By: Christine Schultz

Writer Christine Schultz braves in-laws and teeming crowds to get a taste of the best barbecue in the South. Her verdict? It was worth it.

The first time I ate ribs at Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous in Memphis was after a wedding dress shopping spree with my Southern fiance, his mother, and her husband. With the dress stuffed beneath the table, I set my teeth into a full rack of ribs - a succulent sticky mess unbefitting a bride-to-be. The tender tangy flavor of those dry-rubbed ribs won my Yankee heart. Make no bones about it, I was in hog heaven.

We're talking ribs, baby, downhome ribs. You hear them being chopped and smell them being grilled as you pass the four smoking pits in the kitchen. Step quickly, for some 5,000 people eat here every week - kings and commoners alike - and the waiters move fast.

I got you covered, said our waiter, Big Jack, and was back before we could finish reading all the stuff on the walls: Frank Sinatra loved the Rendezvous, Bill Cosby crowed about it, John Grisham wrote the place into The Firm and it won Southern Living magazine's readers' choice award for favorite barbecue.

Many have tried to copy what Charles Vergos started doing in 1948, but none have matched the pork ribs grilled over a hardwood charcoal fire, basted with hot vinegar and water, and seasoned, with signature dry spices. A squirt bottle of barbecue Sauce waits on the table if you're that way, but Rendezvous ribs have nothing to hide and are meant to be eaten dry.

They're served by waiters who've been wearing white waist aprons and bowties for decades. "How long you been here?" I asked Big Jack. "Thirty-three years, baby," he told me. And so it was realized that Big Jack has been serving ribs since the good Lord gave me any of my own.

They say: "Not since Adam has a rib been so famous," and I'm a believer. These ribs are the best.

Therefore, a woman shall leave her wedding dress under the table and be joined to her husband and future in-laws over a full platter of ribs, and they shall become one family. And they shall all of them be satiated, and, lo, though they have pork between their teeth, they shall not be ashamed. For that is the way of the Rendezvous, maker of the best dry ribs on God's green earth.