Legendary pitmaster Mike Mills was an ambassador for barbecue, southern Illinois and the aroma of life

Mike Mills was an award-winning hall of fame pitmaster, a restaurateur who became a worldwide ambassador for barbecue, the southern Illinois region and the role that cooking meat slowly over a smoky fire plays in restoring the soul.

Mills, 79, who founded 17th Street Barbecue, turning a century-old building in downtown Murphysboro into an internationally known restaurant with a clientele that included top chefs and former President Bill Clinton, died Tuesday, his daughter and restaurant co-owner Amy Mills said.

Mills had reportedly been in ill health in recent months. No cause of death was given by the family, but Amy Mills said it was not COVID-19 related.

In one of two books he cowrote with his daughter, “Praise the Lard,” named after an annual cook-off he founded in Murphysboro, Mills wrote about what barbecue meant to life.

“Barbecue is America’s original comfort food. It feeds the soul. Magic happens around the fire. Time stands still. People talk and share stories, ideas, hopes, dreams,” he wrote. “Tending a pit is intentional and methodical, slow and steady, stoked by conversation or contemplation. You can taste that in the meat.”

Mills opened his restaurant in 1985, looking to create a comforting place for people to hang out, have a few cold beers and enjoy the kind of barbecue his father, Leon, would make, recalling that he could smell it from his crib as an infant.

Within the next few years, Mills cofounded a competition barbecue team named Apple City Barbecue, a nod to the city’s annual apple festival and the town’s CB radio handle.

The team went on to become one of the most successful in the history of the national barbecue circuit. Mills became a four-time World Champion and three-time Grand World Champion at Memphis, otherwise known as the Super Bowl of Swine. He is also the 1992 Grand Champion of the Jack Daniel’s World Invitational Barbecue cooking contest and he won the Jack Daniel’s sauce contest that year as well.

During a 1995 visit to the region, Clinton had been scheduled to eat at the restaurant but his trip was cut short, requiring Mills and his staff to gain security clearance to board Air Force One at Southern Illinois Airport to prepare food from the restaurant. In the back of the Murphysboro restaurant, a black and white photo hangs of Clinton and Mills aboard the presidential aircraft.

In 2007, Bon Appétit magazine named Mills’ ribs the best in America and the same year Restaurants & Institutions magazine called him America’s most-revered barbecue restaurateur. His food was named Best BBQ in America by Travel and Leisure magazine in 2009 and four times his grillwork was featured in Vogue. In 2010 he was inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.

In 2011, Michael Symon, a James Beard-award winning chef who received the Iron Chef designation on television’s Food Network, featured Mills’ ribs on the network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”

Symon referred to Mills nickname in barbecue circles, “the legend,” on Twitter to mourn the death.

“Lost a friend, mentor and one of the greatest humans I have ever met ... it is a sad, sad day,” Symon tweeted. Mills, he said, was a “very special person who inspired, taught & shared the love with so many.”

Mills also became a regular feature at the Illinois State Fair. Joe Khayyat, who helped lure a skeptical Mills and his barbecue to the fair to help promote its Conservation World section two decades ago, became close friends.

“Mike is one of the most genuine, warm, caring people you would ever meet. Despite his success … you would have no idea of any of that when you met him. He never let any of that success go to his head. He was still the same great, humble guy from southern Illinois,” Khayyat said.

“He grew up poor but always said his mom made sure they had something good to eat and clean clothes. He never lived large, didn’t care about the trappings beyond that. He measured his success or richness in his family and friends across the country and knew that good barbecue would always bring everyone together,” he said.

Mills was an inveterate storyteller, spinning tales like the aroma that wafted over his smokers and offering advice, even to competitors, that went far beyond cooking to include guidance on life. One of his favorite quotes was, “Life’s too short for a half rack.”

He expanded from his original restaurant in Murphysboro to open one in Marion. He also was a founding partner in two Memphis Championship Barbecue restaurants in Las Vegas and was the barbecue guru at, and a partner in, Blue Smoke restaurant in New York City.

At the same time, 17th Street Barbecue began mail-order of its food, sauces and books as well as a key ingredient, Magic Dust, a rub concocted of 18 spices. Recently, its three sauces have become available in Whole Foods stores in the Chicago area.

His first book, co-authored with his daughter, was nominated for a 2006 James Beard Foundation award and received the 2006 National Barbecue Association Award of Excellence.

“I’ve come to realize that barbecue offers people salvation and a way of assembling their own congregations. I’ve seen barbecue revitalize towns and rehabilitate men,” Mills wrote in their second book.

“I’ve had thousands of visits from and conversations with people from all over the world who are drawn to the fire and smoke at 17th Street and who, having partaken of communion from our bar, are now part of our extended barbecue family,” he wrote.

Survivors include his daughter. Services were pending.

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