parents and grandparents.

“The secret is good product at the right price and the creation of an atmosphere that people enjoy,” muses Charles. Everybody from Michael Jackson to Red Skelton, from the Rolling Stones to Bill Cosby all agree. When Bill Cosby did a show at the nearby Hilton, he and wife Camille came over at 3:30 p.m. and stayed until 8 p.m. The Cos joshed with the cooks, bantered with the Vergos family and called all of the employees’ wives and kids on the phone.

The restaurant not only has character, but attracts characters. While Chile Pepper swapped yarns with the Vergos clan, a flashy dresser from the streets named “Chicago” appeared and demanded a rib sandwich. Nick Vergos, son of owner Charles, went to the pits himself and obliged Chicago by creating the rib sandwich, an incremental stack of ribs, slaw, beans and enough hot sauce to challenge the most devout chilehead.

“Yeah, I give it to him to get him out, or he would never leave,” laughs Nick. One gets the idea that the unintroduced but imperious Chicago shows up often.

An Ambience of the Eclectic

The entrance to Rendezvous is off an alley between the back of a building and a concrete-painted, white ‘70s-style parking garage. Something faintly but appealingly clandestine attends the entrance to the famed rib joint. When the patron enters, the hungry diner goes downstairs to the first of a series of rooms that open one into another in a labyrinth of rococo decoration.

The Vergos family are to the collector of bric-a-brac as Sotheby’s is to antiques; they are the champs. More than 50 years of collected memorabilia that defies description hangs from the ceilings, dangles from the cornices, clings to the walls and protrudes onto the floors. Antique guns that belonged to a gun club meeting at the restaurant compete for attention with the original scores of music written in and about Memphis. Statuary, paintings, neon signs, farm implement, cure bottles and tin types jostle one another and the visitor in an endless collection.

“I guess I collected a lot of stuff,” Charles observes. That is as much an understatement as Michael Jordan claiming to have made a lot of shots at the basket. As Vergos holds court, he points to a mural-like painting next to the table. The mural was painted by Charlie Mitchell, now in Atlanta and a recognized artist.

“Memphis is noted for its watercolors, so we have sponsored some notable watercolor artists,” Charles observes. The walls reveal a collage of various artists’ works. To name the individual items among the thousands on the walls is to deny that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Part of the undeniable ambiance is the generational gathering of alumni who return to the place. When downtown was down, the students from Ole Miss kept Rendezvous going. Not the least of the reasons was the split-level dining areas. Memphis, ostensibly, had a law that police must be able to look into any establishment where beer was served. Ideally, they could look through the window into the dining room. The subterranean nature of Rendezvous’ main dining area encouraged the students in their pursuits of beverage! Also, generations of medical students have returned to the basement haunt where they sought reprieve from the rigors of training. On such memorable moments Charles has built his 52-year-old business.

This repository of recollections began when Charles, whose Greek father was also a restaurant owner, decided to sell ham and cheese sandwiches near the present location.

“The customers got tired of ham and cheese sandwiches,” remembers Vergos. “There was an old chimney that went through one of the windows in the place. I told them to knock a hole in the chimney and see if the thing would draw. It did, so I put up a brick wall for a pit and a counter. I started with ham and went to ribs.” Heavy weights indeed hang on the thin wire of decision. What if the chimney had not drawn smoke upward into the Memphis air?

Robert Stewart has seen most of it. The waiter started to work for Vergos when he was 17. Stewart is now as much an institution as the restaurant itself. After a long night of waiting on the generations of people who personally request him, he lovingly sweeps the same floor that he was swept thousands of times. Vergos considers such tenured employees a major asset of the Rendezvous.

Vergos looks back to hosting the likes of Bear Bryant and the famous golfers who play in the St. Jude’s Hospital tournament. He also looks forward to the new 18,000-seat ballpark that will be a stone’s throw from his door. He plans to establish a beachhead there for his ribs.

The Pits and the Product

If Rendezvous did not invent the Memphis dry-style rib, it came close. Four eye-level pits stand side by side under the stairwell. The pit masters start with 40 pounds of oak charcoal and add 10 pounds every 20 minutes in a single layer of burning coals. Hickory is added for the flavor of the smoke. The pits feature two levels, the bottom level 20 inches above the coals. Each of the four pits holds 120 pounds of ribs. At the top level, 90 pounds of ribs unthaw and on the bottom 30 pounds cook.

The cooking ribs are sopped with the Vergos brew of vinegar and water. Short-handled mops flicker in and out of the pits as the cooks anoint the ribs. You will find nothing related to tomato sauces here. When the ribs emerge from the pits, Vergos hits them with his house-branded shake of oregano, garlic, paprika and a few other secret things. He spoons out some of “my dad’s old hot-dog slaw” with its own dressing of mustard, mayonnaise and vinegar. More recently, he has added a lumberjack’s-size pork chop to the menu.

While folks wait for up to two hours on the weekend for a table, some of them never get past the appetizer plate of smoked sausage, cheese and pickles.

“When I first started cooking, people asked where the barbecue was. I was cooking ribs without barbecue sauce. I shook the stuff onto the ribs after I cooked them so the people would think they were eating barbecue,” laughs Charles.

Vergos keeps the membrane on the ribs to keep the juice inside. Five tons of ribs pass through the pits every week, and 200 bags of Royal Oak Pure Hardwood Charcoal.

Charles owns the entire 30,000-square-foot building with extra seating for up to 700 people. It is a family venture, with his daughter keeping the books and sons Nick and John looking over other parts of the business. John directs the shipping operation, which overnights ribs all over the country.

Memphis history for the last half of the 20th century incarnates itself in the Vergos clan. With a raised eyebrow and a hearty laugh, Charles recalls, “Some of the guys I threw out of here years ago when this place was rougher now come back to eat and laugh.”

One rather wishes that he had been thrown out years ago just so he could come back and laugh with Charles.