Eric Logan’s brisket started two days before the Rev, White & Blue celebration at Rutgers even began.
Four briskets, smoked low and slow, nearly 24 hours each.
“Good barbecue is about patience,” Logan said. “Time. You can’t rush it.”
That word — patience — comes up again and again with Logan, the creator of Blaque Dawq BBQ, which was founded in Sicklerville but can be found at food truck festivals everywhere in the state.
And it must be said, patience doesn’t only come up when he’s talking about the smoker.
Logan, who grew up in New Jersey, then spent 12 years working for the FBI in the Washington, D.C., area, is an accidental entrepreneur.
He fell for barbecue in D.C.
And when he moved back up North — and couldn’t find anything that matched what he’d left behind — he took matters into his own hands.
“I started cooking, trying to get that flavor I had,” he said.
The result doesn’t fit neatly into any one region’s barbecue tradition. It’s a blend of sweet and vinegary. Of the South and of Logan’s own upbringing.
“I call it more of a Memphis fusion,” he said. “I like sweet, I like the vinegary taste, so I combined the two, and I made a little Northern thing — I add a little bit of Asian flair to the barbecue sauce.”
The business itself grew slowly but purposely. It started with a folding table and a smoker at a pandemic-era pop-up market, where Logan’s wife and daughter were already selling jewelry and clothing. The response surprised him.
“People loved it,” he said.
It took four years to go from that table to a full truck. And even now, the transition is being released patiently.
Logan, who is closing in on his 28th year with the Department of Corrections, feels working the truck full time will represent the next stage of his life.
“I don’t like retiring — I don’t like that word,” he said. “This is more of my transition from one thing to the next thing.”
He also doesn’t like trying to name his specialty.
“I started with the ribs, that’s why I think that’s my best dish,” he said. “But you ask my wife and daughter, they say they love the brisket.”
There’s plenty of opportunities for others to judge.
Blaque Dawg BBQ doesn’t stay in one place long. Logan partners with an event promoter to book pop-ups around the region — Jersey City one weekend, Atlantic City the next. His next stop: Wiggins Park in Camden.
If you go, he’ll be happy to serve you with a smile.
“This is the love that I always talked about doing,” he said.
It just took some time to get there.
