Meet the Pitmaster

Friends Across the Craft

Memphis taught Paul the foundation. Competing nationwide widened the lens. Over the years he’s crossed paths with peers and friends across the craft — pitmasters and classically trained chefs alike. Tuffy Stone’s work has long been one Paul follows and admires from a distance. Chef Phillip Dell is a frequent cook-along and idea-trader, the kind of friendship where two cooks share a pit and the conversation turns into education on both sides. Each of those relationships, and others like them, has woven its way into Paul’s approach — a technique borrowed here, a mindset shaped there, a fresh way to think about an ingredient that never left.

Before the smokehouse, Paul spent more than thirty years in a career that took him around the globe. Italy taught him to take a sardine salad seriously. Germany made the case for Schweinshaxe. Countless street-food stops in between trained the curiosity that now drives the daily specials. Outdoor cooking, for Paul, isn’t an arrival — it’s the next chapter in a long habit of showing up hungry and paying attention.

Upholding the Standards

Whether it’s the brisket, the ribs, the chicken or the daily specials, Paul holds every plate to the traditions Big Shanty Smokehouse was built on — and to the competition standards Willingham’s® built on the circuit.