Marx Barbecue keeps West Side loyalty with homemade dishes, catered events

Aimee Blume
Evansville

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – “Cooking for a thousand people isn’t that big a deal,” Tony Marx of Marx Barbecue says.

A smoked chicken leg quarter, long -cooked on the pit and dipped in Marx's original tomato-based barbecue sauce.

Despite seeming like a small restaurant, the historic West Side establishment regularly delivers barbecue dinners or even whole smoked hogs to groups of 500, 1000 or more.

“I have a lady who comes in and peels potatoes for me, and she had worked for a big catering company for years,” said Marx. “After she’d been here a while, she said she could not believe how much food we push through our kitchen.”

Tony Marx, left, makes pork grenades with William Rodenberg, center, and Tanner Rexing, who have worked at Marx for eight and four years, respectively. Now that they are in college, they come back to help during fall break and holidays.
"They are good bosses and we make great food," said Rodenberg. "It’s a good place to be."

Tony Marx’s great uncle Elmer Marx established the west side staple in 1954. When he took ill, his brother Roy, who is Tony’s Grandfather, came to help out. The business passed to Roy’s son and then on to Tony.

“I grew up in here,” said Tony. “We always had a little grocery store in front and sold a lot of pork, chicken, ribs and sandwiches to go. We did some lunch and a lot of carry out.”

Tony studied accounting at the University of Southern Indiana and worked for SIGECO for three years before deciding the family business was where he belonged. He came in with big ideas about expanding it into a catering powerhouse.

If you stop by Marx for a sit-down meal or carry out, you'll find the hot case full of ready-to-serve ribs smothered in the original sauce; double-smoked ham, and turkey breasts to slice alongside pork grenades and more.

“I thought catering was the way to go and wanted to focus on that, and it has worked for us,” he said.

Whether it’s pulled pork or barbecued chicken, sliced ham or smoked turkey, fried chicken for a wedding, a whole hog to feed 150 people, 40 pork grenades for tailgating or 4000 pork grenades for the Fall Festival, Marx is known for bringing the food where it needs to be.

“The pork grenades are our newest big thing,” said Marx. “They are made with our homemade pork sausage mixed up with ground pulled pork and made into a ball, then wrapped with two slices of bacon and smoked with our sweet and sassy barbecue sauce.”

Pork grenades - a lunch entree, a snack, a party treat, an obsession? Marx's housemade sausage is blended with minced pulled pork and wrapped with bacon before smoking.

If you missed the pork grenades at the Corpus Christi booster club booth at the Fall Festival, you can find them in Marx’s hot case for lunch or snacking any time — or make a larger order for your own party.

Marx’s most dramatic offering is their smoked whole hogs… because who isn’t impressed by 150 pounds of meat for the eating, still on the hoof?

“We were cooking a whole pig once a year for a customer and I thought that it was such a fun time and a great way to go,” said Marx. “When I was younger I played softball at Wesselman Park, and so one day I cooked a pig and put it in the back of my truck. When we were done with the game I folded down the back of the truck and fed anybody who came up, told them what was going on.

"We sold 18 pigs the next year, 35 the year after that and 70 the year after that. And that’s about what we do every year now. People will come in and say ‘you did a pig at my wedding 15 years ago and people are still talking about it when we get together.’”

The finished pork grenades: smoky, sweet, meaty and just a little spicy.

Part of West Siders’ fierce loyalty to Marx springs from the way all the dishes have kept their charm throughout the decades and are still created with the same old-fashioned recipes the business opened with. This is especially true of the unique original barbecue sauce, which is lighter and more tomatoey than most.

“That was Uncle Elmer or Grandpa’s recipe,” said Tony Marx. “It’s unusual, and we still do it exactly like they did back then. We make a couple 45-gallon batches of it every week. My dad developed the new Sweet & Sassy sauce I don’t know how many years ago. It’s been a big hit. It’s sweet with just the right amount of bite. We couldn’t keep up with making that here, so we have Farm Boy do it with our recipe 500 gallons at a time, and they bottle it for us to sell.”

The American and German potato salads (we mentioned there are employees whose main job is to peel potatoes, right?), macaroni salad, slaw, even the pies are all made in house.

All the side dishes and desserts, such as these coconut pies, are homemade right at Marx Barbecue.

The homemade soups are a huge seller at Marx at this time of year, especially the burgoo, which contains pork, beef and chicken with All the Veggies.

“When the weather starts to turn, the soup will fly,” said Marx. “That burgoo recipe has been the same since the beginning. We sell lots and lots of beef vegetable soup, chicken noodle and chili. We make it all here. We do an amazing Mexican meatball soup for a special sometimes, and broccoli cheese or cheeseburger soup.”

For Thanksgiving, customers may order a smoked or roasted turkey, cooked, sliced, panned and ready to go, and sides too.  

“It’s a whole raw turkey, but it’s been boned so it cooks evenly,” said Marx. “It’s so moist. That is the only turkey I’ll eat. We’ll sell 2000 pounds of dressing the day before Thanksgiving.”

If you go

Marx Barbecue and Catering is located at 3119 W Maryland St.

Phone: 812-425-1616

Hours:

Tuesday – Saturday 9 a.m.-8 p.m.

Sunday 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Monday closed