Finger-lickin', Southern-style barbecue moves north

Jason Stepp did not move to Libby to become a prominent cook. A former superintendent of construction from Georgia, Stepp simply wanted to live in the wide-open space he heard his aunt and uncle talk about when he was a kid.

Tired of the ceaseless, headline-grabbing violent crimes that painted his local news red, Stepp finally told his wife something he’d been waiting years to say — “We’re moving to Montana.”

Met with initial consternation, Stepp’s wife found a place on the map that fit her fancy.

“We share a name,” Libby Stepp said.

The Stepps packed the possessions that filled their four-bedroom house in Harlem, Ga., into their 1981 Chevy one-ton pickup and an attached 42-foot horse trailer, and started north with their three sons and Scott Newsome, a lifelong friend of both Stepps who is considered kin of another name.

The crew rolled into town on April 15, Tax Day. Not long after, their smoke began rolling, too.

At 6-foot-3, 350 pounds, Jason Stepp is a cook worth trusting. He learned much of what he knows about barbecuing from his uncle Sam.

“That guy never wore shoes and rarely wore a shirt,” Stepp said. “He’d wear overalls and barbecue in an open pit all the time.”

Following successful offerings during Troy’s Old-Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration, Jason Stepp bought a little red barn and customized it into a fully functioning restaurant-style walk-up window. Open Thursday and Fridays on the corner of 8th Street and Mineral Avenue, Son of the South BBQ has sold 40 pounds of cooked pork and 35 pounds of brisket every week for the past month.

“We buy our meat locally and want to give back locally,” Stepp said.

“This is home. We ain’t going anywhere,” Libby Stepp added.

Thoughts of opening a restaurant are just that. For now, Jason Stepp plans to cook all through the winter.

“We’ll be shoveling snow out the way and off the walk-up window,” Newsome said.