For nearly 50 years, the flat-topped, red-brick building on West College Street in Florence has been a destination for locals and out-of-towners alike, who come to Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q to grab sackfuls of pulled pork sandwiches and Bunyan’s legendary hot dogs.
“It’s been my privilege to introduce (Bunyan’s) to batches of musicians who come to town over the years,” says Muscle Shoals musician and producer Mac McAnally, whose photo is on the “wall of fame” near the front counter inside Bunyan’s.
“In exchange for that, any time somebody from Nashville calls and I’m in Muscle Shoals, they say, ‘Well, you’re bringing a big sack back up here when you come, right?’”
McAnally discovered Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q around the time he moved to Muscle Shoals in 1976, and he’s been hooked on their barbecue and hot dogs ever since, also introducing such fellow musicians as Jimmy Buffett and the late Glen Campbell to Bunyan’s.
“It was musicians that turned me on to it, and as a musician, I’ve tried to turn other musicians on to it,” McAnally says. “Something about musicians connect to that place.”
From the Ford plant to a barbecue joint
John Bunyan Cole, the founder and namesake of Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q, grew up in the small Lauderdale County town of Killen and learned the finer art of barbecuing at an early age.
“When he was young, they used to cook a whole hog and several people would come over and eat,” Cole’s youngest son, Malcolm Cole, says. “That’s where it started, and I think it always stayed with him.”
In 1972, while he was still working at the Ford Motor Company plant in neighboring Sheffield, John Cole turned his backyard hobby into a sideline business when he opened Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q in an old Dairy Queen across the street from the childhood home of Florence native and blues pioneer W.C. Handy.
“My dad was a workaholic,” Malcolm Cole says. “He would work at the barbecue pit during the day, and then he would work at Ford at night. He worked the midnight shift. Sometimes, he would sleep here, and then he would go to work at the Ford plant.”
John Cole’s wife, Rosie, had stayed at home to take care of their children when they were little, but after all their kids were old enough to go to school, she started working at Bunyan’s.
“She didn’t want to stay at home anymore; she wanted to start working again,” Malcolm Cole says. “My dad saw the opportunity to start a business, and she could work in it. That would be one way that she could be close to us and work at the same time.”
Along with his older siblings – brothers Chris and Dwight and sister Felicia – Malcolm Cole started helping around his parents’ barbecue place when he was about 6 years old, he says.
“They’ve always brought us up here,” Malcolm says of his parents. “They had us doing little menial things like taking out the trash, and as we got older, they allowed us to do more things. But I’ve always been around it, practically all my life.
“If you knew my dad, my dad believed in working,’' Malcolm adds. “He definitely worked all his life, and that’s what he expected his kids to do, and that’s what we did. We all grew up in the barbecue pit.”
When the Ford plant closed in 1982, John Cole was able to devote his full attention to his and his wife’s barbecue business, which by then had become a staple in the Shoals area.
“He started out with a basic business plan,” Malcolm Cole says. “He worked it, and it was a success for him.”
The ribs at Bunyan's Bar-B-Q are served with a sweet-and-tangy barbecue sauce.(Photo by Art Meripol, from the book "Alabama Barbecue: Delicious Road Trips")
One good turn deserves another
Rick Singleton, the former Florence police chief and current Lauderdale County sheriff, has been eating at Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q for decades, and he typically orders one of each -- a pulled pork sandwich and a hot dog.
“It’s a legendary place,” Singleton says. “I mean, anybody that comes to town, they’ve got to go to Bunyan’s.”
Singleton knows a little something about barbecue, too.
Before it closed five years ago, he was the second-generation owner of another Florence favorite, Singleton’s Bar-B-Que, which his father opened in 1960.
It was his father, A.L. “Junior” Singleton, in fact, who reached out to help John Cole after a fire damaged Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q many years ago.
“When you are barbecuing and cooking with a wood fire, you are going to have flare-ups, and sometimes they get out of control,” Rick Singleton says. “And that’s what happened with John. His pit caught on fire and they were having to rebuild it some.
“So, during that time, instead of closing, my dad told him to come up here and cook on our pit, so that he could stay open, which he did. John Cole and my dad were just really good friends.”
Many years later, after the elder Singleton retired and his son reopened the family barbecue business, Cole returned the favor.
“When my wife and I opened our location in 1993, we hadn’t been open but about four or five months and I had a pit fire,” Rick Singleton says. “Mr. Cole called and said, ‘Look, your dad helped me out, and we’ll cook whatever you need to cook.’
“So that enabled me to keep operating for a week or so until we got everything repaired.”
The slaw that brings the heat
Florence has been blessed with much great barbecue over the years -- not only Bunyan’s and Singleton’s, but also Dick Howell’s Bar-B-Q Pit and Smokin’ on the Boulevard.
But Bunyan’s regulars, Rick Singleton included, will tell you that what sets Bunyan’s apart is its signature hot slaw -- a fiery, mustard-based coleslaw that heats up both the barbecue sandwiches and the hot dogs.
“It’s got that spiciness to it, and it’s good and juicy,” Singleton says. “You have to wear a bib or stick your neck way out if you don’t want to get it on your shirt.”
Dick Howell’s, which has been around since 1947, is believed to have first introduced the hot mustard slaw to the Shoals area, but many years later, John Cole came up with his own version and eventually passed the recipe along to his son.
“He taught me the recipe, and I’ve been making it for as long as I can remember,” Malcolm Cole says. “I never really asked how it came about. It was just something that we always did.”
Bunyan’s hot slaw is available at a few local grocery stores in the Shoals area, and out-of-town customers often come by the restaurant to get large quantities to take home with them, Malcolm says.
“They will buy it by the gallons,” he says. “They will buy four or five gallons of it to take back with them.”
Bunyan's Bar-B-Q in Florence, Ala., is a favorite of many musicians who come to the Muscle Shoals area to record, as well as homegrown musical heroes such as Jason Isbell, John Paul White, Patterson Hood and David Hood.(Photo by Art Meripol, from the book "Alabama Barbecue: Delicious Road Trips")
‘The best hot dog in my life’
That hot slaw also works its magic on Bunyan’s hot dogs, which are every bit as popular as the ribs and the pulled pork.
The Bunyan’s dog features an old-school red wiener served on a toasted bun and topped with the mustardy slaw -- a combination that is hard to beat and even more difficult to replicate.
After a trip to the Shoals three summers ago, Mississippi chef, restaurateur and food writer Robert St. John proclaimed the Bunyan’s dog “the best hot dog in my life.”
“I own a burger joint that sells killer hot dogs,” St. John wrote in his column. “I have eaten bratwurst at Lambeau Field, chili dogs in Yankee Stadium, and dozens of other hot dogs in dozens of other noted locations and restaurants. None, I repeat, none, can hold a candle to the cheap little slaw dog at Bunyan’s.”
Mac McAnally can certainly vouch for that.
“It’s not like anybody else’s hot dog,” he says. “It’s the reddest hot dog in the world -- you can’t make it any redder than that. With that little bun that they use and their mixture of that barbecue slaw, it’s perfect, just perfect.”
McAnally likes to tell the story about how he introduced his musician friend Jimmy Buffett -- with whom McAnally records and performs in Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band -- to Bunyan’s hot dogs while Buffett was passing through the Shoals area several years ago.
“He called me up and said, ‘Man, tell me some place to go eat; I’m kinda wanting a meat-and-three,’” McAnally recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, this is not a meat-and-three, but go to Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q and ever how many hot dogs you think you can eat, buy three times that many.’ . . .
“He called me like three hours later and goes, ‘Holy cow’ -- and a few deleted expletives -- and told me how many hot dogs he had eaten, which I’m not going to say (how many), but it was more hot dogs than he thought he could eat.”
Sound engineer Jerry Masters treated Paul Simon to some Bunyan’s barbecue when Simon recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in the early 1970s, and bass player Bob Wray picked up a sack of Bunyan’s sandwiches for Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler when he recorded at FAME Studios a couple of years ago, according to Muscle Shoals music historian Bill Jarnigan.
Bunyan’s is also a go-to spot for such homegrown musical heroes as Jason Isbell, John Paul White and Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, as well as Hood’s father, David Hood, of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.
Following in his father’s footsteps
Although beloved for his barbecue, John Bunyan Cole was also well respected throughout the Shoals area for all that he did to make his community a better place to live.
He served as a chairman of the Shoals Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, as well as on the board of the trustees at the University of North Alabama, where he established the John and Rosie Cole Endowed Scholarship.
When he died in 2014 at 76, it was a huge loss to the Shoals community.
“He was obviously a very loved man,” McAnally, who sang at Cole’s memorial service, says. “And it made sense that somebody who would do something that well and keep that business going all that time would be a humanitarian and a good neighbor in a community like Florence.”
Rosie Cole, who turned 80 earlier this year, has long been retired, so it is now up to Malcolm Cole to keep the fires burning at the little barbecue business his parents started almost 50 years ago.
It is both an opportunity and an honor, he says.
“I wouldn’t be able to do the things that I like to do if it weren’t for this business or my dad, so I’m very thankful to have this opportunity,” Malcolm Cole says. “I think it is a responsibility to help carry out my dad’s legacy.
“I plan to keep it going as long as I can,” he adds, “as long as my health will hold out and the Good Lord will continue to bless me.”
Bunyan’s Bar-B-Q is at 901 West College St. in Florence. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The phone is 256-766-3522. For a menu and more information, go here.
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