Smoke rising: Old Jack's BBQ to once again house 'cue

Update: Ken's Hardwood Barbecue is now open

Ken Alexander usually parks his big red food truck on the corner of North Stone Avenue and East Congress Street at lunchtime on Thursdays.

But last week, a car was in its spot, so Alexander and his partner/nephew, Terrance James, turned Ken’s Hardwood Barbecue truck around and drove a few blocks. A police officer directed them to park the fifth-wheel on the sidewalk in front of the library on North Stone — on the other side of Congress.

“People are used to seeing us there,” Alexander said nodding toward Congress moments after delivering orders to two customers late in the lunch hour.

Finding someone parked on their regular corner will soon not be as big a problem. In late May, Alexander will open a brick-and-mortar version of Ken’s Hardwood Barbecue in a place that has been stained with barbecue for nearly 70 years.

Last week, Alexander inked a five-year lease for the 2,500-square-foot building at 5250 E. 22nd St. that has been home to barbecue since Jack Banks opened Jack’s Original Barbecue in 1950. Jack’s stayed open under a few different owners through 2013. An outpost of the national Dickie’s Barbecue Pit succeeded it for a couple years before pulling up stakes last month.

“We really feel fortunate and blessed to be able to go into a spot that’s been a barbecue joint for 67 years,” said Alexander, who retired from Raytheon in 2015 and launched Ken’s Hardwood later that year. “People know it for barbecue. There has been some people there that have been very successful at barbecue at that location.”

Alexander, who runs the food truck with his 29-year-old son K.G. and his 34-year-old nephew James, said he hopes to be open for business by the end of May. The building is pretty much a turnkey operation; all the barbecue equipment, including smokers, is intact.

He does plan to tweak the menu a bit, adding some more comfort-food side dishes, including cornbread, to the array of barbecue ribs, chicken, pulled pork and hot links. The menu is drawn largely from generations of family recipes dating back to his grandfather, who owned a small cafe in rural Dixon, Tennessee.

Alexander has been cooking since he was 9, but when it came time to pick a career, he chose business. He got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in his native Kentucky, then moved to Tucson in 1985. A couple years later he landed a job at Hughes Aircraft, which was acquired by Raytheon.

Alexander said he plans to keep the food truck rolling even after he opens the brick-and-mortar restaurant. The truck is a regular fixture at several Tucson call centers, breweries and beer joints including AZ Beer House on South Kolb Road. A loyal following takes to crowd-sourcing sites like Yelp to lavish praise. In one of the more colorful reviews, Anne J. of Tucson admitted she was not a barbecue aficionado, but she called discovering Ken’s “a bit like finding Jesus, if somewhat less life-changing. I think the sun did come out and angels sang a la Monty Python when I took my first bite of the sweet potato fries.”

“The good thing about the truck is we can take the food to the people,” Alexander said. “It’s like having two locations.”

“We were kind of at a point where we did what we could do as a food truck. It was a logical next step to go into a brick and mortar,” he added. “And how can you turn down Jack’s Barbecue when it comes up? It’s a sign. It just seemed like the right thing to do and the timing was great.”