Penguin Ed's

For more than 16 years and counting, Penguin Ed's Bar-B-Que has satisfied and impressed thousands of customers. Over the years, we've received several awards for our barbeque, and we appreciate the recognition. But for us, we judge success by the number of customers who leave satisfied and come back in to eat with us time after time.Part of what makes Ed's great is the slow, hickory-enhanced method for smoking meats. Another part of our recipe is who we are: a family. In fact, we have several employees who have been with us for almost the entire journey. Because we have so many longtime employees, you can rest assured that the high quality of our food will remain unchanged from day to day.As summer approached, we upgraded our operation to a trailer, and it served as our center of operations for three years.That little white trailer with the red lettering had its quirks. For one thing, it was tiny ; two of us could not stand side-by-side at its width. To this day, some of us who toughed it out in the trailer still walk sideways at work, because that's how we learned to avoid spills and near-misses in the trailer.For another, the trailer retained heat all too well. In the summers, we estimate that the inside of the trailer was approximately 100-degrees hotter than the outside temperature, give or take.Somewhere in the midst of all the heat and sweat of the trailer, the Pilgrim of all Penguins, Ed Knight, decided that he was going to create a fleet of emperor penguins out of paper-m ch . Whether it was too much heat or too much Discovery Channel, we'll never know. We do know that the penguin thing took off in a way none of us could have ever expected.Once Ed started his fleet, he would display them around the trailer. Some days they would be by the picnic tables, sometimes they would stand on the roof. Even now, if you come into our Mission location, you will see Ed's original paper-m ch penguins on display. Kind people from all over started giving Ed penguins, and the collection grew. We can now claim one of the two largest penguin collections in the country.Originally, Ed had named his barbeque operation "Crossroads BBQ, " but amidst all the penguins, Ed's burgeoning nickname "Penguin Ed" stuck.