Ruthie Henri, the ‘South Jersey Barbecue Queen,’ is carrying on the Henri’s Hotts legacy

Ruthie Henri walked from her kitchen into the smoke-scented dining room of Henri’s Hotts Barbeque and greeted a familiar customer with a gentle smile, a somber shake of her head, and then an embrace. And then she hugged another customer. And another.

“I’m trying to be out here more because I’m usually in the back,” said Ruthie, pausing at our table to say hello. “A lot of people still don’t know me.”

The introduction may seem unnecessary considering she cofounded this restaurant 14 years ago. But Ruthie has been pushing herself to be a more visible part of the always warm hospitality here since her husband, Doug Henri, the renowned pit master and namesake of this beloved South Jersey roadhouse, died from COVID-19 in December at 66.

“He just went so fast,” said Ruthie, who reopened the restaurant in February after a six-week closure, in part, to begin healing. “Keeping the restaurant open has been the best thing for me because I was going nuts. It’s helped me because I’m able to reach out to people. I can help people.”

The news was a blow to those who’d come to regard her husband — known as “Henri” to most — as one of the region’s preeminent barbecue artisans, and their restaurant on the Blackhorse Pike in Folsom an essential touchstone on the way to the Jersey Shore.

“It’s shocking,” said longtime friend John Clark, who worked with Henri in his previous career as a corrections officer at the New Jersey Training School in Jamesburg. He’d corresponded with Henri on Facebook just two weeks before he died, unaware of his illness, and said Henri was “very excited” about the upcoming season and a new picnic pavilion they were building behind the restaurant.

For Ruthie there’s never been any question of carrying her husband’s legacy forward. They were very much partners in the operation, even if he was always the face of the business.

“It started out as his dream, but it quickly became something I loved, too,” says Ruthie, 56, who also worked at Cigna for two decades as an operations manager before retiring in 2019. “I was with him from the moment we put the key in the door and made that first sale. We did it together … We spent our lives here. We slept here. And Doug and I were such an incredible team. We rarely had arguments. I did the kitchen and the food and sides and he was outside with the smoker.”

Barbecue was a lifelong passion for Henri, who grew up with the nomadic childhood of an Army kid, then served himself as an Army medic, followed by a decade as a police officer in Daytona, Fla., and 22 years as a corrections officer at the juvenile detention center in Jamesburg. He was self-taught through books and relationships he’d built with mentors such as Ben Lang, whose Georgia company sold him his first “stick burner” smoker, and chef-educator John Henry, who taught him about Texas-style brisket.

The couple began their business as a food truck in 2006, says Ruthie, recalling that Henri’s focus on mastering his craft was so intense she found him one day coughing and sneezing in their Voorhees garage enveloped in a cloud of spice rub. He’d been so caught up in blending vast amounts of smoked paprika, pepper, salt, and sugar, she said, he’d neglected to open any doors for ventilation.

With just $7,000 to start, the two renovated a former pizzeria in 2008 into what would become Henri’s Hotts. A sign posted at the entrance — “This is not FAST FOOD! If you want fast food, go to McDonald’s!” — set the uncompromising tone of no shortcut cooking that would define Henri’s food.

“There would be times we’d be stuck cooking until two in the morning, and one cool day, some pork we expected to be ready in 12 hours was taking 18,” said Ruthie, who learned to work the smoker by Henri’s side. “I said, ‘Babe, can we just take it off and finish it in the oven?’ No! He gave me a nasty ‘No! Why you even asking me that? There’s no crying in barbecue. You’ve got to stick it out. It is what it is.”

By the time I first happened by Henri’s Hotts in 2012, the aroma puffing across the road from the restaurant’s parking lot smokers was so powerful I made a U-turn on Blackhorse Pike and returned for the first of several meals, and an Inquirer review that noted not only the smoked meats, but the soul food menu of stellar fried chicken, corn pudding, and greens inspired by recipes from Henri’s grandmother, Juhne Wheeler.

The restaurant had also begun to form a core group of loyal, long-term employees, like Donald “Trey” Cuff III, 35, who had been incarcerated at Jamesburg who Henri hired after spotting him years later while shopping. He recognized Cuff from culinary classes he’d overseen: “He said, ‘Hey, I know you! I remember you can cook. You want a job?’”

Henri was a demanding presence in the kitchen, said Cuff, with a penchant for strict discipline honed by his years in the military.

“Henri was never nice, but if you could take it, there wasn’t a person left in that kitchen who couldn’t carry their weight. He gave it to you straight up. But he’d also take care of his people,” said Cuff, who said Henri gave bonuses and frequently sent leftovers home with employees for their families at the end of a shift.

And Ruthie was always the calm to Henri’s storm.

“Mama Ruth is the heart of this restaurant, and she was his rock, the only one who could make Henri go quiet and hold it all down,” Cuff said. “But watching their marriage and business working together, I’ve based a lot of my own relationship off what I saw between them: honest communication … I wouldn’t be the man I am today without Henri. I called him Uncle. And, yeah, he was rough around the edges. But you know he meant well and he had nothing but pride and hard work.”

As a chef and mentor, Cuff said Henri was a giant.

“I learned more working for Henri than I probably did working for any other executive chef because Henri was cooking with his heart and his soul: ‘You gotta cook it until them ribs bend!’” he said, recalling Henri’s advice. “We lit a piece of wood on fire to light bigger pieces of wood on fire. That was cave man cooking! And it was a complete art.”

Cuff, who now specializes in pizza, hasn’t worked for Henri’s Hotts since 2016, but says he remains at the ready should they need his help: “Miss Ruth has the right to call me back to work anytime and I will drop whatever I’m doing.”

She says she just may take Cuff up on it, especially as the restaurant prepares to open its new pavilion and she strives to meet her goal of annual growth.

“I set my mind after we opened this restaurant with just $7,000 that I would turn this into a million-dollar business, and I will this year,” she said, based on projections from last year.

But she concedes the nerves are there as she heads into a new season without her husband for the first time. She has leaned into the comfort of her longtime restaurant family for support as she takes to Instagram to reintroduce herself and reassure customers that Henri had prepared her to be a steady hand at the smoker.

“He’d always have this smile on his face when he took meat off the smoker and say, ‘Those ribs are right!’” she said, recalling his telltale test for doneness at the end of each rack. “‘You see this bone?’ he’d say. He’d jiggle it a little and if that meat moved, it was good to go. Not falling off the bone. Just a little wiggle.”

She sold-out of St. Louis-cut ribs each day on opening weekend, the racks slow-smoked fresh each morning in accordance with Henri’s vow to never to serve a reheated rib. All in all, it was a promising start to this unexpected and difficult new chapter for Henri’s Hotts. Friends like Clark, who’s organizing a March 26 afternoon event there to celebrate Henri’s life, have rallied behind the restaurant.

Ruthie’s too humble to call herself “pit master” quite yet — or maybe ever. But Cuff, her former employee, says she’s earned her own title.

“Miss Ruthie’s got enough experience to be a quadruple pit master by now,” says Cuff. “But in my book, she’s a South Jersey Barbecue Queen.”

Henri’s Hotts Barbeque, 1003 E Black Horse Pike, Folsom, N.J., 609-270-7268; bestbbqsj.com. Open Friday through Sunday, noon to 7 p.m.