Mac’s Barbecue Wins Tulsa World BBQ Bracket Contest

“I’ve said from the beginning that this isn’t about your barbecue, it’s about your customers,” Green said. “And we have a lot of seriously loyal customers.”

That loyalty comes from the fact that Mac’s Barbecue, co-owned and pitmastered by Green, has been serving award-winning barbecue for nearly four decades. It started with founder Mike McMillan winning top honors at prestigious competitions like the American Royal and the Jack Daniel’s Invitational, and Mac’s Barbecue was recently named one of the best barbecues in the country by Southern Living magazine.

“It’s hard not to have a good fan base when you’ve been serving people for three generations,” Green said.

And those fans – dubbed “Mac’s Mafia” by some in the local barbecue community – rallied to promote their favorite barbecue spot, helping the Skiatook restaurant become the winner of the Tulsa World BBQ Bracket Contest.

The Tulsa World editors selected 32 of the best barbecue spots in eastern Oklahoma for the contest, and the team of journalism students who worked as interns at the Tulsa World this summer — writers Bella Casey and Luisa Clausen and photographers Taylor Horner and Victor Lopez — profiled the contestants in a series of stories with suggested dishes to try.

Voting began on August 4 and lasted until September 3. A total of 92,956 votes were cast during that period.

Some of the top-rated barbecue restaurants in the area were quickly eliminated, including Oakhart Barbecue, Killer Wail, Alpha Grill and Butcher BBQ Stand.

Mac’s, on the other hand, held off competitors like Stonemill Barbecue and Steakhouse, Nomad Barbecue Deli, Daddy B’s BBQ and one of Tulsa’s legendary barbecue purveyors, Stutts House of Barbecue, before taking on Owasso’s Trails End Barbecue in the finals.

During its victory run, Mac’s received the highest number of votes during the weekly contests, with 9,690 votes in week 3, compared to 9,511 votes for Daddy B’s BBQ.

In the end, Mac’s Barbecue received 7,765 votes, compared to 6,531 votes for Trails End.

“Don’t get me wrong — it’s cool to be on a list like that,” Green said. “Sometimes you’re high on the list, sometimes you’re not, but either way, it’s fun to be a part of it.

“The thing about these lists is that they don’t really have much to do with showing how good you are at your job,” he said.

That craft is something Green has been involved with since childhood.

“I grew up in the kitchen with my mom, helping her cook,” he said. “When I was in the Marines, we would usually have weekend barbecues and I would be the one over the grill. I’ve always loved cooking with fire.”

After his military service, Green met and married Holly McMillan, the daughter of Mac’s founder Mike McMillan.

“When we first met, I had no idea her family owned a barbecue restaurant,” Green said. “I had a job as a manager at Cox Communications, which was probably the best and easiest job in the world, but it wasn’t challenging.”

He often helped out at Mac’s in the evenings when McMillan still owned it, and he and Holly made the restaurant’s signature sauces on the weekends. Green also developed his own ideas for a barbecue restaurant when McMillan offered to sell Mac’s to his son-in-law and retire.

“We talked about it and thought, ‘How hard can it be?'” Green said, laughing. “So I quit my job and started running a restaurant — and I quickly learned that it’s a lot harder than you think.”

Because Mac’s had an established reputation, Green said he was focused on continuing the Mac’s legacy, perfecting what had been started and finding ways to add a personal touch.

“The basic recipes haven’t changed, but we’re going to create special recipes that will allow me to get a little creative,” he said.

Some of these specials became so popular that they were nicknamed “barnburners,” such as The Nanny.

“That’s what I called my grandma, who used to make me pimento cheese sandwiches,” Green said. “So I make pimento cheese and pair it with sliced ​​brisket, pickles and a barbecue aioli on a sandwich that our friends at Trencher’s Deli make for us.”

Another reason Mac’s has such a loyal following (besides the excellent brisket and ribs, and whimsical dishes like the barbecue Frito Pie that captivated the Huffington Post and Zagat readers when they visited barbecue restaurants in 2017) is that Green believes in giving back to the community.

That means participating in events like Cast for Kids, which gives children with special needs the chance to go fishing on Skiatook Lake; helping to organize an art festival to provide art supplies to Skiatook Public Schools; participating in events designed to help area veterans, like Mac’s Mayfest, which raises about $20,000 for local veterans of foreign wars; and supporting the premiere of “Make Peace or Die,” the Oklahoma-produced documentary that won the top prize at this year’s Circle Cinema Film Festival.

Thanks to Green’s generosity, the city of Skiatook declared April 5, 2019, Adam Green Day in honor of his community service.

“If you have a platform, I believe you have an obligation to use that platform to do something decent,” Green said. “If you really want to create a community, the easiest way to do that is to do good things and get other people involved. You do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s ‘good for business.’”