Whole Hog Café on Little Rock Appetite.com

What do rock stars, acrobats, food show hosts, three presidents and one Republican presidential nominee eat when they come to town?

"Good, plain barbecue," according to Mike Blasingame, manager and co-founder of the Whole Hog Cafe. World champion barbecue, to be precise.

Following the formula of "do what you're good at, and the money will follow" Blasingame, his brother Ron, and their partner Mike (Sage) Davis have translated a hobby into a multi-million dollar restaurant, serving an estimated daily average of 360 lbs of smoked pork butts, 128 whole chickens, 60 racks of ribs and 120 lbs of beef brisket out of their spacious Cantrell Road restaurant with astonishing efficiency. Whole hog, indeed.

As Blasingame describes it, the partnership got started with no more ambition than" a couple of guys looking for something to do." They found it on the competitive barbecue circuit, where their recipes quickly racked up prizes, culminating in the 2002 World Championship title at the Olympics of barbecue, Memphis in May.

Along the way, Ron had the modest idea of setting up a trailer on the bottom of Cantrell Hill to serve lunch to nearby office workers. The rest, as they say, is history.

Within three years, the Whole Hog Cafe had expanded to take up three bays in the nearby Riverdale plaza. And across the southwestern United States, there are currently ten more Whole Hog Cafes under license agreements, borne of entrepreneurial customers who've taken "I'll take that to-go" to an entirely different level.

A favorite source of local flavor for visiting VIPS (among others, they've served Bono, Streisand, Cirque du Soleil, Presidents Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush Junior, and recently, Senator John McCain), the Whole Hog rests its reputation on great ingredients, prepared simply and served efficiently.

"We do not put sauce on meat before it goes to the table. We think the meat doesn't need sauce," says Blasingame of the quality cuts of meat that are patiently smoked to tear-apart tenderness over pecan chips. Nevertheless, a six-pack of sauces on every table is a hallmark of the Whole Hog. Each squeeze bottle represents a regional preference: #6 sauce with a mustard base hails from the Carolina coast, for example, while #5 is a molasses-sweetened sauce, Kansas City-style.

"We attempt daily to cook for our customers exactly as if we are cooking competitively," says Blasingame. With generous portions, great prices, and incredible flavor, it's still a winning formula.