Most Seattleites probably couldn't give you directions to Madrona Park—it's a small plot of land nestled against Lake Washington at the end of the number 2 bus line. It's a nice, uncrowded park with a modest view, but the real reason to forge through Madrona's labyrinthine backstreets is a waterfront barbecue stand, announced by a huge sign reading, "MAMA WILLIEBELLE'S BBQ" and below that, "SHO' IS GOOD."
It's all about as casual as a backyard barbecue: a cramped kitchen loaded with nonprofessional Sears-issue refrigerators and stoves, a stereo playing soul classics from the '50s and '60s, and a couple plastic tables and chairs. The soda comes in cans and, most days, there's generic grape flavor to be had. The counter help is warm and friendly except when it's not, and the food is so exceptional that it could be cooked and served out of a cardboard box and you wouldn't care.
The things to order, if you're a barbecue purist, are the meals; there's pulled chicken ($9.49 for a "Sho' Is Good" lunch with two sides, $10.99 for "The Truth" dinner with three sides) or barbecue ribs ($10.99 "Sho' Is Good," $11.99 for "The Truth"). If you only get two sides, you should probably pick the collard greens, which are remarkable: at once meaty and crisp enough to remind you that they started as leafy greens; and the candied yams, which are whipped into gooey submission and nearly sweet enough to count as a dessert. But then you'd be leaving out the macaroni and cheese, which would be kind of a crime: the macaroni is boiled within a millimeter of its life, but that's fine because the whole thing is only meant to function as a Sharp Cheddar Cheese Delivery System, a companion kick to the barbecue sauce.
Barbecue aficionados of the world need to form a mob and terrorize whoever originated the theory that good barbecue should "melt in the mouth" and "fall off the bone." That's not a description of meat; that's cotton candy or watermelon. Mama Williebelle's ribs have a little pull, requiring a slight carnivorous tug to separate pork from bone, and that's as it should be. The chicken is moist and a little bit chewy, and doesn't get overpowered by the barbecue flavor.
Mama Williebelle's is owned and operated by a man named Arthur Banks, and it is, in fact, Artie B's West Coast BBQ Sauce ($5.99 a bottle) that makes the food so perfect. It's tangy, but not too much; there's vinegar, but not so you'd notice. Some sauce is meant to cover bad meat choices; Artie B's works with the meat and brings out the delicious animal nature of it—when you eat barbecue covered with Artie B's sauce, you never forget or stop being grateful that a beast died for your meal. You feel like a conqueror.
Artie B works at Mama Williebelle's nearly every day. I don't think it's an overstatement to declare him a genius. All the hallmarks are there. He's moody—"Don't you dare talk to me," he recently snapped at a sulky cashier, who wasn't employed at the stand a week later. He takes pride in his work—"I worked hard on developing that one, 'cause most veggie burgers are so bleh," he explained to a vegetarian friend of mine who was raving over the veggie burger ($4.99), a sloppy-joe-style mound of snap peas and carrots and broccoli that tasted fresh and, amazingly, healthy. Most importantly, though, Artie B has created the most amazing burger in the Seattle metro area: the Willie Burger ($7.99.) The vegetarian I brought wanted to hold it in her hands, hefting the weight, just because it was so beautiful as an object. This thing, the size of an infant's head, is probably the closest anyone will ever get to eating a cartoon burger—probably a third of a pound of beef, give or take, with a few strips of bacon, a hot link split on top of that, covered with a fried egg, a couple slices of cheese, and then the barbecue sauce. It didn't fall apart while I ate it because it was perfectly balanced, and when I finished it, the sense of accomplishment was tremendous.
There are flaws to Mama Williebelle's. The side salad is basically a sop thrown to health nuts: iceberg lettuce with tasteless dressing that can only be described as "creamy." There's no cornbread to wipe the sauce clean off the plate. And the desserts, made fresh every day, aren't usually ready until after 3:00 p.m., if at all, which is a shame because the sweet potato pie ($1.99), in its own individual tart-sized tin, is starchy and confident in the natural sugars of the sweet potato.
Usually barbecue brings familial metaphors to mind: The idea of someone cooking something all day just for you tends to make people think of family holidays. The fact that Mama Williebelles is only open for a few months out of the year (May–Sept), in the middle of a city park, takes out the family connotations and makes it instead a sign of delicious, ridiculous excess. Rather than wiping your face clean, you just lie back in the grass, your fingers sticky, a warm pressure on your belly, a tangy aftertaste in your mouth: sho nuff. 
