Birthday Ribs for Brandon

It has been for us a summer filled with some family highlights: the birth of our first grandchild in June and in July the surprising (to me) celebration of my 40^th anniversary at WOBM.

So needing something to close out August on Monday we gathered at my brother’s condo in Seaside Park for what’s become a somewhat annual end of summer family gathering that also ties-in my son Brandon’s birthday.

He turned 34 that day so the celebration was somewhat muted although he’s already planted the seed that next year’s 35th is more of a landmark occasion and should be treated that way.  We’ll see about that.

We had a great time and a big part of that was the somewhat unusual catering choice of barbeque from my brother’s next-door neighbor.  To make a long story short Shore Racks is a fledging operation made up of a couple of guys who have full-time jobs elsewhere but whose true passion is barbeque.

My guess is most of what they’ve done to this point is for family and friends but we thought it would be a great idea to give it a try. After all we could pass the food over the fence.

We were blown away with the ribs, pulled pork, chicken wings and skirt steak and if not for the rather cool evening I clearly would have suffered from meat sweats.  It was really good with plenty of leftovers some of which we enjoyed yesterday on the beach. Nothing like a pulled pork sandwich at 11 a.m.

To make the story even a bit more interesting when I asked Adam for a business card I noticed that his partner (who was not there) is someone who I have known since he was a young boy as his family grew up in Beachwood.  Talk about a small world.

Our end of summer family gathering and Brandon’s birthday celebration was even better this year because we had 12-week old Carter(my grandson) and some really good barbecue.  I have no idea what we’ll do next year for an encore.

By the way you can reach out to the guys at Shore Racks by shooting them an email at ShoreRacksNJ@gmail.com.  Happy to support a couple of guys following their passion and whatever you do include the skirt steak!