A barbecue joint that has been on my radar for the past couple years is a place near the Quad City International Airport by the name of Bare Bones Barbecue. I've heard from a handful of people that their food is good with large portions. The only thing that sort of gave me pause in visiting the place was that they also make pizzas at the place. I sort of cringe when I find a barbecue place that takes a left turn and offers something completely different than basic barbecue. Prodded by my wife who also had been wanting to try the place out, we went there on one of our recent Monday night "date nights".
Bare Bones Barbecue has been open since 2010 and is run by Brian Canfield, son of the owner of Bud's Skyline Inn, located just around the corner and down the road from Bare Bones. (Click here to see the recent update on Bud's Skyline Inn.) Both Bud and Brian Canfield have a stake in the barbecue place. Prior to becoming Bare Bones, the building housed a breakfast place called the Omelet Shoppe, then it later became the Runway Cafe for a short time.
It was around 7 p.m. when we pulled into the parking lot at Bare Bones Barbecue located right across the street from the Quad City Airport Hampton Inn (see map). From the outside, the place isn't much to look at. They probably haven't spruced up the outside of the place since it was still the Omelet Shoppe. In fact, a big sign that says, "Cafe" still stands near Airport Road. However, on the inside, it looks fine with a number of large wooden booths and red and white-checkered cloth cover tables in the main dining area.
There's also a bar at Bare Bones featuring a full selection of liquor, wine and beer. A man who was staying at the hotel across the street was waiting at the bar for his pizza to take back to his room.
In addition to barbecue and pizza, the menufeatures a handful of sandwiches and, interestingly enough, a selection of omelets that are available throughout the day. They also have a small salad bar area that is available with each barbecue entree. That's something you don't see at a barbecue place very often, but as one of the servers explained to us that since they're connected to Bud's Skyline Inn - which has a very good salad bar - that's why they have one at Bare Bones, as well.
At most barbecue places I haven't tried before, I always look for a sampler platter. They had one at Bare Bones that had brisket, pulled pork and a 1/3 slab of ribs, so I ordered that. A side and the salad bar came with the meal and I ordered up baked beans.
Cindy was torn between a couple things, but ended up ordering a 1/3 slab of ribs along with their sweet creamy cole slaw. We both went through the salad bar and I was careful not to load up as I had a lot of food coming. Cindy was somewhat disappointed that they didn't have the pickled beets at the salad bar at Bare Bones like they do at Bud's.
After finishing up our salads, our barbecue platters came out. I had a middle part of the slab while Cindy got the end part. She was having problems with cutting into her ribs because they were so boney, so I traded her slabs. The barbecue platter came with some sauce that was sort of tangy and sweet, and a homemade piece of cornbread.
While there were a lot of bones in the 1/3 rack that I traded with Cindy, there was a lot of meat on the bones. It was a little difficult getting the meat from the bones on my slab, but Cindy was having no trouble getting meat off the bone from the slabe I traded her. The meat was a little chewy, but the sweet and spicy dry rub was flavorful and not too overpowering.
The brisket was basically a big slab of beef, juicy and tender. The brisket easily pulled apart and it was more like a fine piece of roast beef than what I would actually call brisket. Still, it was very good and paired with the barbecue sauce, it was a great taste sensation.
The pulled pork was also decent enough. It featured chunks and shredded pork that was also moist and juicy. I couldn't even begin to finish all that I had, so I gave Cindy portions of the shredded pork and brisket. There was more than enough for us to eat, considering the salad bar we had at the start of the meal.
While Cindy continued to eat, I had to run back to the men's room to clean the sugar and spices off my hands that had accumulated while eating the ribs. While the main dining room at Bare Bones is nice, the men's bathroom needed some attention. While it wasn't the cleanest bathroom I've been in, it was a little disappointing that the men's room would be that scuzzy in what was otherwise a clean restaurant.
The men's room and the outside appearance aside, Bare Bones Barbecue was fine enough to dine at. The barbecue was all right, not the best I've had in the Quad Cities, but there's not too many good places for barbecue in the area. I'm still a little leery of places that do pizza and barbecue together, but the pizza they brought out for the man at the bar smelled pretty good. Still, the barbecue was good and we're glad we gave them a chance. And we'll probably head back at some point.
I was down in Bowling Green, Kentucky recently seeing a dealer who has bought some stuff from us off and on over the years. On my way in town to see him, I passed by a barbecue place that had both and interesting name - Smokey Pig Bar-B-Q - and a sort of interesting location. After I saw my dealer later that day, I decided to have some barbecue at Smokey Pig.
Smokey Pig has been around for a number of years, dating back into the early 70's. The original owner, Ned "Smokey" Nickerson, sold the business to Kaye Huffer in 1999. Actually, it was Kaye's husband, Phil, who was instrumental in the family taking over Smokey Pig. Phil grew up in Monroe County, Kentucky, about 50 miles away from Bowling Green. In Monroe County, they have a style of barbecue that is called, well, "Monroe County-style barbecue". Basically, it's a pork-centric barbecue where they smoke the meat with no spices added - the hickory wood smoke gives the meat its signature taste - and before they serve it, they put a little bit of a vinegar-based barbecue sauce on the meat. It's an acquired taste, for sure, but one that a lot of people in Southern Kentucky seem to like. Phil Huffer liked it so much that he would make the 100 mile round trip to Monroe County for barbecue a couple times a week before the family bought Smokey Pig Bar-B-Q.
It wasn't all that busy when I got into Smokey Pig just off Louisville Road on a little side road named after the barbecue joint - Smokey Pig Road. (see map) It was around 5:30 p.m. - they close promptly at 7 p.m. Tuesday thru Saturday (closed Sunday and Monday). I went inside the building and took a look around. The brightly lit dining room as you walk in features the kitchen/ordering window to the left. There's a number of tables and chairs in the dining room and a porch-like dining room back behind some windows of the main dining room. There were some guys out there dining when I came in and a solitary man eating near the television that was turned on to CNN in the corner.
The menu at Smokey Pig is located on the wall next to the window where you order your food. They feature barbecue plates with your choice of a couple sides, but they didn't seem to have any type of a sampler where I could try more than just one thing. Kaye Huffer and her son, Scott, were working the window that evening. Scott Huffer asked me what he could get me. I said, "You really don't have anything like a sampler where I can get maybe some pulled pork and some ribs, do you?"
Scott Huffer said in a Southern drawl, "Oh, I can make up just about anything you want. You want like a pulled pork sandwich and some ribs?"
I said, "Well, I'd like to maybe get the pulled pork plate and maybe a couple three ribs, if I could."
"Sure," Scott replied. "I can do that."
He asked me what I wanted for my sides and I told him baked beans, for sure, but I wasn't certain what I wanted for the other side. I had my choice between either mayo or vinegar cole slaw, mac & cheese, and the cute-named 'tater' salad, and red skin mashed 'taters'. I was really in the down-home South.
I asked him what he recommended and he didn't even hesitate. "Vinegar slaw is my favorite," he replied. I took his lead and got that.
He then asked me if I wanted the pulled pork "dipped". Not knowing the vernacular of Monroe County-style barbecue, I asked him what he meant by dipped. He explained to me that they have a barbecue sauce that they dip the meat into to give it a spicy coating. "Or, if you don't want all that heat," he explained, "we've got a less spicy barbecue powder that we can sprinkle on the meat for ya. Or you can just get it plain."
I said, "No, no. I'll do it dipped."
He asked me if I was sure. "It can be pretty hot for some people," he warned. He pointed to a sign on the wall in the kitchen that outlined the different levels of hot you can have your meat. Double-dipped was REALLY hot. Yeah, I was sure the one dip would be suitable for me. But for good measure, I ordered a couple bottles of beer, just to be sure.
For $15.40, I got two ribs, a healthy amount of pulled pork, two good-sized sides and a couple beers. I certainly couldn't complain about the prices. Scott Huffer handed me two containers - one carrying the ribs and the sides, the other with the pulled pork, freshly dipped, and a dill pickle spear. I also got a couple pieces of white bread - a true barbecue joint, I thought.
I tried the ribs first. They had a little bit of a tomato-based sauce on them. Unfortunately, the ribs were a little tough. Oh, they were meaty, for sure. But they didn't pull off the bone very easily. The flavor was good and I added a little bit of a sweet and smokey barbecue sauce that had a nice mild taste to it. I was hoping the pulled pork would be better.
It was, but it still didn't knock my socks off. The pulled pork was tender and juicy, but the vinegar sauce didn't seem all that hot to me. It did have a nice little kick, but my mouth was no where on fire. When I mixed in some of the mild sauce, it was a pleasant combination of sweet, smokey and spicy.
I tried some of the baked beans on their own and while they were good, mixing in some of the sweet/smokey barbecue sauce made 'em a little better. The vinegar cole slaw was a little bland to my taste - a little more sugar probably would have helped it out.
Overall, I liked my experience at Smokey Pig. The Huffers were friendly and accommodating; the ribs were a little tough, but still pretty meaty; the pulled pork was tender and had a nice little kick when dipped in the Monroe County-style vinegar sauce. I did like their sweet and smokey barbecue sauce and it was a nice addition to the interesting taste of the meats. I got a lot of food for a little price and that's the one thing that I'll always remember about Smokey Pig Bar-B-Q. It's a very good value with pretty good barbecue. (Picture at right courtesy Lexeat.com)
For a while now, I've said that Des Moines has a number of very good barbecue places and one that has been on my radar for quite some time is a small restaurant near Drake University called Woody's Smoke Shack. I was in Des Moines recently one evening and sought out the little barbecue joint on Cottage Grove. (see map)
Woody's Smoke Shack opened in the latter part of 2008 in what was the former location of Sammie Jack's Barbecue which had gone out of business. However, I remember the building from back in the 70's when it was the locally famous Blind Munchies, a funky little sandwich shop run by an old hippie. There was a weekly underground newspaper around Des Moines in which the Blind Munchies used to advertise. Their 4" by 4" ad simply said, "2511 Cottage Cheese" - a take off on their address which was 2511 Cottage Grove. An in-lay that says "2511 Cottage Cheese" is still on the floor of Woody's Smoke Shack.
In 1981, the owner of the Blind Munchies suffered a stroke and became incapacitated. His house, directly across the street from the small restaurant, had a big picture window up front. He had his bed next to the window so he could look across the street to make sure the business was still going. Unfortunately, he died in 1982 and the building stood vacant for about 15 years.
That's when Sammie Jack's Barbecue came in to take over the location. A former competitor on the barbecue contest circuit, the owner of the place had another job that didn't allow him to work the barbecue place full time. Most of the time he was open only from 11 a.m to 2 p.m. and slightly longer hours on the weekend. Some days, if he didn't have the help or didn't have the time, he just wouldn't open. As time went on and people grew tired of the sporadic hours, he ended up closing the business around 2005.
Steve "Woody" Wasson had gotten his start in the barbecue business on the barbecue competition circuit, much like the former owner of Sammie Jack's and many others who have opened barbecue joints. He was in the building trade as his day job, but loved to barbecue in his back yard over the weekend. After getting into barbecue competitions - and winning many awards - he and his wife, Cheryl, began a catering business in 2002, Woody's BBQ.
When the construction business went to hell with the recession in late 2008, the Wasson's decided to open their own barbecue place - Woody's Smoke Shack - in the old Sammie Jack's location. They spruced up the small building and put in a couple smokers out back. It was an immediate hit with barbecue aficionados in the area. I understand the lines at lunch can stretch out the door in the warmer months.
Woody's is only open until 8 p.m. on the weekdays and it was around 7:30 when I pulled up in front of the place. A few people were inside the small dining area, a couple waiting on to-go orders and a couple more finishing up dinners. The interior of the place is sort of cozy with busy walls featuring a number a number of signs and knick-knacks. The tables and chairs are high, but not very big. You *may* be able to fit 30 people in the place. In the summertime, Woody's features outdoor dining on a patio. In the wintertime, they close it up, heat it and use it for overflow seating.
The menu is on a chalk board on the wall behind the front counter. Like most barbecue places that I'm trying for the first time, I wanted to get a little bit of everything. Woody's Special allows you to pick three different types of meat from ribs, chicken, brisket, pulled pork or ham and get a couple sides to go along with it. I ended up ordering a Woody's Special with ribs, brisket and pulled pork. For my sides I ordered baked beans, but I was sort of lost as to what to order for the second side. I asked the young guy who was taking my order what other side I should get and he immediately said, "Oh, get the cheesy potatoes. They're awesome."
Woody's is also a "B.Y.O.B" place. I was sort of disheartened that I couldn't get a beer with my barbecue, but that was fine for that first trip. So, if you want a couple frosty beers with your barbecue at Woody's, they encourage you to bring in your own. I ended up just getting some water with my meal that evening.
The meal came out to me in less than 10 minutes. Interestingly, the meats were all served on aluminum foil on a platter. The sides were in small styrofoam cups. From the temperature of the meats - which was lukewarm, at best - I'm guessing that they just heat up the meat in a microwave when ordered. It was a little disappointing to have it be not all that warm, but it wasn't a deal breaker.
The ribs were the first thing I tried. They had a nice light sauce glaze over the top of the meat on the bones and the pork meat easily pulled apart when I took a couple ribs apart. The rub/glaze has a nice flavor and there was a good smoky flavor with the meat. The ribs were the highlight of the meal.
I got into the pulled pork next. It was moist and tender and also had a nice smoky taste. I added some of Woody's sweet and tangy barbecue sauce and it was a very good combination. I made short work of the pulled pork. It was almost as good as the ribs, but I liked the taste of the ribs better.
The brisket, unfortunately, was the weak link that evening. It was dried out and tepid in temperature. It still had a nice beef taste to it, but it was far from the best brisket I'd had. Still, I was able to eat it all, even though I was getting full from the generous portions Woody's provided.
The baked beans, on their own, were good. With some barbecue sauce added, they were even better. And the cheesy potatoes were as good as advertised. I couldn't finish either the beans or the potatoes as I was getting stuffed.
All the while I was eating, I got to talking to Woody Wasson who was seated at a table near me, taking a load off his feet as he was finishing up another day. He told me that in the summertime he usually has both smokers going out back. "When the weather cools down, so does business. So I just run one smoker during the winter months. Sometimes we run out of some meat, but it beats having a bunch leftover."
I asked Woody how he got started in the business and he said that he used to smoke ribs and pork butt in his backyard for fun over 15 years ago. He said he always made too much food and would give some away to friends and neighbors. Someone told him that he ought to get into a barbecue contest somewhere. "I found one coming up in Waterloo, IA," he told me. "So, my son and I went up there for our first contest."
Woody related to me that the contest was for ribs only. They had 12 rib racks that they had to cook in six hours and the Brinkmann smoker they brought along could only hold 4 racks of ribs at a time. "It normally takes me six hours to cook my ribs," Woody told me. "We were able to pull it off, but we realized, 'Hey! We need a bigger smoker!' "
He told me he found one for sale up in Perry, IA. But when he went to see it, it turned out to be too small. Woody said the guy told him, "Heck, I can build you one. Any size you want."
Woody said it took the guy two weeks to build his first big smoker. "We took possession of it and took it home to burn off all the oil inside the smoker", he told me. "Then we took it to Kansas City for a contest. Our first big contest."
That contest didn't turn out well for the Wasson's. "We overcooked everything," Woody said as he shook his head. "We didn't know how to regulate the heat or keep it at a constant temperature. We were in a little over our heads."
He said that he had to bring the smoker back home and learn how to smoke on it. After getting used to the smoker, Woody entered other competitions, but still wasn't doing well. He was wondering what he was doing wrong and wondered if he really was biting off more than he could chew.
That was until a fellow competitor came to Woody one time after that at another competition and said, "Hey, if you watch my fire overnight, I'll show you the tricks of the trade." So, while the guy "drank and drank and drank some more" with other people at the competition ("Boy, that guy could drink," Woody told me with a laugh), Woody watched his fire on his smoker. The guy went back to the hotel, telling Woody he'd be back at 5 a.m. 5 a.m. came and went, and the guy was nowhere in sight. 6 a.m. came and Woody got to be concerned. He told me, "I called my wife and I said, 'I don't know where he is. He could still be dead drunk somewhere.' "
Woody said that he finally called the guy at the hotel sometime before 7 a.m. and asked him if he remembered he had a competition that day. "He told me, 'Yeah, yeah! I'm on my way," Woody related. True to his word, the guy showed Woody some of the ins and outs of competitive barbecue and that got him going. Woody said, "And today, that guy is my best friend in the business."
Woody said he doesn't do much competing any longer. "We do a lot of catering, especially in the summer months when a lot of those competitions are going on," Woody said. "Besides, there's a lot of other good barbecue places in Des Moines, so I'm competing every day."
Before I left, I had to use the restroom and I have to say that Woody's restroom is one of the nicest and cleanest I've ever been in at a restaurant. It looked like it was a half-bath in someones country home.
With all that said, I found Woody's Barbecue to be good, but not great. I loved the ribs and the pulled pork - even though they were served somewhat lukewarm - and was disappointed in the brisket. I like good brisket and I'm guessing the combination of a cool temperature and possibly sitting in the fridge for more than a couple days may have had something to do with that. I enjoyed talking with Woody and learning about his business. He was a personable and likable kind of guy. I'm going to give Woody's another try at some point and hopefully I'll get meat that is a little more warm the next time. If not, I'm sure that I can ask them to nuke it a little longer to make it better.
While on vacation in the Lake Okoboji region, my buddy, Craig Evert, told me about a place that he really likes called Smokin' Jakes in Arnold Park. (see map) "They have great brisket, man," he gushed over drinks one night when we were at their house. "It's the best barbecue in the lakes region." Heck, we found out Smokin' Jakes may be the ONLY barbecue in the area. One afternoon for lunch, we decided to give Smokin' Jakes a try.
Smokin' Jakes is owned by Linda Geske, who also owns the Table 316 steakhouse and cabaret in Arnolds Park (one of the few restaurants in the area we didn't try on our vacation). It opens at 11 a.m. and stays open until - sometimes - 4 a.m. for the late night bar crowd looking for an early breakfast - and they're kind of famous for their early, early morning breakfasts.
Smokin' Jakes isn't much more than a glorified corner tavern with a bar, tables and booths. It's not fine dining, but you wouldn't expect that from a place that serves barbecue and late night/early morning breakfast. Actually, I didn't see much evidence that there was any smoking apparatus on site. I figured they must smoke the meat elsewhere and bring it in to the restaurant. Antique pots or jugs were on shelves above the booths on the west wall of the place. I never did figure out the significance of those while we were there.
We took a seat at a table along the short wall in the middle. Our server that day, Julie, was also the bartender. I got a beer and Cindy got iced tea. Looking through the lunch menu, I was sort of disappointed to find out that they didn't offer any type of a sampler platter, or even a choice of a barbecue platter - it was basically sandwiches only for any barbecue. (The dinner menu does offer a variety of barbecue plates including ribs, smoked pork chops, brisket, chicken and turkey.) I was a little disheartened when I realized that I couldn't try a couple of different barbecued items. They did have what they called "rib morsels" on the menu, basically rib appetizers, but I didn't feel like getting any of those.
In addition to the sandwiches at lunch, Smokin' Jakes also has a number of soups, salads and appetizers including their "chicken drummies" - small chicken legs with your choice of 10 different types of sauces. Their sandwiches included grilled chicken, a smoked club that featured smoked ham and turkey (that really did sound interesting to me), and a BLT with smoked bacon. Oooo.... That almost had me.
I finally decided upon the brisket sandwich - I figured that I could just east the brisket on its own with out the bun. I got an order of fries with it. Cindy ordered the Philly Chicken sandwich - a smoked chicken breast with sauteed onions and green peppers and topped with Swiss cheese. (You can also get the Philly Beef sandwich with brisket.) She got a side of cole slaw.
Our sandwiches came out less than 15 minutes after we ordered. My sandwich featured three layers of somewhat thick cut brisket lying inside a hoagie bun with a small container of barbecue sauce in between. The fries were thick cut steak fries, so that was a plus. But the presentation wasn't much.
Cindy's Philly Chicken sandwich was almost as boring looking as my brisket sandwich. The cole slaw was in a small bowl off to the side of the smallish sandwich.
The taste of my brisket was good - nothing special. The meat was tender and juicy, but it tasted more like an oven roasted beef than a good smoked brisket, somewhat confirming my fears that they may not have a smoker at all. The thick barbecue sauce had a sweet and smoky flavor to it. It was good, but I wouldn't call it outstanding. The toasted hoagie bun was used more to tear off pieces and dip it in the barbecue sauce. I asked Julie for more sauce as I also used it on the steak fries, which had the perfect crunchy outside and soft inside.
Cindy said her Philly Chicken was "good". She said the breast did have a smoked flavor to it, sort of like how I do chicken breasts on the grill at home with indirect heat and a little bit of mesquite or cherry wood smoke. The cole slaw, which I believe was homemade, was "eh!" in Cindy's book. "I've had better, but it's not bad," she said.
Although I was disappointed that I couldn't try something other than a sandwich for my barbecue choice for lunch, Smokin' Jakes was all right. If it's the only barbecue in the lakes region, then its fine for what it is. But any type of competition that would come in with good barbecue would give Smokin' Jakes a run for their money. Compared to other places I've tried in larger cities, it's average, at best. But for Arnolds Park and Lake Okoboji, it's fine. Just don't expect world class barbecue when you go in.
During a trip to St. Louis earlier this summer, I spent the night in west suburban Chesterfield. With a plethora of dining options in the immediate area, I didn't really know what I wanted to get that evening. Using Urbanspoon, I took a look at all the available cuisines in the immediate area. Barbecue sounded good that evening and I decided to head over to a place called PM Barbecue to see what it was like.
Like many barbecue places, PM BBQ got its start when two friends, Paul Lamers and Mark Ruck, began to enter local barbecue competitions a few years ago. They consistently won a number of competitions and began to sell their barbecue at the Wildwood Farmers Market in nearby Wildwood, MO. As their following grew, they decided to open their own restaurant. They did so in March of 2010 in the Chesterfield Towne Center in the Chesterfield valley. (see map)
In fact, PM BBQ is located right next to El Maguey (see my entry on El Maguey here). I remember the barbecue place from before as it was past 8 p.m. when I got to El Maguey on my last visit there and PM Barbecue was closed for the evening. And because the popular upscale Wild Horse Grill is next door on the other side of PM BBQ, the parking area in front of the three restaurants was pretty packed when I pulled in around 6:30 p.m.
PM BBQ isn't all that big, but is sort of quaint and homey with antique signs and knick-knacks on the wall. They have metal bucket light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Older style wooden chairs and tables were throughout the dining area.
The menu for the restaurant is pretty basic. They have a handful of sandwiches that include brisket, pulled pork, pulled chicken and smoked turkey. They feature smoked baby back ribs and smoked chicken as an entree. Curiously, they don't offer either pulled pork or brisket as part of a dinner (although both can be bought in 1 pound packs when available). And because of that, there is no sampler that would allow one to try two or three of the smoked meats PM BBQ offers.
PM Barbecue cooks their meats in the Memphis style of barbecue - a homemade dry spice and herb rub is put on the meat and it's smoked low and slow for tenderness and taste. They offer four different styles of barbecue sauce on the table - more on that in a little bit.
The menu board for the restaurant is located on the wall behind the front counter. You place your order and pay for your food there, give them your name and they'll call it out if they're busy. If they're not, like the night I was in there, they'll bring the food out to you. Since they didn't offer any type of a sampler plate, I had to make up my mind between the brisket or pulled pork sandwich, or the baby back ribs. I decided upon the brisket and I had my choice of two sides. They offered baked beans, green beans, cole slaw, potato salad, fries, and homemade applesauce. I got the baked beans and fries. I almost got the green beans, but decided to get the fries to dip in the different sauces they have to offer.
It was about 10 minutes after I ordered when the young man who took my order brought out my sandwich platter. The brisket was piled on a wonderful soft bun and had a nice little pink smoke ring on the outside. The French fries were pretty basic - thin and average. But the baked beans were actually very good. They were thick and had nice chunks of brisket ends added in. I usually have to add some sauce to most baked beans I have at some barbecue restaurants, but the beans at PM BBQ were very good on their own. I did experiment by adding sauces to it and they were even better.
Ah, yes! The sauces! As I said, PM BBQ offers four different types of sauces - a sweet sauce that was rich and flavorful; a spicy sauce that had a great kick to the taste; a mustard sauce that was, well, 'eh!' (but I'm not big on mustard sauces); and a vinegar, red pepper and black pepper Carolina style sauce that was just fabulous. It had a great peppery taste with a little spicy kick. The combination of the vinegar and the peppers was a great taste sensation.
I ate the brisket slices, adding the different barbecue sauces with each bite. The brisket was tender, juicy and very flavorful even without the sauce. The faint taste of the rub was prevalent in each bite. The brisket was very, very good. I used the bun to sop up additional barbecue sauce, primarily the Carolina vinegar/pepper sauce.
Now, here's a little side story that helps illustrate why I hate to eat alone at times. On the front door of PM Barbecue, they have a large cowbell that clangs when people go in and out. It's just another rustic item that helps with the overall ambience of the place. I was seated near the front door and a portly middle-aged lady came in the door, cowbell clanging. She was sort of startled by it and she walked right up to me sitting there eating my dinner. She loudly said to me, "Wow! They have a cowbell on the door!" (Like I really cared.) Then she said, "Well, I hope they didn't take that off the cow they killed for the beef they serve here!" Ugh! Just leave me alone! But I soon found out that she was one of those type of people who bothered everyone around her. Thank God, she got her order to go and I was finished before she had a chance to bother me again on the way out.
PM BBQ was a pleasant surprise for me. The brisket was very, very good, but the sweet, spicy and Carolina sauces were the highlight of the meal. The only thing I was disappointed with was the lack of a sampler platter. I would have loved to have tried a quarter rack of ribs and some pulled pork in addition to the brisket. Although the fries were average, the baked beans were some of the best I've had at a barbecue joint. Overall, PM BBQ was a pretty good value with very good barbecue.
When a Dickey's Barbecue restaurant opened in Davenport toward the end of 2008, my long-distance, yet local friend Burt Gearhart predicted it would close within a year. Burt lived for a long time in Texas and frequented the original Dickey's Barbecue places in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He told me after visiting the one in Davenport, "It's nowhere near the quality of the original Dickey's. And I even told them that when I was in there."
Burt's premonition about Dickey's not lasting long grew some teeth when locations in Cedar Rapids and a location in Coralville (Iowa City) all closed within a couple years of opening. The Coralville location was only open months before it was forced to close. I held off going to Dickey's on Utica Ridge in Davenport (see map) for well over three years, figuring that it was probably going to close at any moment. However, business keeps going on at that location and the local franchisee opened a second Dickey's location in Moline in 2011. So it appears that the Quad City Dickey's locations aren't going away any time soon. One day earlier this spring, I had to go out to a tree farm on Utica Ridge and decided to stop in to Dickey's for lunch.
The original Dickey's Barbecue started in Dallas in 1941. Founder Travis Dickey, Sr. had a single goal when he opened his doors: "Serve the best tastin' barbecue imaginable, just the way people like it. And don't make 'em wait too long to get it." The original Dickey's started out as a one room operation and served beef brisket, ribs, and pulled pork. In later years during Thanksgiving and Christmas, Dickey began to smoke hams and turkeys, as well. Dickey's also made their own barbecue beans, cole slaw and potato salad.
Dickey's two sons, T.D. and Roland, took over the operation in 1967. Two years later they opened two more small locations around the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. By 1972, Dickey's was the largest barbecue chain in Texas. In 1994, the brothers decided to start franchising the Dickey Barbecue concept and began to sell franchise rights. Today, there are over 170 Dickey's locations in 39 states. The company bills itself as the largest "fast-casual" restaurant in the nation. "Fast-casual" means that you order at the counter, they give you a number, you go sit down and they bring the food to you.
Local owners Bruce and Judy Norden opened the Utica Ridge location in November of 2008, then with partners (and General Manager) Bill Jensen and Chris Banks, they opened the Moline location in May of 2011. A kitchen fire at the Moline location toward the end of December closed that location until March of this year. But it's back up and running with full bore barbecue.
It was around 1:30 when I got into the Dickey's on Utica Ridge. There are a number of tables and booths throughout the place. The colors on the walls were subtle earth tones and the large windows on the east and south side of the building gave it a bright and appealing atmosphere. A couple was seated at one table and a group of construction workers were seated at another table - all of whom were drinking from one of Dickey's "Big Yellow Cups", a large 32 oz. fully recyclable and reusable fountain drink cup that has become somewhat of a signature item for Dickey's over the past few years.
I went up to the counter, not fully knowing what was going on and took a look at the menu that was sitting on the counter in front of me. One of the guys in the back said he'd be with me in a minute. That gave me time to go through the menu to figure out what I wanted.
I usually get a sampler plate when I try a barbecue place that I'm not familiar with and Dickey's only had a two meat plate on their menu - and you couldn't order ribs as one of the two meats. You had your choice of chopped or sliced beef brisket, pulled pork, ham, sliced turkey breast, marinated smoked chicken, Polish sausage or something called spicy cheddar sausage, which is sort of a Dickey's signature item. You could order ribs, but they were only available on their own platter.
When the guy came out to take my order, I ordered a two meat plate of sliced brisket and the pulled pork. He said, "You get a couple of sides along with that." The sides included barbecue beans, waffle fries, okra, jalapeno beans, mac and cheese, and green beans with bacon just to name only a few of what they offered. I went with the barbecue beans and the mac and cheese.
He asked what I wanted to drink and I sort of looked around for a beer cooler. When I didn't see one, I just said, "Oh, I'll just have water."
The guy must have read my mind and he said, "We have beer, too."
Well, I LOVE beer with my barbecue. I got a couple beers to go along with the meal. After I paid, he gave me a number and said, "We'll bring it out to you when it's finished!"
I found a seat in a booth in the center of the restaurant. It wasn't more than five minutes when one of the other guys brought out my plate of food. There were ample portions of pulled pork and sliced beef brisket on the plate, covered with a generous amounts of Dickey's Original barbecue sauce. The mac and cheese and the barbecue beans were in small containers. And, quite curiously, along with sliced pickles, there was a raw onion ring on the platter. A biscuit-style roll came with the meal.
Once again, not knowing the drill at Dickey's, I found that I didn't have any silverware. I went over by the front counter and found the silverware - along with small vats of Dickey's regular, spicy and sweet barbecue sauces. I grabbed one little tub each of the barbecue sauce, grabbed a fork and a knife and headed back to the table.
From my first bite of the beef brisket, it was fully apparent that I didn't need the knife. The thick sliced brisket fell apart when I put a fork to it. It was very tender and I immediately liked the original Dickey's sauce, although it was a little too runny for my liking. I tried some of the sweet sauce next with the brisket, but I couldn't really tell a big difference between the original and the sweet sauces. But when I tried the spicy Dickey's sauce, that got my attention. It had a nice kick to the taste, lingering on the tongue for a moment with a subtle hot spice flavor. Once again, other than it being a little too runny for me, it was good. I liked it a lot.
The pulled pork was equally as moist and tender as the beef brisket. I ended up going back to get more of the spicy and sweet sauces and I poured the spicy tub container over the pulled pork. It was pretty damn good.
The barbecue beans were just OK, even after I popped more of both the sweet and hot barbecue sauces in with the beans. They were very runny - something that I don't care for in barbecue or baked beans. But they were OK, nonetheless. The surprise of the meal, though, was the mac and cheese. I don't know why I get mac and cheese at places like this because it's usually not very good. But I have to say the mac and cheese was well above average. It was thick and cheesy, and had a very good taste quality to it. I couldn't eat it all, but I was pleasantly surprised with the mac and cheese at Dickey's.
The roll was actually pretty good, too. I found myself dipping it into the barbecue beans and sopping up some of the extra sauce on my platter. The roll was sort of light, but chewy. Quite honestly, I couldn't find anything to bitch about with my meal. I was pleasantly surprised with my barbecue platter at Dickey's.
Another tradition at Dickey's is free soft-serve ice cream. I don't know how I could have enjoyed any ice cream after the lunch I had. I did finish the meats on my platter and made a serious dent into both the barbecue beans and the mac and cheese. The roll was very good dipped in the barbecue sauce. After all that food and a couple beers, I was stuffed.
I have to say that I was very impressed with my first visit to a Dickey's Barbecue. Look, I'm sure the family run locations around Texas are probably better, and I'm sure that's what my friend Burt is basing his opinion of the Davenport Dickey's upon. But I've eaten at a lot of barbecue places (as you can see by the number of barbecue places I've visited around the Midwest) and I think I know what is good and what isn't. Even for a chain, I was impressed with Dickey's Barbecue. As you know, I'm pretty much down on chain restaurants, but I understand that even though there is a standard menu for all Dickey's franchises, each local franchise owner gets to put their own little stamp on the food. The meat was tender and flavorful, and I did dig the mac and cheese at Dickey's. I think I'd go back to Dickey's before I'd go back to a place like Famous Dave's, which, too, isn't bad barbecue for a chain.
Years ago, I used to call on a stereo shop in the Campustown (aka Dog Town to some of the locals) area of Ames, right next to Iowa State University. There was a small barbecue place not far from the store ran by an old man by the name of George Battle - Battle's Barbecue. It was more of a hole-in-the-wall place but George had great barbecue. I remember Battle's Barbecue was always compared to another barbecue place in Ames calledHickory Park. I really liked Battle's Barbecue, but had never tried Hickory Park before. Since my blog has taken off with the number of readers I get on a daily basis, a number of people in Central Iowa have told me about Hickory Park in Ames. My wife even ate there when she was in Ames for meetings last year. I've heard both ways - some loved the place, others didn't think much of it. I was driving between the Twin Cities and Des Moines recently and decided to stop in and get some lunch at Hickory Park just to see what others were talking about.
I'd known about Hickory Park for a number of years, considering they've been in business since 1970. It was in a small building on East Lincoln Way that Dave Wheelock opened his first barbecue place. Winning over the locals with his St. Louis/Kansas City-style barbecue, it became apparent that he needed a larger space.
At the start of 1982, Hickory Park moved to a larger location on SE 16th St. in Ames. Wheelock was able to more than triple the number of patrons he was able to seat at one time to nearly 200 people. 15 years later, Hickory Park moved to its present day location on S. Duff, one of the main drags in Ames (see map). It's large building with equally large parking lot is easy to find for anyone coming north off of Highway 30.
Hickory Park cooks their meats in a special grill oven that combines an open flame with convection heat, then they pot braise their meats, glazing the meat with barbecue sauce, then putting it on the grill again to finish it off. That is certainly an interesting way of barbecuing their meat and one that some barbecue snobs turn up their nose at. But it if tastes good, like some people think it does, why not do it that way? I had to find out for myself.
I got into the restaurant around 1:30 and there were a number of people standing around. I went to the hostess stand and told her it was just me. She said, "I can seat you right away."
As we walked back into the large dining area, I asked the hostess, "Weren't those people back there ahead of me?"
She said, "Yeah, but they're two large parties and they're waiting for a large table to open up. I can get you to a small table no problem."
She sat me down along the west wall of the restaurant with the windows looking out toward S. Duff Ave. The dining area was huge, segmented into smaller dining rooms that seemed to have a different motif in each area. There was an area that had an old 1890's type of decor, while the dining area I was seated in was sort of rustic with a number of old signs and antique lights hanging from the ceiling. Even at 1:30 in the afternoon, I would say the place was well over half full.
She gave me a menu to look over and the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't just barbecue they did at Hickory Park, but they had nearly a dozen burgers to choose from, as well as a like number of specialty sandwiches, salads, deli sandwiches and entrees including a number of smoked meat platters. I get a little worried when a restaurant offers so many things to eat. Most of the times they do all of them good, but it's generally not outstanding.
But I was there for the barbecue and I wanted to try a little bit of two or three of their meats. They had a combination dinner that featured sliced beef brisket, sliced pork and sliced turkey for $7.25. Two sides came with that and I got their cole slaw and their baked beans. I got a beer to go along with the barbecue.
My waitress brought out my meal less than 10 minutes after I ordered it (no wonder the place is so busy at lunch time). There were three large slices of both pork and beef and a large slice of smoked turkey. I used some of the barbecue sauce that was sweet, a little tangy and had a little smoky taste to it. The sauce was OK, not the best I've had, but just OK.
The three meats were all thickly sliced for barbecue. They weren't as tender as I would have liked it to be, but they were sort of flavorful. The beef brisket had a nice smoke ring around the outer edge and out of the three it was the most tender.
The pork was good, but not outstanding. I couldn't tell if they used a rub on the outer layer of the pork, but it had a slightly smoky flavor.
I usually don't get smoked turkey (or chicken, or that matter) when I go to a barbecue place, but this was not bad. Turkey is usually dry and while this was far from moist, it wasn't overly dried out and overcooked like I've found at other places.
The beans were pedestrian, but livened up a bit when I added some more barbecue sauce. And the cole slaw was rather bland. I just had a couple small bites and gave up.
The waitress came back around to see how I was doing and I told her that I was full. She said, "No room for any ice cream?" Nope, not this time. It turns out that another big draw for Hickory Park is their old fashioned ice cream parlor that features an extensive menuof malts and shakes, splits and parfaits, and sodas and floats. They have over a dozen different types of ice cream to choose from at Hickory Park and it appeared that a number of adults and youngsters at the place were enjoying their desserts.
But the meat portions that I got on my plate were a great value for $7.25. I was certainly stuffed by the time I finished off the brisket, then the pork, then made a dent in the large slab of turkey. While I can't say that Hickory Park was the best barbecue I've ever had, it's not bad at all. The beans were just all right, the cole slaw was "eh!", and the sauce was serviceable and did it's part in help with the overall taste of the meat. But even though the food was a great value at Hickory Park, I couldn't help but wonder if Battle's Barbecue is still in business.
I had finished my morning meetings in Champaign on a recent visit there and I had contemplated stopping at The Burger Barge outside of Peoria for a burger on the way home. The only problem is that by the time I would have gotten there it would have been close to 3 p.m., too late to enjoy a great burger if I was planning on eating with my wife later that evening. I decided to go find a barbecue restaurant that I'd driven past on my way into Champaign the previous evening - Boneyard Barbecue. I pulled in there around 1:30 and had missed the lunch rush.
Boneyard Barbecue is located at 25 E. Springfield St. in what was the old Fireside restaurant. (See map) After a place called Rocks closed up in the summer of 2009, Anthony Donato teamed up with Eddie Geovanti's - owner of Geovanti's in Champaign - to open the Fireside, a contemporary bar and grill known for their wings, burgers and - for Springfield, IL natives - their own variation of the horseshoe sandwich.
Donato eventually bought Eddie Geovanti out of both the Fireside and Geovanti's, but found that running both businesses was troublesome, considering he also ran a property and business management company on the side. Enter George Dries.
Dries was the owner of BoBo's BBQ, which was basically a mobile food service that parked in lots around Champaign selling his Southern-style barbecue out of his food truck since 2008. Bobo's was a popular destination for people in and around Champaign and he soon found that he needed a permanent place to sell his barbecue. Donato was looking for a partner for the Fireside location and the two got together to change the bar and grill into Boneyard Barbecue in the fall of 2011.
Dries and Donato updated the inside of the restaurant to make it more of a sports bar atmosphere that also sold burgers and sandwiches along with BoBo's barbecue specialties. There is an outdoor patio (albeit along busy Springfield Ave.) and a large party room for private events. The owners are also huge University of Illinois sports fans and the outside of the building is painted in the school colors of navy blue and orange. Large "I's" for Illinois adorn the outside of the building. For an Iowa Hawkeyes fan like me, it was a little galling to walk into the place.
I took a seat along the north side of the rectangular bar with the windows looking out onto the patio behind me. I was greeted by a bartender, Hannah, who was outgoing and chatty. Rather chatty. Actually, I noticed that with all the help at Boneyard Barbecue were chatty with their customers. Not that there were a lot of customers in the place at that time of the day, but Hannah sure liked to talk.
She gave me a menu to look through and, as always, when I go to a barbecue place that I'm not familiar with I like to go for a combination platter just to try a little bit of everything. They had a handful of combinations - brisket and pulled pork, ribs and brisket, ribs and chicken, ribs and pulled pork. Actually, what I really wanted was ribs, pulled pork and brisket. I just decided to go with the brisket and pulled pork. What was sort of interesting and rather peculiar was that you had to order your choice of barbecue sauce to go on the meat. They didn't have sauce bottles or containers anywhere in the restaurant. You had your choice of mild or hot, or a combination of the two. I got mine with the combination.
Two sides came with the barbecue platter - I got baked beans and mac & cheese. I had to pick between those two and fries, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet corn, cole slaw, sweet potato fries, cottage cheese or green beans.
After about 10 minutes, Hannah came out with my barbecue combination. The mac & cheese, I could tell, was going to be pedestrian, at best. And it was. And the baked beans weren't much better. I should have asked her for some sauce on the side to help zip up the beans because they were pretty weak on taste. And that was another minor quibble on my part - there was no extra sauce available in bottles or containers.
The brisket was more of a pulled beef variety rather than sliced. However, it was moist, tender and tasted good with the smoky and very sweet barbecue sauce that Boneyard Barbecue had to offer. I forked some of the excess sauce on the plate in with a bite of the baked beans and it helped the taste tremendously.
The ribs featured four bones slathered in the barbecue sauce. I really wish I would have gotten the sauce on the side when I got to the ribs because I could tell that they had a unique rub on the outside. The ribs were very meaty, also moist and tender. The sauce was a little overpowering for the taste of the rib meat. It was also so sweet it was sticky. One thing that Boneyard Barbecue needs to offer is wet naps or at least a warm wet towel to use while eating the ribs. I had to go into the restroom and "squeegee" my face and hands off after I finished the meal.
Hannah came over to me and asked, "How was it?" I told her the truth - it was good. I can't say it was outstanding barbecue, but it was good. I've gotten spoiled on good barbecue in Kansas City and in Des Moines, two places that, I feel, has the best barbecue in the Midwest. But Boneyard Barbecue acquitted themselves very well and would have stacked up against many barbecue places I've eaten at in the past. If I do get a chance to go back I'll try the ribs dry or with sauce on the side. I want to taste the meat on the ribs without the interference of the sauce. Not that there is anything wrong with the sauce, but it did overpower the taste of the meat. And I've found that if barbecue joints do that with their meat, they're trying to hide something.
The third location under the Jethro's Barbecue umbrella opened late in 2011 out in West Des Moines - Jethro's Barbecue and Jambalaya - taking the best of Jethro's barbecue from their original restaurant on Forest Avenue in Des Moines near Drake University and adding a number of Cajun specialties. I visited the Jethro's Barbecue in Des Moines last year (click here to read that entry) and came away sort of impressed with their barbecue. Their second location in eastern suburban Altoona, IA - Jethro and Jake's Smokehouse Steaks - takes the Jethro's Barbecue and pairs it with a steakhouse theme. When I found out that the third Jethro's had a Cajun twist to their food, I immediately put it on my list of restaurants to visit. During a trip to Des Moines a few weeks ago, I decided to stop in for lunch.
Des Moines developer/restaurateur Bruce Gerleman designed his third Jethro's location similar to the original one in Des Moines - exposed wood rafters, open floor plan, corrugated metal walls in the bathrooms giving the decor kind of a "shack" feel. (I haven't been to the one in Altoona, but I'm guessing it's similar to the other two.) The West Des Moines location is located on University Ave. just west of 92nd St. in West Des Moines and Boone Drive in Waukee (see map). It's kind of confusing as West Des Moines is on the south side of University and Waukee is across the street to the north. My GPS was equally confused after I put in the address and it tried to get me to turn into the Des Moines Golf and Country Club. But there was no entrance. I continued down the road a bit and saw Jethro's on the corner of a small strip mall just past 92nd St.
It was just after 1 p.m. when I got into Jethro's in West Des Moines and the lunch rush was in full swing. This Jethro's location is about double the size of the one near Drake University and also has a party room toward the back that can be used for overflow when it's not in use for private functions. The bar is similar to the original Jethro's with three sides surrounding tin corrugated culvert tubes stretching from the middle part of the inner bar to the ceiling holding the spigots of draft beer.
And like the Drake location, there is a "Wall of Fame" and a "Wall of Shame" for those who have tried the Adam Emmenecker sandwich challenge - a behemoth sandwich named after a former Drake University men's basketball star that features Jethro's huge pork tenderloin, then add an Angus steak burger, they they top that with mounds of Texas brisket, applewood bacon and then fried cheese. They finish the toppings with buffalo chicken tenders and smother the mountain of beef and pork with melted cheddar and white cheddar sauce.
This is Matt Meszaros, a young man from the Des Moines area who - if you believe the Adam Emmenecker web site devoted to the sandwich - has the record of consuming at least 25 of the sandwiches. Meszaros is the man behind the Des Moines Egotist website that follows Central Iowa advertising and marketing. One thing I have to tell Matt - I used to be your size at one time. While I probably couldn't have eaten one Adam Emmenecker sandwich, let alone at least 25, I probably would have made a serious dent in one when I was your age. But I have to tell you - age catches up with you and most people's metabolism slows down pretty quickly after the age of 40. And it's a lot tougher to drop 50 pounds after the age of 40. Believe me.
While the dining area was pretty full and there were tables available, I decided to sit at the bar which was about 2/3rd's full. A perky young girl by the name of Alicia greeted me with a menu and asked if I wanted anything to drink. I took a quick look at what they had to offer on their beer menu and I noticed they had an unnamed Samuel Adams seasonal. I asked Alicia what it was and she said it was called Alpine Spring. "It's light like a lager, but has sort of a hoppy taste," she explained. She offered me a small glass to taste it and I thought it was fine. I ordered a 16 oz. glass of that.
While Jethro's Barbecue and Jambalaya did have a number of barbecue items on their menu, I was interested primarily on the Cajun specialties listed under "Jasper's Cajun Favorites". There weren't a lot of entrees to choose from - jambalaya, chicken and sausage gumbo, crawfish etouffee, and red beans and "nice" rice - but you could combine them with ribs and other barbecue combinations. I really wanted to try a cup of gumbo along with the jambalaya, but it appeared that the gumbo was only available as an entree. When Alicia asked me if I had any questions, I asked her if the gumbo was available in anything smaller than the entree. She opened up my menu and pointed to a cup of gumbo that was toward the front of the menu. I said, "Perfect! I'll take a cup of gumbo and the jambalaya!"
She brought the gumbo out first. It had a dab of rice on top, topped with chopped green onions. It was a nice presentation. It had a lot of shredded chicken and long slices of smoked andouille sausage. In fact, the slices were cut long-ways and almost needed to be cut in half to get them on the soup spoon. I prefer smaller chunks of sausage in my gumbo, but I could live with it.
The gumbo (below left) was, well, different. While it was thick and rich, I can't really say the taste was bad, but it wasn't great, either. It had a little spicy zip to the taste, but the roux was sort of "eh!". I added copious amounts of Tabasco sauce throughout the eating process to help with the taste. I can't say that it was bland, but it had a different taste than any gumbo I'd ever had. I'm not certain I cared for it. No, actually, I didn't care for it all.
After finishing the gumbo, Alicia brought out a huge bowl of the jambalaya (above right). The gumbo was very filling and I knew that I wouldn't be able to finish the jambalaya. I could only hope to make a dent in it. While the jambalaya looked scrumptious with large chunks of sliced andouille sausage and small shrimp in a very thick rich tomato-base broth with rice, the smell was something else. Even though they put what seemed to be a bushel of fresh chopped green onions on top of the jambalaya, I could easily smell the fishy-ness from the shrimp. The first bite of one of the shrimp on top of the jambalaya was very fishy in taste. The shrimp they used had to be old and I was sort of contemplating sending it back. I had another shrimp that wasn't as fishy in taste - probably because it couldn't get any worse than the first shrimp I had - and decided to keep eating. I joked to a friend later on that they probably got the shrimp out of the nearby Raccoon River.
When Alicia came back to check on me and asked me how the jambalaya was, I said, "All right." I lied. Big time. The bottom line - the jambalaya wasn't very good. I wasn't overly enamored with the gumbo, but the jambalaya was worse. But Alicia was so nice and helpful that I didn't want to say anything to her. So that's why I have a blog.
I was overly disappointed in their Cajun food at Jethro's Barbecue and Jambalaya. My overall sentiment is that they need to stick to barbecue, which Jethro's does all right, and forget about the Cajun food. This won't stop me from going to one of the Jethro's locations in the future for barbecue. But I think I know Cajun food pretty well and this was not good.
Once again, I'm sorry that I don't have the name of the person who sent me an e-mail last summer telling me that I had to go to Woodyard Barbeque on the Kansas side of Kansas City. I do remember that I was told that it wasn't much to look at as far as atmosphere is concerned, but to overlook all that because the food was pretty good. On one trip to Kansas City just before the end of the year, I had dinner at Woodyard Barbeque on Merriam Lane in Kansas City, KS. (see map) Merriam Lane runs parallel to Interstate 35, just before it meets up with Interstate 635 that takes people from Johnson County in Kansas up to Kansas City International Airport. I used to make that run years and years ago when I worked for a company in southwest suburban Olathe for about five years back in the 80's when I first started to travel for work. I know I had passed Woodyard Barbeque hundreds of times over the years on trips to Kansas City, but it turns out that it has only been open as a full time barbeque house for about 10 years.
It was a cold night when I drove down Merriam Lane past warehouses, industrial businesses and other non-descript commercial buildings. Set back from a street a bit is the old farm house that serves as the nerve center for Woodyard Barbeque. I drove past the place and then doubled back and pulled into the parking lot in front of the place. There was a faint smell of smoky wood in the air and it was coming from the large brick smoker located in front of the house. It was the smoke remnants of the meat that was cooked earlier in the day.
There is an outside patio - actually a couple of them that I saw. There's one that attached to the front of the house and another one across the lane from the house to the west. The patios feature picnic tables and antique-looking metal tables and chairs. It was very rustic in its appearance. Since it was cold, of course, no one was seated outside. But I was told that in the summertime, especially on the weekends, the patios can get packed.
The inside of the main building for Woodyard Barbeque featured a small dining room next to the counter where you order your food. A couple guys were in there enjoying their barbeque at the old farm-style wooden tables. A large picture of Guy Fieri, host of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network. I went up to the counter and a guy greeted me. I said, "Guy's been here?"
He said, "Oh, yeah. He did a piece on us a couple years ago." I found the video for Woodyard Barbeque from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on You Tube:
Even though there was a big board with all the food they do at Woodyard Barbeque, the guy at the counter asked if I needed a menu. I did and he pointed out some basic printed menus in a bin on the wall next to the counter. He asked, "First time here?"
I told him it was and that I had been told about this place by someone. I said, "This place looks pretty interesting and it smells pretty good, so far."
He told me that Woodyard Barbeque had been at this location for over 60 years, and they'd been doing barbeque for about 30 years. And just within the past 10 years that they started to sell barbeque full time.
The genesis of Woodyard Barbeque began back in 1913 when Frank Schloegel (pronounced SCHLAY-gul) opened the Southside Coal Company near the Westport area of Kansas City where he and his son, Frank, Jr., sold heating coal to customers around Kansas City. Once fuel oil took over for coal heating, Frank, Jr. moved the business to the current location in the 50's and changed the name to Southside Patio and Wood. He sold wood for customers that still needed wood for heat, but he also sold patio bricks, lawn ornaments, sand and other things that people would ask for.
With the advent of the barbeque craze in Kansas City, Frank, Jr. began to provide other barbecue joints in the area the apple, pecan, cherry, hickory or oak wood they used to cook their barbeque. During the weekends, Frank, Jr. would fire up his grill and cook free food for his customers over the wood that he supplied to other barbeque vendors.
His son, Frank III, took over the business and continued the practice of smoking meats on the weekend. But he took it a step farther as he began to smoke meats for charity fundraisers and church groups. Because his smoked meat was so good, Frank III was pressured into opening a restaurant that served barbeque. Initially, it was only opened on weekends, but about 10 years ago, Frank Schloegel IV - yep, the fourth generation son, decided to open through the week (they're closed on Sundays).
It became a family thing for the Schloegels - Frank IV's sisters helped lay bricks in the patio out front. His cousin helped with the design of the large brick smoker and his brother-in-law helped him build it. Today, Frank IV's cousin Mark O'Bryan is the pitmaster, smoking the meats on a nearly daily basis. And former manager Joe Daly is now a co-owner of the place along with Frank Schloegel IV.
I'm not certain, but it may have very well been Joe Daly at the counter that particular visit. He was showing me pictures of Frank Schloegel III who still comes in from time to time to talk barbeque with the steady customers they get in the summertime. "Wintertime, we're a little more slow at night," he told me. "But we still have a pretty good lunch crowd. And we do a bunch of Christmas-time catering. We can do groups as small as 10 or as large as 10,000."
I looked through the menu, trying to find some sort of a sampler platter. They had the usual ribs, brisket, pulled pork, chicken, turkey, ham, and sausage on the menu. They had a combo that had two ribs, a chicken leg, sausage and brisket. I'm not big on smoked chicken and I would have rather had pulled pork than sausage. Just under that, they had a four meat combo platter. I took the pulled pork, ham and double brisket. "You don't want any burnt ends," he asked me.
"Naw," I replied. "I know a lot of people think of burnt ends as a delicacy, but I've never warmed up to 'em."
He said, "We have a burnt end chili that is to die for." I told him that I thought I had enough food for that particular visit. But at the last moment, I asked if I could get a couple baby-back rib samples - they sold them for $1.75 each. He asked me what side I wanted and I took their baked beans over cheesy corn, potato salad or cole slaw. I grabbed a couple beers to take to my table while I waited for the food to show up.
The guy brought out the meet platter and the ribs about five minutes after I ordered them. Man, this was a lot of food for $13.50! He told me that the barbecue sauce was over by the door. They had two different types of homemade sauces - an original that was a sweet Kansas City style, and a hot that had a sweet and peppery taste. The guy seated at the table near the sauce dispensers said to me, "The hot isn't all that hot." He was right - it had a little spiciness to it, but it wasn't overpowering in heat.
I dug in and grabbed a rib first. Big and thick with succulent pork, the ribs are dry rubbed with a homemade concoction that includes garlic, cayenne, sea salt, lemon pepper and three spices that you don't normally associate with barbeque - ground cloves, ground cardamom and ground tumeric, three spices you'd usually find in Indian food. The meat was moist, tender and pulled effortlessly off the bone.One thing they don't do at Woodyard Barbeque is pull the skin off the back of the ribs like other places will. It helps keep the moisture in and it's easy to peel off during the eating process. (I'm gonna have to try that the next time I do ribs. I have a good friend who taught me to take the skin off. It's a pain in the ass to do, but he says that's the way to do it. I may beg to differ after having the ribs at Woodyard Barbeque.) The combination of the faint smoke taste and the rub concoction gave the baby back rib a wonderful taste sensation. It was very good even without any sauce added to it. I made quick work of the two ribs I had.
I dug into the pulled pork next. It may have been some of the best pulled pork that I'd ever had. It was moist, flavorful and had a hint of smoke. With a little bit of the homemade hot sauce, it was fabulous. I immediately wished I would have gotten a double portion of the pulled pork instead of the brisket.
The brisket was, eh! Actually, it was a little cold as it wasn't heated up enough (I'm sure they smoke a lot of their meat and refrigerate it as a number of barbecue houses do these days). It was OK, but it was far from the best brisket I ever had. I was disappointed in the brisket, to say the least.
The ham was very good, but not anywhere as good as the pulled pork. The ham was thinly sliced, had a great cured smoke flavor to it. I was sort of craving ham that particular day and I'm glad I got it.
The baked beans were good, not outstanding, but good enough. They were good without adding any additional barbeque sauce, as I like to do. But they weren't anything special, even with the sauce.
I got back up to get some more barbecue sauce and by this time another gentleman had joined the guy at the table next to the sauce dispensers. I heard him say, "Man, I love this chili!" I looked over and he had a bowl of Woodyard Barbeque's famous burnt end chili and it did look very good. It had large chunks of pork burnt ends, and was thick and rich. I thought about taking some to go with me and heating it up in the morning in the microwave. But after I finished what I could of my meal, I decided that I'd come back and get pulled pork and a bowl of chili the next time.
So, my scorecard for Woodyard BBQ - Baby back ribs = Excellent. Pulled pork = May have been the best pulled pork I've ever had. Ham = Above average. Brisket = Below average. Sauces = Average. Baked Beans = Average. Ambiance = Interesting. History = Overly interesting.
Woodyard Barbeque is not a fancy place, even for a regular Kansas City-style barbeque joint. If you can get past the fact that it's a little rugged and rustic, the food at Woodyard Barbeque was - overall - very good. I even left with a smoky wood smell on my clothes. The ribs and pulled pork more than made up for the short fall in the quality of the brisket. Next time, I'm going for more pulled pork and a bowl of chili.
Late last year, I put on a new Focal dealer in a small town near Springfield, IL. I was at the store doing training one evening and was going to take the group out for dinner afterward. However, the owner went home sick and the rest of the staff either had family obligations, other plans or, in one guy's case, had to go work at a second job. I went back to Springfield and settled into my hotel, sort of cold and hungry. I decided to go out and scope what was in the general area for food establishments and I happened upon a Smokey Bones barbecue place just down the road on Dirksen Parkway from where I was staying. (See map).
Smokey Bones is a somewhat regional chain of nearly 70 restaurants located in 17 states - primarily in the Southeast. Based out of Orlando, the original Smokey Bones restaurant was opened in 1999 by the Darden Restaurant Group, the same corporation that owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden (two restaurants that I'll never go in), but they also own the upscale Capital Grille steakhouse chains and the very good and not so upscale LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants (both of which I'll happily eat at). The original concept of a Smokey Bones restaurant was to have barbecue served in a somewhat Northwoods lodge appearing structure, complete with pine paneling and high ceilings, with stone-hearth fire places. It was somewhat out of character for a place like that to get its start in Orlando, but with Darden's money behind the restaurant they began to grow and branch out with franchises across Florida and the Southeast.
In 2007, Darden sold their interest in Smokey Bones to Barbecue Integrated, an off-shoot of the huge Sun Capital Partners investment company based out of Boca Raton, FL. Many of the Smokey Bones locations have been upgraded in their look and feel, getting away from the rustic, mountain lodge theme and going to a more contemporary decor.
The one in Springfield still had the mountain lodge motif going for it. The main dining room featured booths with wood backs with similar wood paneling on the walls. It as well lit and it seemed comfortable enough.
I took a seat at the bar and waited for the bartender to acknowledge me. She was the only one behind the bar and most of the people eating at Smokey Bones that evening (after 8 p.m.) were seated at the bar. There were two ladies to my right - a mother who worked as a waitress at Smokey Bones, and her 20-something daughter who was there to pick her up, but was also getting something to eat. How did I know all this? They were loud in their conversation and their banter back and forth was so rapid fire that I thought I'd walked into a Gilmore Girls episode.
The bartender stood there and conversed with the lady and her daughter for about a couple three minutes, completely overlooking the fact that I was seated two spots away with neither a menu or a beer - two things I wanted and wanted right friggin' now! When she finally came over, she was all nonchalant and folksy, like I'd just sat down seconds before instead of about five minutes prior. I did get a menu and I did get a beer.
The menu at Smokey Bones is nothing overly special - it was typical of a chain with a number of appetizers, sandwiches and burgers, chicken entrees, pasta and seafood, and, of course, barbecue with steaks and chops. Places like this with large and varied menus scare me because they do so much that they can't do everything really well. They can only usually get the food "good enough".
I was in the mood to try their barbecue that evening and in most cases at barbecue places I've not been to before, I like to do the combination platter. Smokey Bones had a combination where you could choose three meats from a list of brisket, pulled pork, smoked sausage, chicken and turkey that are slow smoked. But you could also choose from chicken fingers, smoked chicken wings, deep fried chicken wings or a grilled chicken breast. I'd never seen those items on a barbecue combination menu before.
I looked briefly at getting one of the rib combos - a 1/3 rack of Smokey Bones baby back or St. Louis-style ribs with your choice of pulled pork, brisket or sliced smoked turkey. I would have rather liked to buy the ribs individually by the bone as some barbecue joints will do. But not at Smokey Bones.
The bartender, busy as she was, came back long before I was ready to order. I found that was a mistake as when I was ready to order, she was too busy to come to me now. I left my empty beer glass toward the bar side of the top and waited for her to show back up. She was getting a number of "to-go" orders for people who had called ahead and were waiting at the bar for the pick-up. When she finally did get back to me, I ordered the three meat combo, but I only wanted brisket and pulled pork. So I did double brisket for two of my meat choices and the pulled pork for the third. She said I got a couple sides to go along with the barbecue, so I took baked beans (always have to try the baked beans) and the cole slaw.
When my meal made it out to me, I was ready to eat. It had been a long day of travel, meetings and trainings. Smokey Bones has four different types of barbecue sauce available - a sweet sauce, a hot sauce that is a little more subdued in sweetness and more tangy than hot, then there was a sauce that was a vinegar and tomato based, and a Carolina mustard sauce. I'm not big on the mustard sauces for barbecue, so I didn't try it. I did try the vinegar sauce and it was just too runny and vinegary for me. I ended up combining the hot sauce and the sweet sauce to try on my barbecue.
The brisket was lean and tasty, but nothing all that special. Actually, it tasted more like a roast beef than a smoked brisket. It was edible, but not the best brisket I've ever had. The pulled pork was similar - nice chunks of pulled pork that had a good flavor to it. I probably should have ordered a double shot of the pulled pork because it was a little bit better than the brisket.
The beans were all right - a little bit of the hot sauce helped zip them up - and the cole slaw was sweet and creamy, actually it wasn't all that bad. For a meal that was close to the hotel, it did all right for me.
Smokey Bones is one of those types of places that you can count on if you're hungry, it's close to your hotel and you don't want to do a lot of research on some of the better local places to try. The food was acceptable to me, but as I said, they try to do so much that they can only do everything just so well. Still, Smokey Bones shouldn't be dismissed as another chain that tries to cater to the masses. The barbecue I had was good in the pinch. At least you hope that the other locations are as consistent as the one in Springfield.
Thanks to one of my dealers in the Kansas City area who mentioned Johnny's Hickory House Bar-B-Que in passing during a conversation we had about barbecue caterers in the area, I had the pleasure of trying the place out on a recent visit to the arguable barbecue capital of the world. It's always great to find new barbecue places in and around Kansas City and I was eager to give Johnny's a try, considering I'd never heard of the place before.
The origins of Johnny's Bar-B-Que begins in 1977 in the southwest Kansas City suburb of Olathe when a young Johnny White opened his first restaurant. He ran it for five years before selling it. He decided to open a new location in a building on Broadmoor Ave. in Shawnee Mission (see map). That location is still going strong today. Johnny's Bar-B-Que also has a location back out in Olathe (see map).
It also turns out that Johnny's Bar-B-Que was featured on the Food Network program, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and host Guy Fieri visited the restaurant in early 2010 as part of his show on Kansas City barbecue restaurants. Here's the segment on Johnny's from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives -
Quite honestly, I didn't know that Fieri was there until I started doing research on Johnny's for Road Tips. Evidently, there is a big signed poster of Fieri and a "wall tag" that Fieri painted on the wall at Johnny's. I completely missed both on my visit there. But, then again, my wife says that I'm not a very observant person.
I programmed in my GPS to take me north to Shawnee Mission - which, in itself, it completely confusing to me as I hear people in K.C. refer to Shawnee, Mission or Shawnee Mission. But there is no reference to Shawnee Mission on my GPS which then made me have it search for Johnny's Bar-B-Que, which it immediately found. It turns out that Shawnee Mission is an area of towns on the Kansas side of the border mainly between Kansas City, KS and Overland Park. Mission is the name of the town that Johnny's is in. Johnny's is a little tough to find in that it's nestled back off Johnson Drive at Metcalf. I have driven by Johnny's Bar-B-Que for years without knowing it was even there. (Once again, back to what my wife says about being observant.)
The parking lot of Johnny's is behind the building off of Broadmoor. It was just past 7 p.m. when I got there and there weren't a lot of cars in the lot. Good, it wasn't packed, so getting a table would be easy. I went into the building and came upon the front counter area where hundreds of bottles of barbecue sauce from around the nation were on display along with some articles on Johnny's from over the years. The lady who was waiting tables told me I could sit anywhere I like and I took a seat in a booth in the corner just inside the dining room.
The dining area is brightly lit with a handful of televisions around the room. A large number of antique barn stars were on the walls. Booths bordered the dining room at Johnny's Bar-B-Que with a handful of four and six seater tables in the middle. The waitress gave me a menu and took my order for a beer.
The menu at Johnny's Bar-B-Que is not unlike many others around the Kansas City area. They feature burnt ends - when they're available. I'm not a big fan of burnt ends, but some people consider them a delicacy. Of course, they have have ribs, barbecued chicken, beef brisket, ham and pulled pork, all smoked in Johnny White's huge self-designed and homemade in-house smoke room. The sides at Johnny's include baked beans, mac and cheese wedges (whatever that is), cole slaw, onion rings and french fries - or you can get "frings" which is a half order of fries and a half order of onion rings.
I always like to get the combinations when I go to a barbecue joint, especially a new one for me. Johnny's offered a two-meat dinner where you had your choice between brisket, pulled pork, ham, sausage, turkey or chicken. But it didn't offer anything like a half or quarter slab of ribs in the combo. I really wanted to try some of the brisket and some of the ribs. Then I looked over and saw that you could "add a rib" to your meal for $2.99. I figured that I'd get the pulled pork and brisket, then get three pork ribs to go along with the meat. I ordered up a side of baked beans and a side of cole slaw.
When the waitress brought the food to the table, I knew I'd made a mistake in regard to the ribs. The pork ribs were huge! Plus the fact that the portions of the brisket and the pulled pork were generous, as well. Then, the sides were in pretty good sized serving cups, plus there were fries AND white bread slices served with the meal. The picture of the pork rib (above right) is after I'd taken a couple bites off the end of it. They were big, meaty, slathered with sauce and very good.
The brisket was lean, sliced thin and also very good. The pulled pork was OK - above average - but not as good as the ribs or brisket. The cole slaw, huh uh. I had a bite and it was pretty bland. Same with the fries. Nothing special there. The baked beans were very good, however. And even though they didn't really need it, I still added some barbecue sauce to them. I guess Johnny's has a couple three barbecue sauces, but only one was made available to me at the table. But that's OK - I was more than stuffed by the time I figured I could have asked for different sauces.
Overall, I'd have to say Johnny's Bar-B-Que was very good - a pleasant surprise to say the least. That was a lot of food for about $21 bucks plus a couple three beers. Next time I'll know not to order three ribs, but maybe only one. Still, there are dozens of barbecue places in the Kansas City area and I know I've only scraped the surface of the ones that are around. I found a couple others that were featured in the "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" show that I'll have to try on future visits. Hopefully, they will all be as good as Johnny's Bar-B-Que is.
Right off the bat, I have to put a disclaimer on this post. The owner of Creekside Bar and Grill - Randy Adams - is a nearly lifelong friend. We've known each other for almost 40 years. And I've already written about the Creekside Bar and Grill here and here. It is one of the biggest good food secrets in the Quad Cities. They have great burgers, an outrageously great 10 oz. foot long hot dog and great chili. And now they are doing pork ribs. Good ribs. No, great ribs. I'm almost afraid to let the secret out because I'm afraid that they'll be overrun with people wanting their pork ribs.
But let me tell you the story anyway...
Randy Adams and Randy Brekke met while in an apprenticeship program at the Rock Island Arsenal nearly 20 years ago. They stayed close friends as Randy B. moved to Florida for about 10 years and then came back about four years ago to go back to work at the Arsenal. In the meantime, Randy A. had opened Creekside Bar and Grill and eventually took it over from his ex-wife a couple years after their divorce. Enter Lorrie Brekke, Randy B's oldest child. She and Randy hooked up after Randy B. moved back and they eventually got married last year. So for the sake of painting the picture, Randy B. is Randy A's father-in-law.
Randy B. is also what I would call an accomplished barbecue enthusiast. I've learned a few things from Randy B. over the years and have incorporated it into my barbecue world. A little over a year ago, Randy B. got to thinking that he could take an old conventional kitchen oven and turn it into a smoker. He could put the rack of ribs in the oven like you would with any other food, but use the bottom drawer that usually is used to store pans and such as the smoking chamber. He put it up on cinder blocks in his back yard and it worked great. He could get about 8 to 10 racks of ribs in the oven, the smoke would permeate the oven through the internal vents, and he could get a nice even temperature around the ribs. He'd cook the ribs for 4 hours, then take them inside to his real oven in the kitchen and cook them for another 4 hours. It worked slick and the ribs were delicious. He called it his "Redneck Smoker".
Randy B. began to provide Creekside Bar and Grill with his ribs and the initial reaction among the few who tried them was overly positive. He also made a wonderful homemade barbecue sauce that I have to say is one of the best homemade barbecue sauces I've ever had. It has a sweet and smoky flavor to it with just a small bite of spicy flavor at the end. I like it on French fries when I have them as a side at Creekside.
Randy also has his own homemade rub that he uses on the ribs. He cooks his ribs dry - something that I like to do with my barbecue, rather than slather the meat in sauce which will burn and detract from the taste of the meat. I've been trying to get him to give me the recipe for both his rub and the barbecue sauce, but that's a closely guarded secret.
As demand grew for Randy B's pork ribs, he had to figure out how to make a bigger smoker, one that he could use behind Creekside or take to other places if they asked for Creekside barbecue catering. A lady who frequents Creekside told Randy that she had a line on an old fuel oil storage tank - something that Randy B. was looking for when he started to draw out his design for a smoker. With the help of a welder in Bettendorf, Randy B. transformed this fuel tank into a portable smoker, complete with a trailer and hitch. They were able to fashion some racks attached to a rod that went to an electric motor that acted like a Ferris wheel inside, turning the racks of ribs to even out the heat and smoke while cooking. He also got an old top from a gas grill to act as the smoke box that he put off to the side and used a fan to push the smoke into the cooking chamber.
On paper, it was rather ingenious on Randy B's part. But in real life, he had some problems from the start. The fan melted because it got too hot near the wood box. The motor to run the racks was too small. The rod they used to attach the racks turned out that it was also too small and needed to be larger in diameter. There was heating problems and a handful of other things that he had to sort out before he could really get into smoking ribs and other meat in his smoker. Being a resourceful guy, Randy B. got things sorted out and the smoker is up and running on a regular basis just off the beer garden at Creekside. In addition to ribs, Randy B. can take out the racks and use a spit for doing a pig in the smoker. He's done that a couple times. He can also put a wire rack on top and be able to smoke pork butts or brisket if he wants.
Randy B. (pictured above right) cooks the ribs for about 4 hours at 350 degrees, then transfers them to a table top steam cooker in the kitchen at Creekside for another 4 hours. After the ribs are cooked, they put them in the refrigerator and then re-heat them when ordered. More and more rib joints are doing this - Cactus Bob's in Des Moines is one - and I'm beginning to believe this is a great way to do barbecue because the taste of the rub and the smoke flavor gets all through the meat and it's just wonderful. Some barbecue purists say that's cheating, but after having some good barbecue at both Creekside and at Cactus Bob's, I'm starting to think that it may be the way to go.
I went into Creekside a while back just to try some of the ribs from the new smoker. You can order the ribs either in 1/4 slab, 1/2 slab (Randy B. cooks 'em half slab as shown above) and full slabs. Hand-cut French fries come with the ribs. Oh, and Randy B's homemade barbecue sauce. I can't forget about that great stuff.
I ordered a 1/4 slab of ribs. I asked for some extra Randy B's barbecue sauce so I can dip my fries in it, as well. After a bit, Stephen brought me out a platter of ribs and hand-cut fries. I'm sure that he threw a couple extra bones on there for good measure just because I eat there a lot. The ribs were meaty, juicy and literally falling off the bone. There was a nice smoke ring deep into the meat and the overall taste was just wonderful.
In order to get fall off the bone ribs, you can do it two ways - the correct way of cooking the meat low and slow, or the wrong way of parboiling the meat before you stick it on a grill. There are two rather well-known places in the Quad Cities who are famous for their ribs who will parboil the meat before they cook it on a grill, then they slather the meat with a sweet sauce to try and bring back the taste of the meat that they cook out in the boiling process. Randy B's ribs were the former - he cooks his at a little higher temperature than I would cook the ribs, but these were far from dried out or overdone. They were damn fine ribs.
Randy and Lorrie Adams are always looking for ways to improve on the food at Creekside Bar and Grill. Between the great burgers and now the great barbecue, Creekside Bar continues to be one of the best kept secret for food in the Quad Cities. The ribs are just fantastic and for a homemade barbecue sauce, I've not had one that is finer. But please don't tell anyone because I don't want the place to be overrun with people who will buy all the ribs up before I can get more. Let's just keep it our little secret.
A couple people had contacted me about a place called Cactus Bob's BBQ Corral in the Des Moines suburb of Johnston. It's located just a mile north of Interstate 80 on Merle Hay Road (see map) in a strip mall on the east side of the street. When I was in Des Moines recently, I met one of my dealers for lunch there.
There actually is a "Cactus Bob" - Robert Prince is a former sheet metal worker and a self-trained gourmet cook. Over 15 years ago he became friends with Craig DeDecker, a certified chef with over 20 years of experience in food service. The two had a love for homemade foods and especially barbecue. They began to make their own homemade beef jerky and hot pickles, and for a time they sold them at the Des Moines Farmers Market.
In 2002, Prince and DeDecker entered - and won - their very first barbecue championship. Entering more barbecue contests over the next couple of years, the two worked on different rub concoctions, fine tuned their barbecue sauces and came up with a variety of sides to go along with their meats. After winning first place for smoked pork butt and brisket, and a second place in ribs in a barbecue cook-off in 2004, Prince and DeDecker decided to open their own barbecue place the next year. I had heard about Cactus Bob's, but had never really taken them seriously until I began to look for barbecue places in the very underrated barbecue community in greater Des Moines.
Now, allow me to digress to tell you a story to set up my next story about Cactus Bob's...
Years ago, there used to be a barbecue place in Des Moines called Big Daddy's Barbecue. Located on the east side near East High School, Big Daddy's became notorious for the different levels of hot barbecue sauces they had to offer. When I first had Big Daddy's, they had a mild, a mild/hot and a hot. Then they started to name them. This was back in the late 80's and they named them after movies or movie quotes. They had a sauce called "Make My Day" after the Clint Eastwood "Dirty Harry" movies, they also had "Death Wish I" and "Death Wish II" after the old Charles Bronson movies. The hottest of what I believe were six levels was simply named, "Oh My God!" The names of the sauces changed over the years, but these were the ones I remember as they were named.
Big Daddy's had a challenge where a person had to finish a sandwich of either pulled pork or brisket with the hottest level of sauce on the sandwich in either 10 or 15 minutes, I can't remember. It's not an urban legend to say that more than one person went to the Emergency Room after trying to down one of Big Daddy's hot sandwiches. One guy reportedly threw up in the parking lot after taking - and winning - the challenge. Unfortunately, it was right in front of a lady picking up ribs to go at the drive thru window. She quickly canceled her order.
Big Daddy's went out of business a couple three years ago for good after going through some tough times over the previous few years. I had their mild/hot sauce one time and it was pretty zippy. I had a friend who is a longtime rep in the audio business who had the hot sauce on a sandwich one time and he said he regretted it later that evening as he was sitting on the toilet. He said, "I can handle hot food, but that was almost too much for me. I can't even imagine how hot some of those named sauces could be!"
It turns out that Cactus Bob's has similar levels of hot sauce to choose from, if you want. They feature seven different sauces with the hottest - Black Bart's Desert Death - made from an Asian pepper that is said to be 400 times more hot than a habanero pepper and a 1000 times hotter than a jalapeno. In fact, Cactus Bob's also has a similar challenge to those who think they can handle the hot sauce - the Cactus Bob's Showdown Challenge. For a six dollar entry fee and a signed waiverclearing Cactus Bob's from any legal ramifications or medical bills that may result in the person taking the challenge, a person has 10 minutes to down either a pork or brisket sandwich while not taking a drink of any liquid. I like to eat, but I don't like to hurt myself either during or after I eat, though.
There appears to be many winners of the challenge in the past. The picture above right shows a wall covered with former winners of what was called the "Old Rule" challenge. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing Cactus Bob's "Showdown" sauce is probably hotter than the former sauce they used for the challenge.
It was a hot summer afternoon just after one when I met up with my dealer at Cactus Bob's. I had just driven in from Minneapolis and was hungry and could use a beer. The menu at Cactus Bob's is up on the wall above the counter in the very well lit main dining area. Not knowing what to get on my first visit, I was thinking of getting a sampler platter of brisket and pork. But they don't offer that at Cactus Bob's. The closest thing they have on the menu is a pork rib tips and your choice of smoked pork butt or brisket with two sides.
They feature two different styles of pork ribs at Cactus Bob's - baby backs and St. Louis-style (which, I've been told, are basically baby back ribs with less of the fat cut off the rack). They also have smoked chicken, turkey and link sausage. In fact, Cactus Bob's will smoke whole turkeys, prime ribs and whole bone-in hams for you for a fee. That's done through their Smokehouse menu. Cactus Bob's also features a full catering menu for parties, corporate events and other gatherings.
I finally decided to try one of Cactus Bob's sandwiches - the Chuckwagon - as it had the smoked pork, brisket and turkey on it. It was served on a toasted bun and I had a choice of two sides. I took the baked beans and a small bowl of Cactus Bob's Texas chili, complete with large chunks of beef brisket chunks. My dealer got a sandwich of well, I believe it was the Longhorn, which was the beef brisket sandwich. Cactus Bob's also threw in a couple of their hot "prickly pickle" spears to go along with the meal.
Cactus Bob's dry smokes their meat with their own rub spice recipe. They've adopted the "cook earlier, refrigerate, reheat upon ordering" technique that is becoming the norm for many barbecue places. This is common practice for a number of barbecue joints who can smoke the meat in advance and then reheat it after a few hours in the fridge. A few barbecue snobs think this is cheating (sort of like how I think parboiling ribs to make them "fall off the bone" tender robs the taste of the meat and you have to rely upon the sauce), but I'm of the school of thought that it actually helps enhance the taste of the smoke and rub spices with the meat when they're put in a cold environment for a few hours.
We got our sandwiches and sides and found a place to sit in the long narrow dining area just off the main dining room. Before I bit into the sandwich took little bites of both the brisket and the sliced pork on their own. The brisket was a tad overcooked, but still flavorful. The pork was juicy and flavorful and had a great taste to it. And even though I'm not big on turkey, it tasted very well with the pork and brisket.
In addition to the seven hot barbecue sauces that Cactus Bob's has, they feature three on the table - their original "sweet and spicy" sauce that I have to say is very, very good; the "sweet and smoky" sauce that is similar to the original Cactus Bob's sauce, only with a little more smoke flavoring to it; and their "Revenge" sauce that kicks the original up a bit with some hot peppers added to the mix. I tried the "Revenge" sauce and it was hot, but not anything that I couldn't handle. Actually, I liked to mix a little of the "Revenge" sauce the original Cactus Bob's sauce to give it even more of a zippy taste on the sandwich.
The two sides were just outstanding. The chili was top-notch with a great seasoned blend of spices, beans and large chunks of brisket. And the beans weren't too far behind. I probably didn't have to add any of the Cactus Bob's original and "Revenge" sauce to the beans as they were excellent on their own, but I did anyhow and they were even better.
I was very impressed with the barbecue at Cactus Bob's, so much so that I really need to come back and try a half rack of baby back ribs at some point. The meats were good (although the pork seemed to be better than the brisket), I really liked the table sauces and was too much of a wimp to even try the first level of hot sauce, and the beans and chili were some of the best I've ever had at a barbecue joint. Des Moines has a number of very good barbecue joints and Cactus Bob's has to be near or at the top. I can't wait to get back for some ribs at some point.
When I found out that I was going to Nashville for the 2011 Summer NAMM show, my colleague Ian told me, "The first meal we have to go to is Neely's for barbecue." Well, that was certainly fine with me. Ian picked me up at the airport and we immediately went to Neely's, just north of the downtown Nashville area just off of Rosa Parks Blvd. (see map).
Neely's is a Memphis-based family-owned barbecue restaurant. After their father died, the five Neely brothers and their sister learned the art of slow-cooking barbecue from their uncle, Jim Neely, who ran his own barbecue joint in Memphis - Interstate Barbecue. After getting a $20,000 loan from their grandmother, four of the Neely brothers - Gaelin, Tony, Mark and Pat (below left) -opened their first restaurant in downtown Memphis in 1988. It was a small place with folding chairs and tables and only one barbecue pit. Through hard work and mostly word of mouth advertising, their business grew by leaps and bounds. In 1992, they opened a second location on the east side of Memphis that helped grow their business even more. In 2001, the Neely's expanded to the Nashville location and immediately became a favorite with the locals in Music City.
In the early 90's, Pat's fiancee, Gina, joined the brothers in the business. Pat and Gina (above right) were sweethearts in high school, but both married other people after they got out of school. However, both divorced their original spouses and hooked up again after running into each other at their 10 year high school reunion. Pat and Gina were married in the 1994 and are now the stars of the highly popular Food Network program, "Down Home with the Neely's." Earlier this year, Pat and Gina Neely partnered with New York City restaurateur Abraham Merchant - whose company, Merchant's Hospitality, oversees nine New York area restaurants - to open Neely's Barbecue Parlor on the upper east side of Manhattan. Compared to the other Neely restaurants, the New York City location is much more upscale and teeters on the edge of fine dining.
I was expecting to find something of a rib joint shack when Ian drove us to Neely's in Nashville. But I was sort of surprised to find a somewhat modern looking building in the midst of an office park called Waterfront Plaza. It's sort of tucked in a bit and you have to turn off of Rosa Parks Blvd. into a spacious parking lot and it's located right on the water of North Rhodes lake. There's a deck off the back of the restaurant that has a great view of the little lake. Part of the deck is covered for outdoor dining, but it was pretty hot and humid that evening so no one was seated outside. Inside, it looks like any typical barbecue place - heavy on the wood floors and paneling, many lighted beer signs, checkered plastic tablecloths. There were pictures of Pat and Gina Neely with nearly every other Food Network show host who has visited their restaurants.
The menu at Neely's in Nashville is on the wall behind the cash register. You order first, get a number, then sit down at one of the tables. The waitresses will bring your food out to you. Being that it was my first visit to Neely's, I really didn't know what I wanted. They had barbecue sandwiches, Memphis-style ribs, rib tips, smoked turkey, Texas-chunk style brisket and pulled pork. They even have Barbecued Spaghetti - a combination of a marinara and barbecue sauce on top of spaghetti pasta and pulled pork. Ian immediately signed up for his favorite - beef ribs. He got a side of cole slaw and fries with his dinner.
I was sort of stuck between the pulled pork and the brisket, then I saw the sampler platter - brisket, smoked turkey, pulled pork, or pork ribs with two sides and bread. I ordered the sampler, along with a side of baked beans and macaroni and cheese. The lady behind the cash register said, "I hope you're hungry. That's a lot of food. Usually, two people will get that and split it." I figured that I could probably put a good sized dent into it, but wouldn't be able to eat it all.
The cooking line at Neely's is right out in the open. One of the cooks hollered at me, "This your first time at Neely's?" I told him it was for me, but my colleague had been there a few times before. "Get ready to get a taste delight," he hollered back.
We sat at a table in the middle of the dining area, but near the front counter. Being that we're both in the audio/video industry, Ian and I immediately noticed that the televisions Neely's were using were old tube style TV's with one rather large rear projection television up on a high shelf. The picture quality on all the televisions was pretty bad. Ian said, "I don't think people come here to watch television."
It was at that point in time that my wife called from back home to inform me that our air conditioner had gone out. We knew we were riding on borrowed time with both our furnace (over 25 years old) and A/C (over 20 years old) and the blower motor died on the furnace. It was 82 degrees in the house and rising. The A/C at our house had been working almost non-stop for quite sometime trying to keep up with a stretch of hot weather, including three days in a row where the overnight temperature didn't get any cooler than 78 degrees with humidity percentages in the upper 80's to lower 90's at night. I told her to shut the A/C off as it was beginning to frost up outside the house and see if she could get hold of any repair people to come over to take a look at the blower. She was stressing and I was feeling overly guilty that I was getting ready to have barbecue in Nashville while she was simmering in 100 degree heat back home.
It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time before our food finally made it to the table. Maybe I was focused on worrying about what was happening back in Iowa, but it was about 20 minutes from the time we ordered until the food showed up. And the girl behind the counter was right - my combination dinner WAS a lot of food (below left.) It was a generous helping of beef brisket, pulled pork, pork ribs and the pulled smoked turkey. All but the ribs had a sauce on the top, the ribs were cooked with Neely's own Memphis-style rub on them. They didn't bring any extra sauce so I went up and got a couple small 2 oz. tubs - one mild and the other hot. Quite honestly, they didn't add much to the taste of the meat and were a little weak.
The ribs, to me, were a little dry. Oh, they pulled off the bone fine and dandy, but I found them to be a little chewy. I concentrated on the pulled pork and brisket more, though. The pulled pork was juicy and tender, and had a very good flavor to it. The brisket wasn't the best I'd ever had, and I wasn't sure I liked it served in chunks rather than cut into slices like I normally have. The outside of the brisket chunks were tough to chew, but inside the meat was more tender. It tasted good, but not great. And the smoked turkey, I think I had one bite of that and it was OK. I'm not big on turkey or chicken that is smoked, then pulled apart.
The two sides were also plentiful (above right). The mac and cheese had a little bit of paprika mixed in with it and it helped zip up the taste a bit. But the baked beans were worth the price of admission. Many times, I have to add barbecue sauce to baked beans I have at other barbecue places, but Neely's baked beans were just great as they were. They featured large chunks of beef in with the beans and it had a thick and deep smoky taste to each bite I had. The beans at Neely's were simply outstanding.
Ian's beef ribs were meaty, juicy and plentiful (pictured left). He, too, knew that there would be no way he would be able to finish his whole meal, but he made a gallant effort in doing so. His cole slaw, he said, we pretty good. But the French fries were just basic fries and nothing that was extraordinary.
I think I left a little bit of everything on my plate before I finally decided that I'd had enough. Dents were made in each of the meats, save the turkey. I'm not a big fan of dry ribs and even with the mediocre sauce that Neely's provide, it didn't help the dryness of the meat. But the brisket was above average and the pulled pork was the best of all the meats I tried. The mac and cheese was good, but the beans were, well, like I said, outstanding. They were some of the best baked beans I've ever had in a barbecue restaurant.
Overall, I'd have to say that Neely's was good, but not worth the hype I've heard about the place. It was a little expensive - $45 bucks for our two dinners and three beers. My sampler platter alone was $22.95 and I was able to eat a little more than half of the food I was served. I was completely stuffed as we went out on the deck to watch the school of catfish swim around the turtles treading water just under the deck railing. Ian said that he'd had better meals at Neely's in the past, so it may have been an off night. One of these days, I want to go back to Memphis for a long weekend and check out the Neely's there. Maybe I'll get a better impression of the place.
As I noted in my earlier post on Smokey D's in Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa is quickly garnering a lot of attention from barbecue enthusiasts for the quality of barbecue places that have sprung up in the area over the past few years. While I can't quite put Des Moines in the same category as Kansas City, St. Louis or Memphis in regard to renown barbecue joints, my quest to find good barbecue places the city continued with a visit to Jethro's Barbecue, just west of Drake University on Forest Ave. (see map).
Jethro's is the brain child of Des Moines real estate developer Bruce Gerleman. Gerleman bought the old Pizza Hut building along Forest Ave. in 2007, and in the Spring of 2008 he opened the doors to Jethro's, named after the dim-bulb character, Jethro Bodine, in Gerleman's favorite television show, The Beverly Hillbillies. On Jethro's web site, Gerleman even came up with a story that took up after the Beverly Hillbillies were canceled in the early 70's. In that story, Jethro had grown tired of Beverly Hills and moved back east. He ended up in Des Moines, bought a 750 lb. smoker and opened his little barbecue place near Drake. Some of the original sandwiches he had to offer on the menu were named after other characters of the television program such as the Elly May, the Jed and the Mr. Drysdale.
Of course, it wasn't much more than six months after Gerleman opened Jethro's that he got a "cease and desist" letter from CBS Television, who still owned rights to the Beverly Hillbillies shows. To appease the CBS lawyers, he dropped the character names from the sandwiches, but kept the Jethro's name, complete with the strapping character in a plaid shirt, jeans with a rope belt, suspenders and boots. That didn't satisfy CBS enough, who continued to go after Gerleman by saying that using the hillbilly character in his logo was still infringing on their intellectual property.
Gerleman maintained that hillbilly character in the logo was a composite of 20 different characters conjured up by an artist he hired. While I couldn't find anywhere that the conflict had been resolved, the character in the logo now has a solid red shirt, but sans the rope belt that helped hold up the tattered jeans along with a pair of suspenders. Jethro's is still going strong, so I'm guessing CBS thought they were wasting a lot of time and money chasing after a restaurant that was somehow ripping off the Beverly Hillbillies nearly 40 years after the last show was aired on CBS - and before it went into perpetual reruns around the world, garnering CBS untold riches from a cheap form of entertainment.
Last fall, Gerleman, who also owns Splash Seafood restaurant in downtown Des Moines, opened a second Jethro's location - this one called Jethro 'n Jake's Smokehouse Steaks - in suburban Altoona near Prairie Meadows and Adventureland. According the "back story" on Jethro's web site, the Jake in the name is Jethro's bulldog (the mascot for Drake University is a bulldog). While Jethro 'n Jake's has the same barbecue menu as Jethro's original location, they also feature steaks and prime rib.
The Des Moines location for Jethro's is a laid back, quasi-sports bar that features a number of flat screen televisions throughout the restaurant. Lighted signs and memorabilia hang above the exposed wooden rafters, while many of the walls are adorned with Drake athletic pictures and posters paying homage to former stand out athletes and teams over the years.
Jethro's features a nice little outside patio eating area out behind the place which also had a couple flat screens to allow patrons to watch television while they eat or enjoy a cold drink. Both Jethro's locations feature 12 DirecTV satellite receivers so if there's a sporting event on, at least one television will be turned to it. Jethro's is a destination for fans who want to catch their favorite National Football League team.
It was mid-afternoon when I made it into Jethro's on my way to Omaha. I took a seat at the bar and looked over a menu. A television crew was just packing up when I was there and it turned out they were interviewing the manager about an ESPN contest Jethro's was participating in regarding their signature sandwich, the Adam Emmenecker. They throw a little bit of everything on the Adam Emmenecker, named after the former Drake basketball player who led the Bulldogs to the Missouri Valley championship three years ago. The sandwich, which weighs 5 pounds, features an Angus steak burger, a giant pork tenderloin, and Jethro's Texas-style brisket. And that's just the start. They then add spicy chicken tenders, fried cheese, bacon, MORE cheese and top it off with a toasted bun and a pickle spear. People voted on ESPN's web site for the best "Fanwich", a sandwich named after an athlete. (The Emmenecker got second, beaten out by a sandwich that was named after San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain at Ike's Place in San Francisco.)
Jethro's has a challenge for those who can eat a whole Adam Emmenecker sandwich in an allotted time. For a $25 dollar price, a number of people have tried to finish the Adam Emmenecker in less than 15 minutes, including The Travel Channel's"Man Vs. Food's"Adam Richman who visited Jethro's last year for the challenge. Here's a You Tube video of Richman trying to tackle the Adam Emmenecker -
Quite honestly, I didn't even know there was a "Man Vs. Food" episode on Jethro's, let alone one that featured the greater Des Moines area, until I visited Jethro's that particular day. While Richman wasn't able to finish the behemoth sandwich in under 15 minutes, a handful of people have. Just inside the front door of Jethro's is the "Hall of Fame" - pictures of the seven people (that was the total up to my visit) who have finished the Adam Emmenecker sandwich during the 15 minute time limit. (At the time of the taping of Richman's segment at Jethro's, only two people had been able to finish the sandwich. Nearly a year later, five more people had triumphed.)
Not to take anything away from those who failed to finish the Adam Emmenecker, Jethro's pays homage to those who tried with a "Hall of Shame" featuring hundreds of pictures of those who weren't up for the challenge.
Me? I wouldn't even begin to try it. Oh, maybe 30 years ago when I was younger and more stupid than I am today. It just doesn't sound appealing to me to eat a burger, some brisket, a 10 oz. deep-fried pork tenderloin, chicken tenders and all that cheese on a sandwich.
The bar at Jethro's continues the "shack" theme with what appears go be a tin culvert drainage tile that goes from floor to ceiling which also serves as the spigot holder for a number of Jethro's fine selection of draft beers. Flat screen televisions covered three sides of the culvert tile fixture.
It wasn't busy in the least when I was in Jethro's that afternoon. Knowing that this would probably be lunch and dinner for me, I decided to get a two meat combination dinner that came with two sides of my choosing. I had my choice between brisket, sliced smoked turkey, pulled chicken, smoked ham, pulled pork and smoked sausage. Brisket and pulled pork are my favorites, so I went with that combination.
For my sides, I had to get baked beans, but I was sort of torn between Jethro's hot coleslaw (I really wanted to try that, but chickened out), jalapeno creamed corn (also was going to pull the trigger on that, but didn't at the last minute), and the mac and cheese. I wussed out and got the mac and cheese.
Not long after I ordered and just in time for me to order a second beer, my barbecue platter showed up in front of me. The pulled pork was moist and had a nice smokey flavor on its own. The brisket was cut thick and was also very juicy and favorable. The baked beans - it looked like they used three or four different types of beans in the concoction - was pedestrian at best, even when I tried to kick it up a notch with one Jethro's barbecue sauces. And the mac and cheese was overly disappointing. One bite told me that it was bland and boring. In hindsight, I really wish I would have gotten the hot coleslaw.
Jethro's features five different types of barbecue sauces - their "secret" sauce that is thick and sweet, a Carolina sauce that is thin and vinegary, a Georgia mustard-based sauce that I didn't care for, and a hot barbecue sauce that featured seven different types of peppers in the mix. It was zippy, but not overpowering. (The fifth sauce - an Alabama white cream sauce - didn't look appealing to me.) Mixing some of the Jethro's Secret sauce with the hot sauce made for a nice combination to go along with the meat and the beans.
Overall, the barbecue at Jethro's was good, above average good. The meats were tasty and moist, but the sides were a little less than desirable. The combination of the two sweet and hot sauces was a great compliment to the meat giving it a nice "zippy" taste quality. Jethro's has become a favorite of many people around Des Moines and in their first year of business they garnered the "Best Barbecue in Des Moines" by the Cityview, the local free weekly newspaper. I can see why. It's a pretty cool place, even if you weren't there for the barbecue. While I wouldn't put it on par with some great barbecue joints I've eaten at in St. Louis or Kansas City, it's still very good.
My quest continues for good barbecue in Des Moines. If you have any ideas, send 'em my way!
A thank you to Road Tips reader Peter Lawrence who suggested that I try the third of the three Clean Plate Club restaurants, Merle's #1 Barbecue in downtown Evanston (see map). The other two restaurants under the Clean Plate Club umbrella - Davis Street Fishmarket and Pete Millers - I've already visited and have written entries about them. You can find the entry on Davis Street Fishmarket here and the one on Pete Miller's here. Both those restaurants were very good, so I went to Merle's with great anticipation.
Merle's #1 Barbecue has been in business for nearly 20 years, first opening their doors in 1992 near the Northwestern University campus. Merle's prides themselves on cooking their barbecue "low and slow", just as barbecue was meant to be. Merle's menu features a number of appetizers, burgers, barbecue sandwiches, and wings that feature four different types of sauces - traditional Buffalo, barbecue, a combo of both or the "Light My Fire" ultra-hot wing sauce. But their barbecue entrees are what people have been coming to Merle's for for years. They feature Texas-style brisket, North Carolina pork, St. Louis-style ribs (either with barbecue sauce or dry rubbed), and barbecued chicken entrees. Merle's features two different kinds of sauce - a vinegar-based Texas-style sauce that had a smoky taste with a bit of a bite of jalapenos, and a sweet and mildly spicy Chicago-style.
It was a short walk from my hotel to Merle's on a cool evening with the wind coming in off of Lake Michigan. I sat at the bar as there was a wait to get into the sort of rustic looking dining area. The night I was there, Merle's #1 Barbecue offers "all-you-can-eat" wings for $4.50 from 8 to 10 p.m. They also feature an on-going special of Schlitz in 16 oz. cans for $2 bucks. A large number of Northwestern students were there enjoying the wings special. That's all right, I was probably going to just sit at the bar anyway. (Photo courtesy of Planet99.com)
I looked through the menu after I got a beer and I wanted to give the ribs and the brisket a try. They had a ribs and meat combo for $18.95. I got the dry-rubbed St. Louis-style ribs. She asked if I wanted them to "fall off the bone". No! I saw on the menu that they had "fall off the bone" ribs and that more than likely means they parboiled them before they put them in the smoker or on the grill. That's cheating in my book, and it kills the taste of the meat.
Two sides came with the combo entree - I got their baked beans (a must for any barbecue place) and I thought about their cole slaw, but went with the mac-n-cheese instead. I asked the bartender if I could get extra barbecue sauce on the side and she reached down below the bar and pulled out two Corona beer bottles - one with the Texas-style sauce and the other with the Chicago-style sauce with dispenser spouts on them and put them on the bar in front of me. I looked at them and said, "Huh! Now, this is rather ingenious! What a great way to store barbecue sauce!"
But I found out later on how they were able to use beer bottles with dispenser caps on the top.
When the bartender brought my barbecue entree out to me, I was sort of taken back by the sizes of the sides and how small of a portion of brisket that I got. While the sides were served in two pretty good sized bowls - neither of which I'd be able to finish - there was only three slices of brisket and about six ribs, primarily from the end of the row of ribs.
The brisket came with the spicy Texas-style sauce - well, it was supposed to be spicy. I didn't think it was. I took the beer bottle full of the Texas sauce and poured some more on the brisket. It was thin and runny - no wonder they could serve it in a beer bottle. The Chicago sauce - billed to be "sticky sweet" - was almost as runny and not too sweet. Both were completely lifeless in taste. I added both to the very mediocre baked beans and the sauces alone couldn't save the beans. Sometimes you can do that with some barbecue sauces and baked beans. Merle's sauces were bland and just not very good. Their beans were some of the worst I've encountered in a barbecue restaurant.
The St. Louis-style ribs were charred and not much on the meaty side. I don't know what kind of rub they had on them, but it didn't add much to the taste of the meat. The meat was a little tough to gnaw off the bone. The brisket was just OK, as well. The meat was tender and had an average flavor that could have been helped out if the sauces were better.
Last and probably least, the mac-n-cheese was just plain ol' mac-n-cheese. It had no pizazz, no flavor, nothing. It was about as neutral of a taste as you can get for mac-n-cheese. I'm sure kids probably liked it, but they didn't even add anything to the cheese sauce other than the macaroni noodles. Two bites of that and I'd had enough. I sort of wish I would have gotten the cole slaw instead.
All in all, I was overly disappointed in Merle's #1 Barbecue. It's, by far, the weakest of the triumvirate of Clean Plate Club restaurants. It was also one of the most disappointing barbecue experiences I've had in quite sometime. The ribs were below average and you had to work hard just to get the little amount of meat they had on them. The brisket was OK - the best part of the meal - but the sauces were runny, flavorless and not very good. The baked beans were worse than the sauce and the mac-n-cheese was pedestrian, at best. I'm sure Merle's has a number of loyal customers, or they wouldn't have been in business for nearly 20 years. But I think I can find better barbecue in and around the North Shore area the next time I'm looking for barbecue when I'm there.
(Update - It appears that others felt the same as I did about Merle's. They closed the doors on the place just after the first of January of 2012. It was said they lost their lease, but if what I read from others that were saying negative things about the place I'm sure it won't be missed.)
Barbecue has gained a strong presence in the Des Moines area. It's not a place that you'd first think "barbecue" when describing the city, like you would Memphis or Kansas City. But over the years, there have been many good barbecue places in and around the area. There seems to be a number of them popping up over the past 3 to 5 years. I've been told that I have to go to Jethro's BBQ, Flying Mango, and Woody's Smoke Shackto try the barbecue at those places. But, once again, my good friend Jeff "Burph" Versteegh suggested I try a place that he's all too familiar with, Smokey D's with three locationsin Des Moines.
Smokey D's is named after Darren Warth who had headed his own competitive barbecue team for a number of years. Warth has won a number of awards for barbecue at prestigious competitions such as the American Royal in Kansas City and the Jack Daniels World Barbecue Invitational in Tennessee. Like many of these competitors who have won loads of awards working the competitive barbecue circuit, they eventually open their own place to let the public try some of their winning barbecue recipes. In 2007, Warth - along with partner and pit boss Shad Kirton - opened their first barbecue joint on NW 54th St. They soon opened up two other downtown locations - one in the skywalk near the Ruan Center, and the other at 12th and Locust in the Allied/Nationwide building. My buddy works at Nationwide, so he eats at the Smokey D's at least once a week.
Business boomed at the smallish Smokey D's on NW 54th St. and it became apparent they needed more room. Last September, Warth and Kirton took over a building just north of Interstate 80/35 on 2nd Ave. in what was, I believe, an old Western wear and tack store next to the Big Barn Harley Davidson, a Des Moines landmark for travelers rolling along the interstate. They gutted the place and turned it into a restaurant, complete with a main dining room and a bar area that also serves as a dining area. It was at the 2nd Ave. location that I had my first encounter with Smokey D's (see map).
I got to Smokey D's at a time that I thought would be advantageous to get in before the noon rush - right at about 11:30 a.m.. However, a long line had already formed snaking around the main dining room and back into the bar area. It looked to be a 15 to 20 minute wait to get up to the counter to place my order. If there were this many people in line by 11:30, I figured this must be some pretty good barbecue. And it seemed like they were really moving the line and people were already done and leaving tables open. I always figured that I could just eat at the bar if it was too packed by the time I was looking for a seat.
As the line moved along and came around the corner into the home stretch for ordering at the counter, this is where I got a close up look at many of the trophies and plaques that Smokey D's had won over the years at various barbecue competitions. Kirton won a big award last year being named the winning Pitmaster on the BBQ Pitmasters program on The Learning Channel. He won $100,000 and the Kingsford Cup. Not to be outdone, Warth won the Best Pork invitational category at the American Royal this past year. Smokey D's tomato-based mild barbecue sauce was also judged to be the 6th best at the American Royal and their hotter barbecue sauce got 13th place. Between the two, Kirton and Warth have combined to win about 30 Grand Championship awards on the competitive barbecue circuit.
The menu at Smokey D's is on a sign board directly above the counter where you place your orders. Now, be forewarned - you can't order beer at this counter, you have to go into the bar and order directly from the bartender. That was a little confusing to me at first, but it was actually pretty painless to do it that way. This allowed the people at the front counter to deal with food orders.
Smokey D's had the regular things you'd find at most barbecue places - beef brisket, chopped pork, pulled chicken and burnt ends. They also had sliced smoked turkey, something I don't run into all that often at other barbecue places. Of course, there were the normal sandwiches featuring the meat they make, as well as a number of mouthwater side dishes that you could order to go along with your meal.
As I like to do at most barbecue places that I'm visiting for the first time, I wanted to try the brisket and the chopped pork. The dinner platter allows you to choose two different meats (the lunch platter is one meat only) as well as your choice of two sides. I always have to get baked beans for one of my sides and Burph told me that Smokey D's mac and cheese was "pretty good." So that's what I ordered - brisket and chopped pork, baked beans and mac and cheese. A piece of garlic bread comes with the platter. The lady at the cash register gave me a little table card with a number on it to place near me so they'll know where I'm at when they bring my order out.
I made my way to the bar to get a beer and decided to just sit there. I got a Bud Light from the bartender and waited for my meal. When it came out I was surprised at how much food $9.95 got you. The baked beans and mac & cheese were served in little styrofoam cups with the chopped pork and brisket off to the sides. I tried both a piece of the pork and the brisket without putting any barbecue sauce on them and they were both very, very good. The pork was tender with a little smokey taste to it, the brisket was also flavorful, but not quite as tender as the pork.
I tried a little bit of the Smokey D's mild sauce and I have to say it was, "Eh!" It definitely didn't trip my trigger at all. The spicy barbecue sauce had a little bit more zip to the taste, but it still wasn't what I would call a world class barbecue sauce.
I added some of the spicy sauce to the beans to help zip them up a bit, but I've had baked beans that were much better at other barbecue places. However, my friend undersold the mac & cheese - it was outstanding. It was creamy with chunks of ham and some jalapeno peppers in it. I was sitting there eating it and thinking, "Geez, there are so many ways to do mac and cheese." Smokey D's mac and cheese was a hit.
Now, I don't know if it was because I had an early morning breakfast meeting or what, but my taste buds just weren't dazzled with my overall meal. I got full quickly and had trouble putting more than a dent in my food. I'm sorry to say that I think Smokey D's sauce was pedestrian, at best. I've got a fridge full of barbecue sauces that I've picked up around the Midwest that blow Smokey D's sauces out of the water. The beans were also average, but I will say the brisket and the chopped pork on their own were outstanding. Tasty, succulent, nice flavor without too much smoke in the meat. Maybe it was best to enjoy the meat without the sauce.
This is not to say that Smokey D's is not a good place to eat. Other than the sauce and the baked beans, their brisket and especially their pork was very, very good. And the mac & cheese was some of the best I've ever had and that includes mac & cheese made with gourmet cheeses and added with lobster meat at some fine restaurants I've eaten at over the years. The awards Darren Warth and Shad Kirton have garnered over the years are very deserving. It's no wonder it was a 20 minute wait before noon to get food at Smokey D's.
I was in St. Louis recently doing some training sessions for dealers in the area. I found myself out in O'Fallon, IL one evening completely wondering where I was going to have dinner that night. I wasn't overly familiar with the area and have only spent a couple nights on the Illinois side of the river when I've come to St. Louis. I've been told by a couple of people that there was a good steak house/supper club in O'Fallon and a place that had pretty good gyros not far from my hotel. I finally a place that I've heard about many times in my travels, but had not been to - the 17th St. Bar and Grill. The original 17th St. Bar and Grill is in Murphysboro in southern Illinois. But I don't have any dealers that far south in Illinois that would allow me to get down there to try the place. I was surprised to find a 17th St. Bar and Grill in O'Fallon not far from my hotel.
The 17th St. Bar and Grill is run by Mike Mills who is rather famous in barbecue circles. Mills is the only three time Grand World Champion of the prestigious Memphis in Maycontest - the Super Bowl of barbecue. He won his awards in 1990, 1992 and 1994. And he was only .02 points short of winning his fourth championship one year. That alone should cement Mills' place among the the all-time greats of barbecue. But Mills has also won four World Championships in barbecue (Mills' bio doesn't list where these events took place, but I'm guessing it was also at Memphis in May), and has won numerous local, state, regional, national and international contests for both his barbecue and his homemade barbecue sauce.
Mills got his barbecue genes from his father, Leon, who used to host neighborhood cook-outs in his hometown of Cape Girardeau, MO. The elder Mills' would dig a hole in the ground, put fire wood in the hole and placed a metal grate over the hole for a true barbecue pit. This was long before any above ground barbecue cookers were available. Leon Mills gained a reputation for not only his great barbecue, but his great barbecue sauce - a mustard/vinegar based sauce that was tangy and flavorful.
Unfortunately, Leon Mills died at the age of 42 so it was up to his family to carry on his legacy. Mills' wife, Faye, continued to make the homemade barbecue sauce. It got to a point where enough people convinced her to bottle the sauce and sell it. She was making the sauce at home for the original 17th St. Bar and Grill restaurant until it became too much for her to keep up with the demand. I believe I read somewhere that 17th St. Bar and Grill goes through 500 gallons of sauce a week.
The 17th St. Bar and Grill was the culmination of a dream that Mills' father had before he died - he wanted to open his own restaurant to serve his style of barbecue. Mike Mills opened his first barbecue restaurant in Murphysboro in 1985. In 1988, along with some friends, Mills formed the Apple City Barbecue Team, a competitive barbecue team that would enter their first competition that year. Their first effort garnered them 3rd place in the "best ribs" category at a contest in Murphysboro, but they soon found their way and began to win more competitions leading to their first Memphis in May championship in 1990.
Mike Mills has been featured in a number of print article and has appeared on television numerous times. In addition to the four 17th St. Bar and Grill locations, Mills also owns three Las Vegas area barbecue restaurants - Memphis Championship Barbecue- and also has been an adviser to owner of the the award winning Blue Smoke barbecue restaurant in New York City. Mills has also co-authored a book - Peace, Love and Barbecue- that chronicles the passion he and other pitmasters have for their profession. It features a number of recipes from the Mills family and other famous barbecue masters, as well as a number of stories about barbecuing.
With a pedigree like that, you'd almost think that any barbecue aficionado would have to make a pilgrimage to one of Mills' restaurants. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that his O'Fallon location was less than three miles from the hotel I was staying in that evening (see map). I pulled into the place around 7:30 p.m. and was met by a girl at the hostess counter. There was a large dining area, but a pretty large bar area, as well. They had some post-season baseball on the television and I asked if it was OK to sit in the bar. She said, "Sure!" She guided me into the bar area and placed a menu on the bar for me to look through.
The bartender that evening, Cassie, asked me what I wanted and I ordered up a Bud Light. Unfortunately, the draft Bud Light wasn't all that cold. First strike against any barbecue restaurant that serves beer - it has to be cold. This was more like about 50 degrees. Ehhh...
The menu at 17th St. Bar and Grill is wide and diverse with a large selection of appetizers, sandwiches and entrees featuring barbecued chicken, beef and pork. In addition to Mills' award winning barbecued ribs, the 17th St. Bar and Grill also features steaks, pork chops and grilled seafood. But I was there for the barbecue.
After hunting around the rather large menu, I was able to find the combination section of the menu. I always like to try a couple three things at a barbecue joint that is new to me. And 17th St. Bar and Grill had the perfect combination for me - the Blue Ribbon Selection combo meal. I was able to choose three different types of meat along with two of the restaurants numerous sides. I ordered a combo of beef brisket, pulled pork shoulder and baby back ribs. I was torn what to get for my sides as there were just too many to choose from. They had french fries, hush-puppies, collard greens, red beans and rice, sauerkraut, steamed veggies, mac and cheese - the list went on and on. I was completely confused because I really wanted to try about four or five sides. Cassie told me the cole slaw was very good. I took her on her word. I also ordered up some of the 17th St. Bar and Grill baked beans.
Not long after I ordered, my food was brought out by a waitress. The plate was large, but full of generous portions of the meat. The cole slaw and baked beans were in their own serving dishes. To my chagrin, Mills' original barbecue sauce was poured across the top of the meats. I'd rather have my barbecue served dry and allow me to add whatever sauce that I wanted. But I guess the Mills' sauce is their signature and they've been serving it that way for years. (Mike Mills says the sauce is made from a recipe that's over 100 years old.)
I tried the ribs first. 17th St. Bar and Grill also features a homemade rub called "Mike's Magic Dust" made from 18 different spices and herbs that Mills conjured up years ago. They sprinkle the "magic dust" on the ribs before they cook them and the first thing I noticed is there's a lot of salt in it, because that's exactly how they tasted to me - too salty.
The original Mills family sauce was good, but I'm not big on mustard/vinegar sauces. (Mills uses white rice vinegar in his sauce - it doesn't have the acidic taste other vinegars have.) Fortunately, they also had some of their "spicy" sauce that was sweeter, but it wasn't all that spicy. You got a little kick in the taste buds, but not enough that it was overpowering.
The ribs were very good - the meat was flavorful and tender. But the saltiness of the "magic dust" was almost a little too much for me. I'm a guy that hardly puts salt on anything and the salt flavor on the ribs was tremendously heightened on my taste buds. Any meat rub concoction with a medium amount of salt tastes too salty to me.
The pulled pork was also a little bit salty to my taste, but it was still very good. The sweet and spicy sauce helped cover the taste of the salt and was a good complement to the pulled pork.
The brisket, however, was outstanding. The thin cuts of beef had a nice little smoke ring at the top and the "magic dust" taste was minimal. Coupled with the spicy sweet sauce, the taste sensation was the best of the three meats.
The baked beans were good, especially when I added some of the sweet and spicy sauce to them. But I was not impressed with the cole slaw. It was rather bland and, well... I just didn't care for it. I'm sure some people - like Cassie - like it, but I wish I would have gotten something else.
As I finished up my meal, it turned out that one of the managers of the 17th St. Bar and Grill was seated at the end of the bar talking to employees before she went home for the evening. We struck up a conversation about this particular location and she told me that the building originally housed one of the Super Smokers barbecue restaurants - one of my all-time favorite barbecue joints in the St. Louis area that went out of business a few years back. (Super Smokers has since re-opened out in St. Peters, MO not far from the old company that I used to work for years ago.)
She told me that a couple of the former owners of Super Smokers helped Mike Mills procure the place and they opened the 17th St. Bar and Grill in O'Fallon in February of 2007. She said that she used to work at the old Super Smokers location and that the pit master, Cassie the bartender, and one other person are still left from the old days.
The Food Network's Food Feuds program pitted (sorry for the pun) 17th St. Bar and Grill up against Pappy's Smokehouse earlier this fall. (See my entry on Pappy's here.) The episode just aired this past week and five judges from the St. Louis Barbecue Society along with host Michael Symon (a former Iron Chef Americawinner in 2007) named 17th St. Bar and Grill as having the best baby back ribs in St. Louis. Symon thought that smoking method Mike Mills uses (about 210 degrees for six hours over fruit wood) made the meat on 17th Street's ribs more tender and flavorful. He also liked the Magic Dust rub over Pappy's herb-based rub.
I have mixed feelings about the 17th St. Bar and Grill. I thought the baby back ribs were a bit too salty and I didn't care much for the Mills' family sauce - which is probably akin to saying their child is ugly. But the pulled pork was very good and the brisket was just excellent. And I did like the sweet and spicy sauce, as well. I tried to buy some at the little shop they had in the lobby, but for some reason they were out of it.
I would have to say that while I prefer Pappy's over 17th St. Bar and Grill, I can see why some people would say the opposite - they're both very good at what they do. And that's not to say that I'll not go back to 17th St. Bar and Grill at some point - I definitely will. But I'll probably stick with the brisket and not get the cole slaw on my next visit.
While in Kansas City recently, I had just gotten back from a long trip out toward West Central Kansas and decided to try and find the newer of the two locations of Oklahoma Joe's Barbecue - the location on Strang Road in Olathe, KS (see map). Oklahoma Joe's has suddenly risen to the top of my "favorites" list of a long line of great barbecue places in the Kansas City area. (You can read my original post on Oklahoma Joe's here.)
The original Oklahoma Joe's is located in what is basically an old gas station in Kansas City, KS (below left). It is one of the more unique places I've been to for any type of restaurant. The barbecue I had on my first visit was absolutely fabulous - the brisket was out of this world and the ribs were very, very good. Each time I get back to K.C., I have to have at least one meal at Oklahoma Joe's.
I was staying out at my usual place in Overland Park, KS - the Hilton Garden Inn - and the Olathe Oklahoma Joe's is much closer to my hotel than the original one in Kansas City. The Oklahoma Joe's in Olathe (above right - picture courtesy of Kansas Travel.org) is located in a newer strip mall and has ample parking around the building. Even coming up on 8 p.m., I was having trouble finding a place to park because it was packed with people at that time. The one in Kansas City, Kansas (or KCK, as the locals refer to it) serves its last meal at 8:30 p.m through the week. The Olathe location closes at 9 p.m. for the late eating suburbanite crowd. (The KCK location is open until 9:30 on weekends and the Olathe location closes at 10:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Both locations are closed on Sunday.)
The inside of Oklahoma Joe's in Olathe (picture right courtesy of Kansas Travel.org) is vastly larger than the original location, but it doesn't have any of the rib joint ambiance that the KCK Oklahoma Joe's possesses. The menu in Olathe is nearly identical to the KCK location and the line to order at the counter was nearly 12 people deep when I walked in. It allowed me ample time to peruse the large blackboard menu on the wall to see what I really wanted to eat that evening.
Without getting into the detail that I did with my original post, I'll just say that I went with the Two Meat Dinner - pulled pork and brisket with a side of baked beans and Texas toast, with a couple bottles of Bud Light to help wash the dust out of my mouth from a long day of driving and to help cut into the zippy chipotle pepper taste of Oklahoma Joe's "Night of the Living Sauce" barbecue sauce.
While the surroundings at the Olathe location was more of a corporate chain restaurant, the food was probably as good as the original Oklahoma Joe's in KCK. The brisket was devastatingly delicious, tender and lean with a hint of a smoke taste. The pulled pork was equally tender, but sort of lacked a good smoky base to the meat. But putting a combination of the Oklahoma Joe's regular "Cowtown" sauce and the more spicy sauce together, the taste sensation with the pulled pork was not lost. And adding some of the "Night of the Living Sauce" to the baked beans helped flare up an already wonderful side dish.
Next door to the Oklahoma Joe's restaurant in Olathe is a barbecue store that sells smokers and grilles, sauces, rubs, wood chips and barbecue accessories. It's similar to the stuff you'd find at Smoke 'n' Fire in Overland Park, but much smaller in size and in selection than what Smoke 'n' Fire offers.
I've heard that the decor and ambiance of a restaurant can make the food taste better. I sort of like the old rib joint feel to the original Oklahoma Joe's in KCK compared to the slick, contemporary interior of their Olathe location. While it is comfortable with larger tables and a larger dining area than the original place, I think the KCK Oklahoma Joe's is just a notch better than the one in Olathe. That's not to say that I didn't like my meal at the Olathe Oklahoma Joe's, it was very, very good - still one of the best, if not THE best barbecue in Kansas City. But even though it's a little more of a haul from where I stay when I'm in the Kansas City location, I'd go back to the Oklahoma Joe's in KCK before I'd go to the one in Olathe.
Since Pappy's Smokehouse opened in 2008, it has climbed to the top of nearly every "Best of" poll for barbecue in the St. Louis area. This Midtown barbecue place - in the shadows of Harris-Stowe State University and a short walk from St. Louis University (see map) - features Memphis-style barbecue cooked in smokers up to 14 hours. And when they run out of food for the day, they shut down. Then they start the whole cycle again for the next day. It's a great concept for barbecue - no reheating of one or two day old barbecue to serve to customers.
The man behind this concept is Mike "Smokey" Emerson, (pictured at right - courtesy Riverfront Times) a restaurant industry veteran who started out busing tables at the age of 13 working his way up the ladder at various restaurants until he helped open the high-end Del Pietro's Italian restaurant in the mid-70's. Emerson then got a commercial sales gig, but got back into the restaurant business when he interviewed to be the General Manager of Super Smokers out in suburban Eureka. (There used to be a Super Smokers right near the office of the old company I used to work at years ago out in St. Peters. It was just fabulous, but that location closed long ago and I haven't been to the original Eureka restaurant.)
It was at Super Smokers that he got hooked up with barbecue expert Skip Steele, the co-owner and pit master at Super Smokers. Steele was a world barbecue champion award winner and he took top spot for whole pig at the Memphis in May barbecue contest in 2000. Emerson and Steele became very close as they shared a love for not only fine barbecue, but for hunting and fishing, as well. Emerson used to barbecue with his older brother, Pappy, in his brother's back yard. Pappy, who died in 2001, and Mike used to make tons of barbecue for whoever showed up. Pappy's Smokehouse is named in honor of Mike Emerson's older brother.
Steele sold his share of Super Smokers in 2007 and moved to Las Vegas to be the head chef/pit master at R.U.B. BBQ at the Riocasino and hotel. But soon after Emerson, along with partners Brian Scoggins and John Matthews, opened Pappy's Smokehouse, Skip Steele was lured back to St. Louis to be the chef/pit master of the place. Given how great Super Smokers was under Steele's pit watch, Pappy's has been a hit and has gained national recognition in just over two years in business.
I had tried to get into Pappy's Smokehouse on a couple of previous occasions, once just before noon and another time around 2 p.m. Each time, the parking lot off to the side was full of cars and the line stretched out through the "L"-shaped restaurant toward the back door. I wasn't quite willing to wait that long for barbecue, no matter how good it was. However, on a recent trip to St. Louis, I planned on having a late lunch at Pappy's - after 3 p.m. I figured the crowd at Pappy's wouldn't be as big at that point (it wasn't), but I'd also heard that they would sometimes start to run out of food around 4 p.m. (they hadn't).
Pappy's Smokehouse is on Olive Street located right next to The U restaurant and bar, a favorite hang-out of college kids and sports fans. Both Pappy's and The U share the parking lot, but Pappy's uses the share of spots in the daytime while The U will garner most of the crowd at night after Pappy's has closed.
Out in front of Pappy's are two commercial smokers where the bulk of their barbecuing is done. About the time when they start running out of food in the early evening, the next day's meat is beginning to cook - low and slow - at around 215 degrees. They use both apple and cherry wood for their pork ribs and they're cooked dry with a spice rub. Mike Emerson's motto is "We've got nothing to hide so the sauce is on the side." On a typical day they'll cook up to 750 pounds of pork and 300 pounds of beef brisket.
Pappy's also does a large catering business, as well. Niki Puto, who was the former catering manager at the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis, came over to Pappy's to head up their growing full-service, buffet-style catering business.
I was able to get right in to Pappy's when I walked in around 3:15. Actually, the place was over half-full with people either having a late lunch like me or an early dinner. Or they had been frustrated trying to get in during lunch in the past or had been in late in the day when they had already run out of barbecue. In any event, there was a good sized crowd in the place in the middle of the afternoon.
Blues music blared out of speakers located around the dining area. The long part of the "L"-shaped building features conventional picnic tables as well as tables and chairs. There is a small dining area up front by the counter with a few tables and chairs, as well as a high window ledge with high chairs to sit on. Because of the popularity at Pappy's, management asks people not to sit first, then go order. Pappy's isn't the kind of place where people will linger for a couple hours as they don't sell beer (What!? Another barbecue place that doesn't sell beer!?), so tables turn over rather quickly.
Pappy's menu - which is located above the counter where you order - consists of a wide-array of barbecued meats and sides. They feature sandwiches such as pulled pork, pulled chicken, sliced brisket and turkey breast. The food platters at Pappy's feature full and half-slabs of their pork ribs, pulled pork, brisket, pulled chicken and turkey breast. They have a number of sides including cole slaw, baked beans, fries, green beans, fried corn on the cob and applesauce. But they're well know for their sweet potato fries. Pappy's claims to be the biggest seller of sweet potato fries in the nation.
Next to the menu board on the wall is a dry-erase board where they jot down what they're out of at that point of the day. Thankfully, they weren't out of anything when I walked in. I heard one of the workers in the dining area tell an older man that they usually run out of brisket first.
They also feature a number of combinations, including one called "Heifer and Hog" - a combination of beef brisket slices and pulled pork served with thick white bread and two sides. That's exactly what I wanted.
I stepped up to the counter and a pleasant young lady with a good sense of humor took my order. She asked me what sides I wanted and I decided to try their baked beans, but I was torn between getting their cole slaw or the sweet potato fries. I finally opted for the cole slaw - I thought the sweet potato fries would be too much. She said, "Good choice. I like our cole slaw."
I made the mistake of ordering a beer and she said, "I'm sorry, we don't have a liquor license." I got confused because when I came in through the back door I saw a sign for Boulder Buffalo Gold beer. But then I realized afterward that it was on the back door going into The U and not for Pappy's. I got a water instead.
She asked me for my name as they usually dish it up and bring it out to the table. But since it was slow at that point, they handed my platter over the counter. I got a seat at the window ledge with the high chairs and dug in.
First of all, the brisket was absolutely fabulous. The smoke ring around the meat was perfect. The beef brisket was tender, flavorful and fresh. On its own without any sauce, it was just excellent - some of the best brisket I've ever had.
The pulled pork was almost as good as the brisket. The charred ends were chewy, but the inner pork was moist, tender and full of flavor. They definitely know how to smoke their meat at Pappy's as there was just a hint of smoke taste in every bite, not enough to over power the natural taste of the meat like some barbecue places will do. It was very good.
When I did add sauce to the meat, it only helped enhance the taste. Pappy's features three different types of sauce - their Original sauce that has a little bit of smooth pepper taste; Holly's Hot Sauce that they claim is pretty hot, but I found it to be slightly more spicy than their Original; and Sweet Baby Jane, a thick and rich, sweet/smoky Kansas City-style sauce. I tried each of the sauce on a corner of the thick white bread and then began to experiment. I thought that a mix of the Original and the Holly's Hot Sauce was a great combination.
The baked beans on their own were good, but I really liked them better when I put some of the Sweet Baby Jane and the Holly's Hot sauce in them. And the cole slaw was the sweet and sour kind that I like. They weren't very creamy - also a big plus in my book.
The meat portions were generous, the sides were in 6 oz. cups filled to the brim and the two large slices of white bread was more than enough. I was able to finish the meats, but not the sides. I'm going to have to try the sweet potato fries the next time I'm in. And with a number of trips planned to St. Louis in the coming months, I will be back at Pappy's at some point. From what I remember about Super Smokers when they had their location next to I-70 in St. Peters, that was the finest barbecue I've ever had in St. Louis. But I have to say that Pappy's Smokehouse probably smoked 'em and replaced them as my favorite barbecue place in St. Louis. But, of course, the common denominator here is Skip Steele. Pappy's Smokehouse is, simply, barbecue heaven.
While Smoke 'n Fire would be a cool name for a barbecue joint, you can't eat at the place in Overland Park, KS (see map). It's a superstore for barbecue smokers, grilles, inside and outside fireplaces, and barbecue accessories along with spices, rubs and sauces. I had seen their ad on TV when I was in Kansas City recently and I took the time one day to run out there to check the place out.
Jim and Joan Cattey first opened Smoke 'n Fire in 1998. How they got into the business is rather interesting. They used to run a farm feed and seed store in Northern Missouri. Through a number of sales contests, they ended up winning some barbecue grills. They had a friend who was selling wood-fired stoves and they sort of partnered up in selling fireplaces, stoves and grilles. The location on 151st St. in Overland Park is the third location Smoke 'n Fire has been in - each location more than doubled the size of their previous site.
Jim Cattey (right) is sort of a local celebrity in that he has a half-hour barbecue show - Xtreme Barbecue Radio - on WHB radio from May thru October each year, plus he stars in his own commercials that air on TV. Cattey has also authored a book called "Backyard Grilling" along with his wife and chef Richard McPeake. In fact, Richard McPeake conducts a number of barbecuing and smoking classes at Smoke 'n Fire. When you buy selected smokers or barbecue grilles at Smoke 'n Fire, they'll throw in a basic class for free.
McPeake also has authored a couple of books on his own on backyard smoking including "Backyard Barbecue - The Art of Smokeology". He's a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and is a certified judge for the Kansas City Barbecue Society. He has conducted over 300 classes for over 9000 people in his association with Smoke 'n Fire. He is also the guy behind the great barbecue web site, Rib Stars, where he sells copies of his books and his own barbecue rubs.
I'd finished a morning meeting at a dealer I've been chasing off and on in the Overland Park area and it turned out that Fire 'n Smoke's location was not far from the dealer's store. Being the grilling and smoking nut that I am, I wanted to go over and check out this place.
As I walked in the door, I was met by two of the new style Weber "Bullet" Smokers. One was the regular 18' size, but they also have a new 22" smoker that's available for $399. The biggest difference between the Bullet smoker I've had for about three years now and the new style is that the new ones have a built in thermometer - my biggest bitch when it came to my smoker. It also appears to be a heavier gauge of metal in the new ones. I immediately wanted one.
In addition to the two Weber smokers and a large array of Weber grilles, they also had a wide variety of smokers and grilles including some pretty heavy-duty, industrial style smokers that I wouldn't mind having. But the prices certainly weren't cheap at Smoke 'n Fire. The quality of the grilles and smokers they had were top-notch. They featured a large selection of grilles and smokers from Lynx, Beef Eater, Primo and Ducane. They also had one of the famous Big Green Egg ceramic grill and smoker. Those things are not cheap.
The place was just huge. I was walking around in a literal daze just looking at everything they had to offer. It was a barbecue paradise for me. They had everything you needed to make any type of backyard grilling a success. My head was spinning at each turn looking at some of the neat accessories they had to offer. There were little knick-knacks like aprons, mitts, thermometers, grilling tools, cleaning tools and cleaning brushes. They had knife sharpeners, meat marinators and tenderizers, grid lifters (I almost got one of those myself), and something called "Grill Floss". It cleaned the underside of your grill grate. That's a little anal for me.
I was back in the corner of the store and I found their area that featured a number of rubs, sauces and spices. I took a quick picture of the area and a lady popped around the corner and she said, "Sir, we don't allow pictures or videos to be made in the store."
I was incredulous. "Really," I asked. "Why's that?"
She said, "The owner feels that it's his intellectual property and he doesn't want someone coming in here to take pictures so they may get ideas for their own place."
I said, "Oh, OK. Sorry. I live up in Iowa and I wanted to show some of my friends this place. You've got a mecca for grilling and smoking here."
I went back into another corner of the store and I found shelves of wood chips in all sizes of bags - from 100 lbs. down to 10 pound bags. They had all different types of wood from mesquite to hickory to alder to cherry to... Well, if you can think of a type of wood that you can use to smoke with, they had it at Smoke 'n Fire. They even had different varieties of flavors within some of the wood chips they sold. I had to get a picture of this, so I snuck one last picture.
I was still wandering around when I heard the lady who initially accosted me about taking pictures with my cell phone say to another guy, "Yeah, that's him back in the corner. He says he's just looking around."
This guy came up to me and asked if he could be of any assistance. As I told the lady before, I told him that I was a big barbecue aficionado and that I saw their ad on television the night before and wanted to check the place out. He asked me where I lived and I told him I lived back in Iowa. He said, "Well, before you leave, give us your name so we can put you on our mailing list." He said it with sort of an untrusting tone of voice. I mean, I guess I can see why they would be worried about people coming in and taking pictures to get ideas. It was a helluva business for them.
I did give my name, e-mail and mailing address to the lady at the counter before I left. I'm not certain she actually added it to the list as I've not seen anything from them either via e-mail or regular mail, and it's been awhile since I've been in. In the back of my mind, I think they probably wanted to take down my name and address in case they found that I was going to open my own style of Smoke 'n Fire store so they could sue me at some point in the future. I'm now probably labeled as an "undesirable" in their system.
And as I left I did see a sign near the front door that said, "No Photo or Video Cameras". I may or may not have seen that when I came in...
But Smoke n' Fire is truly a mecca for those of us who are heavily into barbecuing and smoking. I didn't buy anything this trip, but I'll be back to Kansas City in a few weeks and I'll have to block out an hour or so during the day to come in and look for some stuff. The only problem is that they close at 5:30 every day so I can't spend some time some evening there. But that's OK - I'd rather be eating good barbecue at that time rather than looking for stuff to buy.
Kansas City has some world-class barbecue. It's always a treat to get barbecue in K.C. and it's a double treat when I find a new place to try some barbecue. On a recent trip to town, I was doing a little reading up on a place that I wasn't familiar with - Oklahoma Joe's. The article I read on line said that it was in an old gas station in a neighborhood on the Kansas side of Kansas City. I thought I'd give it a shot that evening.
Like a number of barbecue joints, Oklahoma Joe's got its start from a backyard grilling enthusiast - much like myself - who began to enter barbecue competitions around the Midwest in the 1990's. Jeff Stehney was inspired by a couple of large Kansas City area barbecue contests to buy a heavy duty Oklahoma Joe's smoker to enter into competition against some of the best amateur barbecue aficionados in the U.S. Within two years, Stehney and his team, "Slaughterhouse Five" (named after his favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel), won the prestigious Grand Champion awards at both the American Royal Open and the Kansas City Barbecue Society contests.
Stehney and his team, the core of which featured his wife, Joy, and good friend, Jim Howell, captured numerous awardsin various competitions throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas. It was through these competitions he met up with Roger Davidson, the owner of Oklahoma Joe's smokers. Davidson and Stehney struck up a quick friendship that quickly turned into a business venture together. The first Oklahoma Joe's Barbecue opened in 1995 in Stillwater, OK - the home of Davidson's smoker company. The Kansas City location opened in 1996 with Jim Stehney overseeing the operation. Through all of this, Stehney continued to enter barbecue contests - and would usually win awards in multiple categories.
In 1997, Davidson sold his smoker company to Char-Broil, the maker of New Braunfels smokers. Char-Broil was eventually bought out by Brinkmann. Davidson moved to Texas and with no one to oversee the Stillwater operation, the Oklahoma Joe's BBQ closed. Jeff and Joy Stehney bought out Davidson's interest in the Kansas City location and continue to run it today. Davidson, in the meantime, started a new smoker company - Horizon Barbecue Smokers - based out of Perry, OK.
I got the address to Oklahoma Joe's in Kansas City and punched it into the GPS. As I got closer, I found myself in a residential neighborhood wondering what the place would be like. I came up to the corner of 47th and Mission (see map) and there it was on the NE corner of the intersection. The parking lot was packed (it was just after 8 p.m. and they close at 8:30) and I drove around the building to find a parking spot. I found one in front of the gas station. Yes, Oklahoma Joe's is not in an old gas station - it really is a gas station with a convenience store, gas pumps on two sides and the whole nine yards! I just shook my head in amazement and chuckled as I walked in.
Oklahoma Joe's menu is on a chalk board along the east wall of the establishment. That's where you order from one of the line cooks and he starts your order. I had a lot of trouble understanding the one line cook from a combination of his southern dialect, the loudness of the dining area and the bustle behind him in the kitchen area. Oklahoma Joe's menu isn't extensive like I've found at other Kansas City area barbecue places, but it focused on the core foods of real barbecue.
I ended up ordering the Rib and Brisket combo - three meaty pork ribs with a stack of thin sliced brisket. I got a choice of a side with that and I didn't hesitate when I told him I wanted baked beans. I then went to the cash register and the girl there asked me what I wanted to drink. Thankfully, Oklahoma Joe's has beer - lots of it to choose from, by the way. I ended up getting a couple bottles of Bud Light to help wash the barbecue down.
As I waited for my order to come up, I noticed a number of people coming up and getting orders to go. One couple had called in their order and took their "to-go" sack to a table to eat. The dining area - consisting of a number of two and four chair tables, a few booths and a number of seats along a high bar on the south side of the dining room - was nearly full. After I got my tray with my barbecue and beer, I found a small table near the cash register and sat down to eat. In true barbecue joint style, they had a roll of paper towels on the table along with two different types of sauce - regular and hot.
I had one of the ribs first. They had a nice dry rub on them and they were tender to the bite. Meaty and moist, the pork slid effortlessly off the bone. I put a little of Oklahoma Joe's regular barbecue sauce on a bite of the rib and I have to say it was very good. It had a sweet, smoky taste to the sauce and it was a perfect match with the ribs. I even poured some into my baked beans which were thick and meaty and had a little spicy bite to them. They were very, very good on their own without the barbecue sauce in them.
The brisket was next. It was tender and very thin sliced and came with a dollop of their barbecue sauce on top. The brisket sat on a piece of white bread - very Southern as far as barbecue is concerned. From the first bite, I was in heaven. It was so flavorful and tender. Some of the best brisket I'd ever had.
They gave me two rib bones and an end piece. While I believe they thought they were doing me a favor with giving me the end piece. While it was tender and flavorful, the end pieces of pork ribs have a lot of little bones in them. I was pausing repeatedly to stop and pull the little bones out of my mouth and put 'em on the plate. I didn't care if anyone was watching. This is barbecue, for God's sake!
I decided to kick it up a notch with Oklahoma Joe's "Night of the Living Sauce" hot sauce. Well, I didn't think it was all that hot, but it added more zip to what the regular Oklahoma Joe's sauce had. I put some of that in my baked beans and stirred it around. It made the beans a little more spicy and helped with the sweet taste, as well.
By this time, I'm in barbecue heaven. The ambiance of the place was unique, the barbecue was just outstanding, it was getting close to 8:30 and there were still people coming in to either pick up orders or to eat in the dining area. I was savoring every bite of Oklahoma Joe's barbecue. I was slopping up the remnants of the sauce with the piece of Texas Toast that was on my plate. When the sauce was gone from the plate, I'd just pour more on the bread and eat it like that. As I finished my meal, I thought this might be the best barbecue dinner I've ever had.
As I was leaving Oklahoma Joe's, I noticed they had a large section of sauces, spices and rubs on the shelf in the convenience store area of the building. Geez, a gas station/convenience store/rib joint. This was just something else. The gas station/convenience store - Joe's Corner - had a number of people coming in for stuff other than barbecue. And there were people gassing up outside. As I got in my car and checked my fuel gauge, I decided I needed some gas, too. As I was pumping gas, I thought, "Only at Oklahoma Joe's can you get gas inside and outside the building."
Oklahoma Joe's was one of those overly surprising and ultra-pleasant dining experiences that I just love to find when I'm on the road. The barbecue was just outstanding, the beans were delicious, the sauces were wonderful. It's no wonder that Anthony Bourdain named Oklahoma Joe's as one of his 13 places to eat before you die. If heaven has barbecue, Oklahoma Joe's is serving it.
Now my stomach is rumbling just thinking of Oklahoma Joe's. Quite seriously, it may have been the best barbecue that I've ever had. If it wasn't the best, it has to be in the top 3. I can't wait to get back to K.C. later this spring to have some more.
I put on a new dealer in Kansas City recently and we were talking about his favorite barbecue places. I mentioned going to Jack Stack Barbecue, of which one location is just down the street from his store. He said, "You know, a place that I sort of like, but a lot of people shy away from here in Kansas City is Smokehouse Bar-B-Que. The owner is Iranian or Iraqi and that prejudices some people here in town. But I think it's very good."
Smokehouse Bar-B-Que is a four location local chainthat was started in 1986 by Darioush Ghasemi. Quite honestly, Smokehouse never registered on my barbecue scanner when it came to looking for good barbecue in K.C. There's a ton of good to great Kansas City barbecue restaurants, but my new dealer's recommendation of Smokehouse was rather intriguing.
Recently, I found that I would be driving down to Kansas City from Lincoln, NE via Interstate 29. The somewhat-new Zona Rosa shopping center is home to one of the Smokehouse Bar-B-Que locations (see map). Since Zona Rosa is right off the Interstate at Barry Road, I decided to stop in for lunch one day.
The outside of the Zona Rosa Smokehouse Bar-B-Que is pretty nondescript, but the interior looks like it could be an upscale steakhouse. The first thing you can't help but notice when you walk in the main dining area is a massive, concave, stained-glass, back-lit window in the ceiling over the middle of the room. It was rather impressive. There is a lounge area off to the left side that features a large square bar with seating on three sides, and four 42" flat screen televisions on the back wall.
Since I was a party of one, I opted to sit at the bar. The hostess ushered me to a seat and left a lunch menu on the bar for me. The bartender was quick to ask what I'd like to drink. A beer sounded good - a beer is always good with barbecue. But since I had a couple meetings in the afternoon and then a product training at my new dealer that evening, I just got water. (No pop - I have only had two Cokes in the last year. Both of those were when I was in the hospital with my hip replacement surgeries. They made me drink them so I'd pee more quickly and I could get released.)
Actually, the lunch menu isn't much different from Smokehouse Bar-B-Que's dinner menu, as both feature a number of salads, chicken entrees and, of course, ribs and brisket. Both menus feature a number of mouthwatering sandwiches along with combo meat plates. The dinner menu adds steaks and some seafood to the mix. Smokehouse Bar-B-Que's appetizer include their famous Cajun chicken wings, jalapeno cheese nuggets, and Smokehouse Bar-B-Que's thick and yummy onion rings.
I was looking at the combo plates as I wanted to try both their ribs and their brisket. I got the pork spare ribs and brisket combo. It came with french fries and cole slaw. I probably wasn't going to eat much of the fries or the slaw, but what the hell.
It wasn't long after I ordered from the bartender that my food came out. The barbecue sauce was pretty mild and served in a small bowl. I asked the bartender if he had any hotter barbecue sauce and he said he'd go get some for me. I should have said, "More spicy". Instead, he brought out a piping hot bowl of barbecue sauce. The first taste pretty much told me that it was the same barbecue sauce, only warmed up.
However, as the sauce in the hot bowl began to cool down, I noticed that the sauce had a little more kick to it than the first bowl he brought out. I figured that the hotness in temperature of the sauce masked the initial spicy bite the sauce had to offer. It wasn't bad, actually.
The pork spare ribs were meaty and flavorful. I got three in total and it was more than enough for lunch. And the brisket was cut thin, was juicy and tender, and also had great flavor to it. I was overly impressed with the barbecue. I had a couple french fries, just to try 'em and they were OK. And the cole slaw was average, at best. But the sides aren't what I came to Smokehouse Bar-B-Cue for.
In a city known for world-class barbecue, you have to be pretty good to be in business over 20 years and to have four locations. I was pleasantly surprised by Smokehouse Bar-B-Cue and told my dealer that evening of my experience there. He said, "I told you it was good. It's just not on the radar of a lot of people around here. The names of other places pop up before they talk about Smokehouse. Places that I, personally, don't think hold a candle to the food at Smokehouse."
Well, Smokehouse Bar-B-Que is on my radar now. I will definitely seek out another location on a coming trip to K.C.
During our recent visit to Atlanta for the annual CEDIA Expo, my boss and one of my colleagues had to go out to dinner with an account one evening. My remaining colleagues were in a minor quandary as to where to go for our dinner. One of our guys, Ian, suggested barbecue and there was a barbecue place not far from our hotel in Buckhead - One Star Ranch. We decided to give it a try.
I had been in Atlanta a number of years ago when the CEDIA Expo was there for a couple of years and I met up with my friend, Eric Van Fossen, one evening for a night out. He took me to a rib place that, from what I remembered, was pretty good. It was sort of a dive place - plenty of picnic tables and a lot of beer signs on the wall. But the barbecue was good. For the life of me, I couldn't remember the name of it, nor could I tell you exactly where it was. When I pulled up in front of the One Star Ranch, it immediately jogged my memory. This was the place Eric took me to about 12 years prior. (He confirmed that was the place when I talked to him a couple days later.)
Except it wasn't called One Star Ranch at that time. A little over 20 years ago, Frank and Pam Bonk opened their little rib place in Buckhead and called it the Rib Ranch. When they opened their second location in suburban Alpharetta in 2001, they decided to change the name of their restaurants to One Star Ranch. The waitress at One Star Ranch told me they changed the name when they got a "one star" rating by a local food critic for their barbecue. Considering many people had thought of the Rib Ranch as being the best barbecue in Atlanta for over 10 years, the Bonk's decided to play up the bad ranking. It was kind of a funny story.
One Star Ranch is a little tough to find (see map). When I pulled up, there's a large parking lot next to the place. Except there was - maybe - two or three cars in the lot. One of our guys said, "This might not be good. There's no one here." We got out of the van and started to walk toward the restaurant. The waitress who eventually ended up waiting on us leaned over the railing from the outdoor seating area and said, "Hey, are you all comin' in here for food?"
We said we were. She said, "You can't park there or your van will get towed and we certainly don't want that. Go ahead and park across the street."
Sure enough, I looked around and saw these warning signs that vehicle that weren't authorized to park in that lot would be towed. I looked across the street and saw that the smaller lot over there was nearly full. But someone was pulling out of a spot and I took that. Oh, yes. There were a lot of people in the restaurant.
The guys had commandeered a picnic table outside as I parked the van and they immediately started to order up some beers. Our waitress gave us each a menu and one of the guys said, "Hey, can we get an order of onion rings right off the bat to tide us over?"
She said, "You all want a whole tub?"
We all kind of shrugged our shoulders and collectively said, "Sure!"
Being that I'd been there before, some of the guys were quizzing me as what to get. I said, "All I remember is that the food was good, the beer was cold and they had football on the televisions in the dining room. It was a fun night."
We downed our beers pretty quickly, to the point that the waitress suggested that we just get a couple buckets of beer to go with our ample - and excellently greasy - onion rings. We ordered up another "tub" of rings, as well.
One Star Ranch bills itself as a Texas-style barbecue rather than the mustard sauce-based, pork-centric style that you get in the Southeast. I was torn between their brisket and the pork ribs. And they didn't have a combo plate like you get at most other barbecue places. So, I decided to get both. The only problem is that you get two sides with each platter. I went with double baked beans and fries. I wouldn't eat the fries, but I'm sure other people at the table would.
One Star Ranch is famous for their beef ribs. If you grew up watching The Flintstones, you remember some of the exaggerated ribs that Fred or Barney would be gnawing on. When they brought out the beef ribs that a couple of guys had ordered, well, it was then when I decided that I needed to get a camera phone. These things were huge! Just absolutely huge! And they brought out not one, but TWO per plate! We all got a large laugh out of how big they were.
My "regular" pork rib plate consisted of four meaty ribs. And the brisket plate had a generous portion of sliced beef on it. And both were very good. And the beans were very good, as well. I liked their sweet, yet sort of spicy barbecue sauce. It was a great complement to the meat and beans. But it was a lot of food. I was able to finish the ribs and the brisket, but a lot of the beans were left over and I didn't even bother with the fries.
Our waitress was just excellent. She had a sassy sense of humor and was quick on the requests. She got a hefty tip for putting up with us.
One Star Ranch was everything that I remembered the old "Rib Ranch" was and more. I'm more partial to the Texas - Kansas City style of barbecue with the sweet and spicy sauces, juicy ribs and flavorful beef brisket. And that's exactly what One Star Ranch is. And I'll tell you - it's far from a "one star" rating. I'd like to find that critic and find out what the deal really was on their visit.
I was in the far eastern suburbs of St. Louis recently spending the night before I did a training for American TV the next morning. Near my hotel was a Texas Roadhouse and a Buffalo Wild Wings. It was late when I got in and I wasn't up for doing any research to find any "new" place to eat, so I headed over that direction, fully intending to make up my mind between the two when I pulled up. But something caught my eye as I turned the corner - a restaurant about the size of the other two by the name of Outlaw Blues. (see map) I thought, "Huh! Well, let me see what this is all about."
Outlaw Blues bills itself as a restaurant and saloon, with barbecue and southern-style food being the main draw. They primarily do steaks, ribs, fried chicken, seafood, burgers, sandwiches, salads - a little bit of everything. The menu was pretty full and diverse.
Steve and Karen Edwards opened Outlaw Blues in November of 2008. The Edwards also own Farmer's Restaurant in nearby Highland, and are part owners of Ravanelli's Restaurant with two locations in Collinsville and Granite City. Steve Edwards wanted to have a restaurant that featured both Memphis-style and New Orleans-style barbecue. And he wanted to have a restaurant that had a big bar. He certainly accomplished his goals with Outlaw Blues.
I got into Outlaw Blues around 8:30 on a Monday evening. I was greeted by a hostess who wanted to know if I wanted a seat in the dining room. I looked into the bar area and decided I wanted to sit in there. There were a handful of people in the dining room, and a couple people in the bar. I was greeted by the very friendly bartender and I ordered up a Schlafly pale ale, which they had on tap.
So much on the menu sounded so good. I get a little skeptical with a restaurant that has a vast and varied menu. Those are usually the restaurants that can do everything well, but they don't do anything very well. I was sort of interested in trying their barbecue, but their comfort food - including a meat loaf entree - was sort of enticing.
I saw something that caught my eye at the bottom of one of the menu pages - the Perfect Pair. You could get two pieces of Southern fried chicken and either some pulled pork or a 1/3 slab of baby back ribs. Then they had the trifecta at the end - fried chicken, pulled pork AND a 1/3 slab of ribs. Oh, boy. I get to try a little bit of everything. And I got two sides to go along with it.
To my horror, I found that Outlaw Blues didn't feature baked beans as a side. A barbecue place that has no baked beans? What the hell is this? Baked beans are a staple in barbecue joints. Well, Outlaw Blues wasn't quite a "joint", but I would have thought they would have had baked beans. Instead, I took red beans and rice, and a side of pickled beets. (I don't see pickled beets on the menu very often. Cindy got me hooked on pickled beets when she'd bring home jars of them from her grandma years ago.)
The bartender, a petite Asian girl, came over to take my order. I ordered up the "trifecta" and she asked me, "What kind of chicken meat do you want? White or dark?"
Now, I'm a fully grown man. I don't have the faintest idea as to which pieces of the chicken are white or dark. All I know are "thighs", "wings", "legs", etc. I have no idea which is which. I've never learned the difference. I said, "Can I just get a couple of legs?" She said she'd make sure that's what I got.
It was a beautiful evening and Outlaw Blues features an outdoor dining area. I contemplated going out there, but I was comfortable at the bar and they had something on TV that was pretty interesting. Plus, the bartender - whose name I completely forgot - was very attentive. When my beer glass had one last swallow, she was over asking me if I needed another. Of course, there were only two other people sitting at the bar.
The bartender brought out my food. She said, "The cook gave you three legs. I hope that's OK." I told her I could live with it.
All right - where do I start? Well, I had to try the fried chicken first. The batter was flavorful and the legs were meaty. They were very good. I could have easily just gotten the chicken and been happy. I don't think the chicken was quite as good as what I had in Savannah, but it was still very good.
The pulled pork and the baby back ribs were very good. The ribs were meaty, as well, and the pulled pork was tender and moist. The barbecue sauce was nothing special. It was a tomato base and didn't have a lot of pizazz to it. It really did nothing to add to the flavor of both the pulled pork and baby back ribs.
The red beans and rice were - eh! Nothing special. But the pickled beets were absolutely wonderful. They were sweet and didn't have that earthy taste you get from some beets. And I was also served corn bread with maple butter. I'm not big on corn bread, but this was very good. The sweet maple butter was a wonderful complement to the bread.
All in all the meal was good to very good. Surprisingly, good to very good. Pleasantly surprisingly good to very good. I was a little disappointed in the barbecue sauce, plus the fact Outlaw Blues didn't offer baked beans as a side. The red beans and rice were nothing special. But the Southern fried chicken, pulled pork, and ribs were very good. The pickled beets were excellent. And I enjoyed the corn bread with the maple butter. While Outlaw Blues does a little bit of everything, they do it well above average. I was impressed with Outlaw Blues. I hope the Edwards make a go of it.
(Update - Well, it appeared the Edwards didn't make a go of Outlaw Blues. They closed the doors in March of 2011. However, the place reopened as the third location of Edwards' Ravenelli's Restaurant. They still have the great fried chicken on the menu, but all the barbecue and Cajun foods are now gone.)
I'm always on the hunt for good barbecue when I'm on the road. Sometimes it's tough to find a diamond in the rough. But when you do find one that gives you such a pleasant experience, it's almost a euphoric feeling. I got lucky on my initial visit to Brothers Barbecue, aka, Brothers Ribs, in the northwestern Chicago suburb of Palatine.
Brothers barbecue is tucked back in a strip mall called Regency Plaza in Palatine (see map). Years ago, I was averse to any restaurant in a strip mall. But I've since learned that it doesn't matter where the location is as long as the food is good. Brothers isn't all that big - it seats about 30 to 35 people. And there is no wait staff service. You order at the counter and one of the cooks will bring the food out to you when it's ready.
Brothers Barbecue has been open since 1990. Jimmy Findlay and his three brothers learned the art of barbecue from their father. They learned how to make barbecue sauce from their grandmother. They slow cook their meats in a convection smoker. In addition to ribs, brisket, pulled pork and other barbecue delights, Brothers Barbecue is also known for their rib tips - the tough and usually burnt end pieces of rib racks. Some people love rib tips. I don't care for them, myself.
I got into Brothers Barbecue around 8 p.m. one evening. I was the only one in the place. That's not a good sign, I thought. It turns out that most of their business is either take out or delivery (Thursday thru Sunday, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.). Probably one of the reasons they don't have many people in the dining area is because they don't serve alcohol. Another rib place that doesn't serve beer! What's this world coming to?
I soon found out that Brothers Barbecue is a "bring-your-own-beer" establishment. The guy at the counter said, "There's a Dominick's just over there that sells beer. You can go and get some beer and bring it in, if you want. One of the guys is over there now getting some beer for us when we close up at 9 p.m." I decided against beer for my initial visit to Brothers, opting for just water.
All around Brothers Barbecue dining room were signs touting their awards for best ribs and best sauce at various barbecue cook-off events held around the country. The signs all looked the same and it made me a little leery of their achievements. I suppose anyone can go to a printer and have them make signs that say anything. The food and their sauce would have to be their proof to me.
The menu is full of barbecue delights. You can get a dinner plate with barbecue and your choice of one side (beans, fries, cole slaw, etc.), or you can just get a dinner with the meat only. That made it easy for me as I wanted to try both their brisket and a half-slab of ribs. I ordered up a brisket dinner with baked beans, then a half-slab of baby back ribs - meat only.
While I waited for my meal to show up, a couple people came in to pick up carry-out orders. Then another couple showed up to eat in the dining room. The phone was ringing, so they were keeping busy.
The guy who took my order brought out the tray. It had a generous amount of beef brisket on the plate, along with a healthy slab of ribs. Actually, the beef brisket was sort of disappointing in that it wasn't the sliced brisket that I like, but rather a sort of pulled beef like you'd get if you cooked the brisket in a crock pot. They were moist, almost too moist. But the brisket did taste good.
The ribs were cooked perfectly. They had a great smoky taste that wasn't overpowering or distracting to the taste of the baby back rib meat. They were meaty and juicy - definitely not over-cooked.
But the star of the meal was their Brothers Barbecue Sauce (formerly called Grandma's Barbecue Sauce). It was a tomato-based sauce that was more tangy than sweet. It had a nice little peppery taste to it that gave it a nice after-kick after you swallowed the meat. I was sort of upset with myself that I didn't bring in a six-pack of beer to enjoy with the ribs.
As I continued with the meal, the more I got into it. The baked beans were very good, even more so when I added some of their barbecue sauce. And they also had great grilled Texas toast that I used to sop up some of the extra barbecue sauce. I'm telling you - the barbecue sauce was awesome!
When I finished my last bite, I was truly sorry the dinner was over. It had been a long time since I'd had great barbecue like what I had at Brothers Barbecue. The sauce was worthy of the praise it had supposedly received at various barbecue cook offs. It was so good that I bought a bottle to take home. But I screwed up - I only bought one bottle. It didn't last me very long after I brought it home. One bottle cost $3.49, two bottles are $5.99. Cindy didn't really care for the taste of it, but I certainly did. That's fine, as there will be more for me!
Getting more barbecue sauce from Brothers Barbecue will be my impetus to go back in very soon to have more ribs. Although I was disappointed in the brisket, it was still very good. But the ribs with their sauce were outstanding. I was very pleasantly surprised with my visit to Brothers Barbecue and I need to get back there as soon as I can.
I have to give thanks to Daniel Kim, who is a friend of a friend, and who used to live in Savannah, for giving me some good tips as to some of the better places to eat in Savannah while we were there. I always have a hankering for barbecue and Daniel highly recommended Johnny Harris for their ribs. Considering he was spot on with many of his other suggestions (and his suggestions coincided with other's suggestions), we took an evening to go to dinner at Johnny Harris.
The original Johnny Harris barbecue restaurant dates back to 1924 when a local Savannah man, Johnny Harris, opened what amounted to be a roadside shack on what was the outskirts of town at that time. Three years later, Harris was joined in business by Kermit "Red" Richardson. While Harris concentrated on the barbecue and making the sauce, Richardson was the cashier, dishwasher, janitor and part-time cook.
Business at Johnny Harris quickly grew and the old shack was soon to be too small. In the mid-30's, Harris and Richardson moved into their present day location on E. Victory Dr. (see map). Over the years, the restaurant has expanded with larger seating areas, a larger kitchen, plus a sauce production facility with a warehouse that ships over 800 cases of Johnny Harris barbecue sauce a month.
Johnny Harris died in 1942 and Richardson continued the business as a part-owner and manager. Red Richardson ended up buying out Johnny Harris' part of the business from his family in the mid-50's. Richardson died in 1969, but his wife continued to run the place with the help of their son, Phil, and their son-in-law, Norman Hecht. Hecht developed Johnny Harris' catering business which has the capability to serve up to 10,000 people at a function.
Today, Phil Richardson's daughter, Julie, and her husband, B.J., run the day-to-day operation at Johnny Harris. The restaurant is the oldest continuous restaurant in Savannah. That's saying a lot considering the age of the city (around 275 years).
It was after 8 p.m. when we made our way down to Johnny Harris. Being the middle of the week, there wasn't a lot of cars in the parking lot. We were seated in a booth in the large, somewhat circular dining room that featured a very high ceiling that went up to a point in the center. Hanging from the apex was a huge ceiling light. We were given menus by our waitress, Kim, a very personable and pleasant young lady who had a great sense of humor.
This booth was sort of isolated in that it was truly a booth. It was like sitting in a little room where the only opening was the way in and out of the booth. There was a window that looked outside. One the wall under the window was a little button with a weathered sign that said "Service" beside it. It looked like it had been pushed by a multitude of barbecue stained fingers over the years. Cindy said, "Oh, it's an old service button. I used to see these at old places back home years ago." I was sort of incredulous, so when Kim came back with our drinks I asked her what the button was for. She said, "Oh, well, that's to let me know that you all want somethin'!" I asked if it still worked (it looked like it may have been put in back in the 30's), and she said, "Well, sho' 'nuff! You all need anythin' at all, jus' push the button!" We immediately liked her.
Cindy said, "See? You thought I was kidding you!"
I just can't grasp the concept of having a button to call for service. Kim said that the more important customers were seated in booths years ago. She said, "So, you folks are all impo'tant tonight!"
Ribs are the most popular item at Johnny Harris, followed by their chicken - which you can get either fried or barbecued. They also feature fish and seafood on the menu - of which you can either broiled or battered and fried. There were a number of different types of steaks and chops featured on the menu, as well. And the appetizers included fried green tomatoes, fried mushrooms and fried asparagus. Jeez, it's a large wonder why people in the south aren't all 400 pounds!
I wanted barbecue, as did Cindy. They had a special that night - 1/2 slab of baby back ribs for $8.50. She also got some cornbread and macaroni and cheese as her sides. I wanted to try a couple different things so I got the combination 1/2 slab of baby back ribs/chopped pork butt. I also got mac and cheese and got some Savannah red rice, which is basically rice with some veggies chopped up and added.
The only barbecue sauce on the table was the Original Johnny Harris sauce. I poured a little out of the bottle onto my side plate and took a little nip. It was a true southern, mustard-vinegary blend, not sweet at all. I'm not overly keen on this type of barbecue sauce, but it's very big in the south - especially the Carolinas. It had the same deep red color that you find with other types of barbecue sauce. But it was more runny than thick. Here's Cindy in her capacity of a spokeswoman model for Johnny Harris' barbecue sauce.
Our food came out and I was given a generous portion of chopped pork butt and a smaller-sized half-rack of baby backs topped with a healthy ladle full of Johnny Harris barbecue sauce. The mac and cheese along with the Savannah red rice came in small bowls sitting on a plate. And in true Southern barbecue style, we each got slices of toasted white bread.
Now, the barbecue was good. Not outstanding, in my book, but still very good. I guess I'm used to the hickory smoked variety of barbecue with a more smokey, sweet tasting sauce. While it was a different taste to me, I can see why some people who were raised on this stuff keep coming back for it.
For dessert, we tried a piece of their Key Lime Pie. While it was nowhere near as good as what we had at Paula Deen's two restaurants the previous evenings, it was still good.
Before we left, we took a look around some of the corridors of the restaurant to see the pictures and autographs on menus of famous people who have eaten at Johnny Harris over the years. I was especially intrigued to see a number of autographs and pictures of old time Southeastern Conference football coaches who have dined in the restaurant. Oh, there were a number of celebrities who had autographed pictures or menus. But there just seemed to be an inordinate amount of former SEC football coaches featured on the wall at Johnny Harris.
When we were leaving, I looked at a case and found that they also had a hickory smoked barbecue sauce at Johnny Harris. I wondered if I could have had my choice with the hickory smoked sauce. I contemplated buying a bottle to try, but then decided against it.
After we got back from Savannah, I e-mailed Daniel Kim and thanked him for his suggestions of restaurants to visit in Savannah. I told him that while we ate at a number of great restaurants while on vacation, I would have to say the worst meal we had was at Johnny Harris. And I have to clarify that because the barbecue was very good at Johnny Harris, it's just that I'm not overly found of that heavy mustard-vinegar type of sauce. It's just that we ate at some outstanding restaurants during our stay in and around Savannah.
But Johnny Harris is truly an institution in Savannah and if you are going to spend some time in the area, you really should give it a try. The service was great, the food was good and we thought the prices were pretty reasonable. You should go if nothing more for the historical aspect of the restaurant and to experience old-style Southern barbecue.
Before Tweeter closed their doors in the Chicago area this past fall, I was talking with a couple three salespeople at their Lincoln Park location one day about good barbecue in the Chicagoland region. A couple of the guys were telling me about a place in far southwestern suburban Plainfield by the name of Baby Back Blues. I made it a point to give it a shot one day.
In 1998, Ken Faught and Jim Howley opened Baby Back Blues in a small strip mall in suburban Plainfield just off of Interstate 55 on Highway 30 (see map). Their concept was to serve some of the best Southern-style ribs this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. While Chicago ribs are usually cooked with the sauce on them, Faught decided that he wanted to do his ribs "Memphis-style" with a dry rub put on the meat before slow cooking them in a smoker over hardwood charcoal. Baby Back Blues then has a mild and a "hot" sauce that customers can put on the meat when they get served.
Here's a video courtesy of RibFest USA on Baby Back Blues featuring Ken Faught talking about how they do their ribs:
It was around 2 p.m. when I went into Baby Back Blues to get some lunch. There were a couple people just finishing their lunch when I came in, so it was well past the noontime rush. There was some good ol' time blues music coming from the speakers and a couple guys were behind the counter waiting to take my order. The menu at Baby Back Blues is fairly simple - they only have baby back ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket and pulled chicken. Along with that they have the regular barbecue joint fare of baked pinto beans, cole slaw, hand-cut fries and - as I was told - some supposedly outrageously great homemade macaroni and cheese.
It didn't take me long to figure out that I wanted to try the pulled pork and the brisket. But they were only available on sandwiches. Well, I figured I could order them on sandwich buns and then just eat the meat. That way I wouldn't get too stuffed.
When I stepped up to order, the guy asked me, "Have you been here before?"
I said, "No, I heard about this place from some other people. I'm from the Quad Cities."
He said, "Quad Cities! That's quite a haul for barbecue!"
I said, "Well, I'm just in here on business and I went a few miles out of my way to try you guys out."
I ended up ordering a small pulled pork sandwich and a small brisket sandwich. I got a side of baked pinto beans and even though I'm not a big mac and cheese fan, I decided to give that a try, as well.
The other guy behind the counter said, "Hey, since you've never been in before, would you like a sampling of our pulled chicken and our ribs?"
Well, I certainly couldn't say no. I hadn't had breakfast in anticipation of having barbecue for lunch, so I was fairly hungry at that point in time.
While Baby Back Blues isn't all that big - it seats, maybe 40 people - it's still a nice little place for being in business for 10 years. The smokey and mouthwatering smell of barbecue permeated the place, but it wasn't overwhelming to say the least. The only drawback to the place was that it didn't serve alcohol. That's a two-point demerit in my book. However, I was told that you could bring your own beer into the place, if you liked. The one point was put back on the scoresheet. If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you know that I think a barbecue joint without beer is a travesty.
The guy brought a couple plates of food to the counter for me. I got a bottle of the mild and a bottle of the hot sauce from the counter. Later, I found out that you were supposed to fill some plastic cups with the sauce and take them to the table. OK, rookie mistake.
I will say the ribs were very good. Nice, tender, still juicy and a very good flavor with the rub. I also liked the pulled pork, but was completely in love with the brisket. I'm not a big fan of barbecued chicken, but like the pulled pork, it was moist, tender and flavorful. The beans were nothing special, even after I spiced them up with the hot sauce - which wasn't very hot, in my book. But the mac and cheese side was awesome! It was cheesy with a great buttery aftertaste. Whoever told me the mac and cheese was great wasn't kidding.
Considering the hype the guys from Tweeter were giving Baby Back Blues, I was sort of expecting to be let down with the whole experience. But it was everything they said it would be and I was very pleasantly surprised with the food. When I was leaving, one of the guys said, "So, what did you think? Give me your honest answer."
As I've said in previous posts about the cuisine in Indianapolis, the area doesn't really have a culinary claim to fame like Kansas City barbecue, Omaha steaks or Chicago pizza. Actually, Indianapolis cuisine is a melting pot of good to above average restaurants where only a handful of places stick out. Barbecue isn't one of the things that immediately jumps into mind when I think of eating out in Indianapolis. But one of my dealers in Indy suggested I had to give Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q a try at some point.
Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q began 1999 when Rich Allen, a transplanted Texan, decided to start a catering company specializing in barbecue, much like the type of barbecue he was raised on in eastern Texas. The catering business went over tremendously and a couple years later Rich opened his first restaurant in Noblesville. He then opened a second location in Indianapolis (see map). Just recently, Allen moved Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q to a new location in Noblesville (see map). That was the location I went to on a rain swept Indiana night last fall.
The decor of Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q was reminiscent of an old style Texas roadhouse, lots of wood and a lot of pictures and memorabilia on the walls. The place was less than half full around 8:30 when I got in there. I was seated by a hostess who handed me a menu while I waited for my waitress to come over.
First - a side story to tell you...
Earlier this fall, a Texas-based chain of barbecue joints - Dickey's Barbecue - opened a location here in the Quad Cities (look for an upcoming entry on Dickey's in the future). My long-distant, yet local friend, Burt Gearhart, used to eat at Dickey's when he lived in Texas for a number of years. He called said of the opening that "heaven had come to the Quad Cities." I went to their web site to check the place out and I was appalled to see that they had no beer. How can you be a barbecue joint and not have beer? Or, at the very least, have a "Bring-Your-Own-Beer" policy. Burt told me that while they didn't show it on their on-line menu, rest assured that Dickey's did have beer.
Now, back to Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q. My waitress came around and asked if I'd like anything to drink while I looked at the menu. I said, "Boy, I'd love a cold beer. What do you have?"
She sort of stopped and said, "I'm sorry, but we don't have beer, sir."
I about came unglued. "No beer," I exclaimed in a retort. "What kind of barbecue place doesn't have beer?"
She explained that they hadn't secured their liquor license from the city of Noblesville as of yet. "We hope to get that sometime by the end of the month."
She then said, "Our Indianapolis location has beer."
I sort of looked at her and said, "But we aren't at the Indianapolis location." I can be such a penis-head sometimes.
I then asked, "How long you guys been open here?"
She said, "Well, we just opened last Thursday."
I said, "Thursday? Really?"
She said, "Yeah, but we moved from another location to this one. I guess the city council is dragging their feet on getting us our liquor license."
I said, "OK, that's fine. I'll just get a Coke."
It was obvious that she'd been asked about the beer situation.
Barbecue rules the menu at Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q. But they also offer burgers, steaks, appetizers and salads. I got to looking over some of the barbecue combinations. They had the Texas Two-Step and the Trio - you got four rib bones and your choice of either two (for the Two-Step) or three (for the Trio) different smoked meats. Dick's had pulled pork, brisket, sausage, chicken, turkey or ham to choose from. I took the Texas Two-Step with the ribs, pulled pork and brisket. Along with that, you got a choice of two of the 14 different side dishes Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q has to offer. I took the jalapeno ranch beans and the baked beans. I sort of wondered what the difference was between baked beans and the ranch beans.
I waited about 15 minutes before my food was brought out to me. The ribs were nice and meaty. And the portions of pulled pork and brisket were very generous. There was a difference between the baked beans and the ranch beans - the ranch beans are what I would call baked beans, while Dick's baked beans would be called "warmed up beans out of a can".
What I didn't care for, however, was Dick's chintzy nature when it comes to their barbecue sauce. She brought out two small containers of sauce - one their mild sauce and the other their spicy sauce. Now, I like a LOT of barbecue sauce on my meat. Plus I like to add it to my baked beans. And believe me, Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q's baked beans needed the help.
I asked for some more sauce and she brought out two more small containers. They were the size that some restaurants will give you for salad dressing. I wasn't happy with that at all. It's not fun when you have to be judicious with your barbecue sauce.
Still, the sauce wasn't bad. Their mild sauce was sort of a sweet-vinegar blend, while their spicy was - well, it was spicy! It was pretty good. It really zipped up the baked beans, which needed a lot of zippyness.
The jalapeno ranch beans were pretty good, as well. I added some of the mild sauce to the ranch beans and that helped them, too. I definitely liked the ranch beans more than the baked beans.
The brisket was very good. Nice big slices of smoked beef with a nice hickory flavor to them. And the pulled pork was also very good. It was very lean with little to no fat like you find in some other barbecue joint's pulled pork.
With tip, my bill came to a little over $24 bucks. I gave her an extra couple dollars above and beyond my normal tip for being such a dick to her when we were sparing over the beer issue. All in all, Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q was good, definitely not the best I've ever had, but it was above average. Even without the beer, Dick's Bodacious Bar-B-Q was worth the stop.
(Update February 2012 - The Noblesville location for Dick's Bodacious BBQ has closed and the only one that is still open is their downtown Indianapolis location.)
Since 1985, Dave Raymond has been making his distinctive barbecue sauce that was gleaned from a long time family recipe. In the mid-90's, along with Raymond's brother and a close friend, they began to market the sauce, called Sweet Baby Ray's, a name that Raymond's older brother gave him during pickup basketball games when they were younger.
Over the years, Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce showed up on grocery shelves across the Midwest. It has now grown to be the second best selling barbecue sauce in the nation. To be quite frank with you, Sweet Baby Ray's sauce is pretty middle of the road, if you ask me.
However, a few years ago, Raymond sold the sauce business. He continued to do catering, and participated in the annual "Taste of Chicago" food festival in Grant Park. In 2005, Raymond opened his first barbecue place - Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue - in suburban Wood Dale, IL (see map). A couple years later, Raymond opened a second location in suburban Elk Grove (see map).
Raymond employed chef Paul Papadopoulas to oversee the menu at his restaurants. Papadopoulas worked as an intern at NoLa, Emeril Lagasee's famous New Orleans restaurant. Papadopoulas eventually made his way to Chicago and worked as a chef at the Heaven on Seven restaurants. When he hired an intern who turned out to be Raymond's nephew, he found out that Raymond was looking to open a barbecue restaurant. Papadopoulas contacted Raymond and became the executive chef for Sweet Baby Ray's. Papadopoulas brought along a number of Cajun recipes with him to go with the barbecue menu.
It was a weekday evening when I was in the western suburbs of Chicago recently. I was looking for someplace new to give a try and I remembered seeing a Sweet Baby Ray's when I was driving near the hotel. Even though I'm not a big fan of their sauce, I wanted to give their barbecue a try. I ended up at the Wood Dale location and went inside for some food.
Sweet Baby Ray's Wood Dale location is pretty small, it only seats 36 people. (As an aside, I understand they've purchased property next to the Wood Dale location and are looking to expand the restaurant.) You order from the menu at the front counter and they'll bring it to your seat.
In addition to their barbecue platters, Sweet Baby Ray's sells a number of specialty sandwiches, including a burger, pulled pork sandwich, a shrimp po' boy, and a Cuban sandwich. And some of their side dishes were pretty interesting. In addition to the normal sides you find at most barbecue places, they also had red beans and rice, green chile macaroni and cheese, and a Cajun-style creamed corn dish.
I ordered the combo plate of brisket and pulled pork with a side of their baked beans and cole slaw (although the green chile mac and cheese sounded interesting). A piece of corn bread also came with the meal. I'm not big on corn bread, but it came with it so I took it. I got a cold beer while I waited at my table for the food.
About ten minutes passed before they brought out my dinner on a plate served on top of a tin tray. I wouldn't say the portions Sweet Baby Ray's served were huge, but ample enough for that evening. The beef brisket was tender and flavorful. And I liked the pulled pork, as well. The beans were OK, at best. I added a little bit of the Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce to the beans to try to give 'em a little bit of zip, but it didn't help. And the cole slaw was also OK, but nothing special.
Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue was good. Not the best I've ever had, but it was acceptable for the Chicago area. I don't know if they have any other flavors of Sweet Baby Ray's sauce. Something a little more spicy would have given the food a little more flavor. But on it's own, the beef and pork were good. My recommendation is to give it a try, but not to go out of your way to do so.
Business in the Twin Cities has been pretty tough for me over the past few years, but I was just able to land a new and good account in the city. During one of my meetings with the dealer located in the Uptown area of Minneapolis, I proposed we go out to dinner that evening. There's a lot of little restaurants in the area, but when he said, "We could go to Rudolphs", I eagerly said yes.
It had been, possibly, 20 years since I'd last been in Rudolphs, a restaurant on Lyndale Ave. (see map) that features ribs and other barbecued specialties. Actually, you can't call Rudolphs a rib joint - it's far from that. It's a very nice, somewhat upscale restaurant. And that's what the owner designed it to be when he first opened in 1975.
Jimmy Theros was a restaurant veteran in the Twin Cities working with his parents in a couple of places they owned. He knew that people in the area loved barbecue. But at the time in the mid-70's, most of the barbecue joints in the cities were just that - joints. And most of them were in places that weren't in the greatest sections of town. Theros envisioned a more elegant setting for barbecue, something that would be comfortable and non-threatening to diners. It's more of a supper club than a rib joint.
In 2002 when Jimmy Theros decided to retire at the age of 74, his son, Charlie, took over the day-to-day operations of Rudolphs. Charlie actually made Rudolphs more of a entertainment destination with revamping the bar area and adding bar specials to the mix, and adding a D.J. on the weekends.
Rudolphs is named after the great silent screen star, Rudolph Valentino. Many of the pictures on the wall of Rudolphs are of old movie stars and movie scenes. But the lighting is subdued, the chairs are comfy and the tables are big.
We got into Rudolphs around 8:30 one evening and were shown to a table in the dining room. It was a nice night in Minneapolis that evening with a lot of people out and about. The bar area was nearly full and the dining area was a little over half-full when we sat down.
While barbecue is the main focus at Rudolphs, the menu also features steaks, seafood and pasta, something you definitely don't see at most barbecue-based restaurants. Many of the barbecue entrees are named after movie stars or characters in movies. One of the items featured on the menu was the Godzilla - 1 1/2 racks of ribs, 6 pieces of chicken, cornbread, cole slaw and garlic mashed potatoes for $64 bucks. I understand they get a few takers of that meal from time to time.
Since it had been a long time since I'd been to Rudolphs, I wanted to try the barbecue again. I ordered the hickory smoked brisket, topped with Rudolphs sweet and smoky sauce. It came with a side of their garlic mashed potatoes that were then topped with onion straws. And their gumbo intrigued me, so I asked for cup of that, as well.
My guest got the Ron Burgundy - named after Will Ferrell's character in "Anchorman" - which consisted of three spare ribs and a strip steak barbecued and brushed with Rudolphs' sauce, then sliced before serving. He also ordered up a side of the cole slaw with the meal. He said, "It's a big helping, so you can help me eat it."
When the waitress brought out the cup of gumbo, that's exactly what I got. It was served in a large coffee cup. And the gumbo was very good. It had a lot of flavor to it, but I added a little "zing" to the taste by throwing some Tabasco into the gumbo for good measure.
When our main entrees came out, I was ready for the meat. My guest's strip steak, sliced in diagonal pieces, was cooked a perfect medium rare. My brisket was OK, I can't say it was great, but it was more than edible. I got some of Rudolphs' hickory smoke sauce to put on the brisket and it helped. But Rudolphs' sauces are no where near being as spicy as I like my barbecue sauce to be.
The garlic mashed potatoes with the onion straws were good, although it could have been a little more garlic-flavored for my tastes. The cole slaw we shared was good, too, but it was nothing outstanding.
Afterward, I was definitely full and happy with my barbecue fix. With beers and food, the bill came to a little over $65 bucks before tax and tip. But it was everything that I remembered Rudolphs to be. Good, serviceable barbecue in a nice setting.
While I'm sure there is better barbecue in the Twin Cities, it's probably not going to be on the same par as Rudolphs' ambiance or food selection. There's a reason Rudolphs has been going strong for over 33 years and a lot of it has to do with the service, the food selection and the comfortable nature of the restaurant. It truly is a staple of the Twin Cities' food scene.
I put on a new dealer in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago recently. I offered to take him out for dinner after we consummated the opening order and he said, "Do you like barbecue?" Oh, man! Do I! He suggested a place not far from his place called Smokin' T's Barbecue.
Tom Stoner and Tom Gescheidle - the "T's" of Smokin' T's - are both graduates of the Culinary Institute of America. While at a wedding in Texas, both Stone and Gescheidle professed a love for barbecue of all types - Memphis-style with the dry rub; North Carolina-style with the pulled pork and vinegar based sauces; Texas-style with great beef brisket; and St. Louis-style pork ribs. They decided to open a restaurant that featured a little bit of everything that is holy in barbecue. Smokin' T's was born in 2007.
From the outside, the place doesn't look like it would be a good barbecue joint. It's situated in a cottage-type building that is part of a shopping area in a growing section of the Long Grove/Kildeer area at the NW corner of Old McHenry Road and Route 22 (Half Day Road) near the Kemper Lakes Golf Course (see map). We walked in around 6:30 and the place was half full. It isn't all that big - about 30 to 35 seats total. But it has nice decor and is definitely family friendly.
The only problem is that Smokin' T's doesn't sell beer and I really could have used a beer after a long day and before the drive back to the hotel. Oh well... That's OK, I could get a Coke with my dinner.
The menu is posted on a board near the front counter. A pleasant young girl asked us if we'd been in before. My new dealer said, "Oh, yes. Many times. But this is my friend's first time here."
The girl then proceeded to tell me about Smokin' T's and how they don't try to "regionalize" one style of barbecue. She said, "We have a little bit of everything."
And they certainly did. Ribs, pulled pork, brisket, chicken - they had a fine selection of different styles of barbecue from around the nation. My new dealer suggested trying the combo platters - two, three or four different types of meat with two sides. I ordered a combo platter with the ribs, pulled pork and Smokin' T's "Chicago" version of brisket - sliced Black Angus beef short ribs. I also got the baked beans and the cole slaw. My dealer got the exact same thing, only he got the homemade corn pudding and fries.
We got our food and sat down at a table. On the table they have three different types of sauce - a North Carolina vinegar barbecue sauce; a Memphis mustard sauce with black pepper; and Smokin' T's "original" sauce which was sweet with chopped onions. I'll have to say the North Carolina vinegar sauce was great on the pulled pork and the ribs.
The St. Louis-style ribs were sort of fatty and boney. I wasn't impressed with them at all, although the taste of the meat was fine. My dealer also said he'd had better ribs in Smokin' T's before. But the pulled pork was just excellent. Great taste, moist, tender. Adding the North Carolina vinegar sauce just helped accentuate the smoked taste.
And the Black Angus beef short rib brisket was double excellent. Also very tasty, tender and had a nice smoked flavor to them. The Smokin' T's "original" sauce went well with the brisket.
Smokin' T's baked beans were OK, nothing special. Even adding the original sauce or the mustard sauce didn't zip 'em up enough. And I didn't care much for the cole slaw which seemed sort of bland. My dealer said, "Oh, man. Get the corn pudding next time. It's out of this world. It's an old recipe that one of the guys has had in his family for years and years."
OK, duly noted for the next visit. And there will be a next visit. I wouldn't call Smokin' T's all that cheap - it was over $40 bucks with drinks and tax. But the portions for the meat were huge. It was definitely worth the price compared to other barbecue places I've been to. So, yes, Smokin' T's gets a double "thumbs up" from this barbecue connoisseur.
It had been years since I'd been to Arthur Bryant's barbecue joint in Kansas City (see map) that I wanted to try it again. I still think Jack Stack Barbecue is the best in Kansas City, but something was just calling me the day I stopped in Arthur Bryant's original location recently. I had to work a dealer event that evening and wanted to have a big lunch as I knew I probably wouldn't be eating again that day.
Arthur Bryant's is world renown in that heads of state, celebrities and average "Joe's" have been eating there since 1930. Arthur Bryant (right) took barbecue out of the dingy back room place in Kansas City and helped transform the town into one of the select cities for barbecue in the world.
Henry Perry was known as the "Father of Barbecue" in Kansas City. His barbecue place was one of many that sprang up during the Depression. One of his workers was a guy by the name of Charlie Bryant. Charlie's brother, Arthur, came to visit him one time and fell in love with Perry's place. After Henry died, Charlie took over the running of the business with Arthur at his side. When Charlie died, Arthur took over. Tons of barbecue places have come and gone in Kansas City over the years, but Bryant's was really the first one that made it available to the masses.
Arthur Bryant died in his restaurant in 1982 at the age of 80, doing what he loved doing the most. Bryant's closed down after that, but was revitalized two months later by two investors - Gary Berbiglia and Bill Rauschelbach. Both continue to run the original one at 18th and Brooklyn, as well as two other locations around Kansas City - all of which hold the same traditions of smoked foods, tangy sauces and large portions that Arthur held so dear.
It was around 2 p.m. when I got into Arthur Bryant's. It had been - oh, God - about 18 years since I was last in the place. And it was exactly the same as it was before. You have a serving line where you take a tray and order directly with the guy who serves up your food. The menu is posted on a board above the serving area.
I remember the beef brisket sandwich being not only very good but very big. I ordered up a brisket sandwich with fries for $9.35. For fun, I decided to try some of their baked beans for an additional $2.25. The guy behind the counter grabbed a handful of succulent, thin shaved beef brisket and formed kind of a ball of meat on top of a piece of white bread. Then he topped it off with another slice of white bread and a shit load of fries.
I grabbed a couple of beers and the bill came to about $18.00. Expensive, but what the hell. It was Arthur Bryant's and it was good barbecue.
First of all, there's no way you can eat a beef brisket sandwich with your hands at Arthur Bryant's. You pour a little sauce on the top and dig in with a knife and fork. The sauces at Arthur Bryant's are OK - nothing special. The Original Sauce has a vinegar base to it and it pretty runny. The Rich and Spicy sauce is more thick, but I didn't think it was all that spicy. Still, I liked it better than the Original.
And the amount of food - oh, shit! There's a good pound of beef brisket and a like amount of fries. The bowl of beans wasn't all that big, but it was enough. I poured some of the two different sauces in with the beans and tried it that way. They were good, but not outstanding.
But the brisket was great. I'm a sucker for a good brisket. It was tender and juicy with the right amount of smoky flavor. Even though I never came close to finishing half the fries and beans, I made damn sure there wasn't an morsel of beef left on my plate.
Actually, I think of Arthur Bryant's as more of a tourist trap these days than a top notch barbecue joint. The beef brisket sandwich was very good, however. I would go back there in a heartbeat just for that alone. And I'll probably do just that. Jesus, my stomach is doing back flips as I write this!
A couple days ago, the Chicago Tribune featured an article on Kansas City Barbecue. The article talked about the history of Kansas City style barbecue and also talked about some of the big names of barbecue in town, including Gates BBQ, Arthur Bryant's, and my personal favorite, Fiorella's Jack Stack. It also talks about some of the lesser known and up-and-coming barbecue places in Kansas City.
There's also some recipes included in the article, as well as a series of photographs from some of the Kansas City area barbecue establishments. And click here to see a streaming video interview with Ollie Gates, the son of the founder of Gates BBQ.
The only problem I have with the article is that the author is geographically challenged. She states that Kansas City is halfway between Texas and Memphis - two bastions of barbecue. Well, last time I looked on a map, Little Rock, Arkansas, was halfway between Memphis and Texas. Kansas City is directly north of Texas and northwest of Memphis. But that's neither here nor there when you get into the "meat" of the article.
If you're reading the linked article around lunch time, don't blame me if your stomach sends out hunger pangs. The pictures and the story made me want to get back to Kansas City as soon as I can.
Last fall, I wrote about the side trip I made to Elmer's Authentic Texas BBQ outside of Battle Lake, MN here. I had met the owner, Tim Nanson, at the River Rockin' Ribfest in Davenport earlier in the summer. I was on my way to Fargo in the middle of October, so I wanted to stop in and have dinner at his place.
Being that Elmer's Authentic Texas BBQ is smack-dab in the middle of the western Minnesota lakes region (see map), they cater primarily to people who have summer homes in the area. They go to a limited operation schedule after the end of September. It so happened they were closed that night when I got there. I was bummed.
During my recent trip up to North Dakota, I decided to stop in at Elmer's and surprise Tim and have dinner. I made it around 6 p.m., but it turned out that I was the one who was surprised.
Oh, Elmer's was open, but I was greeted by this message on their marquee out front. New ownership. Hmm... I wonder what happened to Tim? And closed on Tuesday? It was a Monday night so I was lucky. Geez, I would have been pissed had I come all this way out of my way on a Tuesday night.
I went in and was greeted by a cute little blond girl who showed me to a booth. I noticed immediately the decor was a little more bright than when I was there last fall. I said to the girl, "So, Tim doesn't own this any longer?"
She said, "No, my older sister, Mary, owns it now."
I asked what happened to Tim and she said, "He moved back out to California to be closer to his family."
Mary Wilson, who worked with the original owner, Elmer Neumann, when he first moved to the Battle Lake area from Texas, bought the place from the Nanson's earlier this year. She also worked there when Tim Nanson ran the place. She has a partner in the business, Matt Oothoudt.
When Mary first opened this year, she had Elmer come back in and help her get started, showing her smoking techniques, changing the sauce back to Elmer's original recipe and just making sure things were going OK. She also changed the decor a bit, repainting the walls to a lighter color and making the place a little more presentable.
I ordered up a beer and took a look at the menu. In addition to the various barbecue items, they'll do steaks and burgers at Elmer's. Well, I wanted barbecue, but I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted brisket or ribs. Suddenly, I found on the menu where I could order both - the combination platter of a quarter pound of brisket and a half rack of baby back ribs with a choice of two sides for $15.95. Sold! For my two sides, I took baked beans and onion rings.
When the platter came to me, I was a little underwhelmed with the portions of meat. The half rack of ribs was actually only about 5 or 6 bones, and the quarter pound of brisket was only three slices. They were very good, though. And the sauce was very good, as well. Except they only give you a small container of sauce - they don't keep it on the table.
I liked Tim Nanson's sauce, but thought it could have had a little kick to it. I bought some of his sauce at the ribfest last year and I did some experimentation. I added a tablespoon of garlic powder and a quarter teaspoon of cayenne to the sauce. I thought it picked it up tremendously. Well, Mary Wilson's sauce, supposedly the original Elmer's recipe, was even better. It was much more thick than Tim's sauce. It did have that nice little after kick to it, and had a distinctive black pepper taste. And it was served warm. Maybe that's why they didn't keep any on the table.
The baked beans were OK, but were better when the sauce was added. And the onion rings were also, OK. Nothing special. Actually, they were a little cold when they came out.
I saw that they sold the sauce in pint, quart or gallon sizes. I asked the waitress if I could get a quart of the sauce and she said it was no problem. Well, the problem was that she came out with a styrofoam quart cup of the barbecue sauce with a plastic lid on top. Since I was traveling and had another 1800 miles to drive that week, I thought, "Oh, great. One sudden stop and that's going to be all over the car." But when I got to the hotel that night, I went to the front desk and had them use packing tap to keep the lid on. There was no spillage and I transferred the sauce to a quart jar when I got home and it's resting comfortably in the refrigerator.
Being that Elmer's Authentic Texas BBQ is about 35 miles off the interstate, it's definitely out of the way when you're going from Minneapolis to Fargo. I don't know if I'll be back through, but I wanted to try it at least once. But if you're in the western Minnesota area on vacation, and you don't mind a little drive, Elmer's Authentic Texas BBQ is worth the trip. Based on the amount of people in there on a Monday night, they must do some pretty good business in the summertime.
I've always wanted to smoke a brisket on my Weber "bullet" smoker. I knew that it was somewhat labor intensive and tremendously time consuming even before I bought my first brisket. But with Cindy in Europe and a lot of time on my hands, I decided to tackle making one over the weekend.
I bought a 12.5 lb. brisket from The Olde Smokehouse here in Davenport a couple days prior to smoking it up. Actually, the brisket was the smallest one they had. I thought, "Wow! This is a severe piece of meat! I'll be eating on this for days!"
Before I got started, I contacted Rick Knight in suburban St. Louis, an old friend and colleague who grew up in Texas, and who has made a number of briskets over the years. He gave me his family rub recipe for the brisket:
1/4 cup Chili powder
1 tbs Paprika
1 tbs Salt
2 tbs Cracked Black Pepper
1 tbs Oregano
1 tsp Coriander
1 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Onion Powder
Mix together in a bowl, then sprinkle and pat the mixture all over the brisket - more on the non-fat side. Wrap the brisket up in aluminum foil and let it sit overnight in the fridge.
Then he told me, "The secret is actually the spray concoction. Some barbecue guys will say never to open the lid when you're smoking. But whenever I add coals or wood chips to the fire, I'll always open the top and spray this stuff on the brisket to help keep it moist."
The spray is pretty simple:
1 cup Cider Vinegar
1/2 cup Bourbon (Rick said the original family recipe called for beer. "I like the taste Bourbon adds, but use what you wish." I went with the bourbon. Jack Daniel's, at that.)
1 tbs Worcestershire Sauce
1 tbs Olive Oil
Mix together in a measuring cup and pour into a triggered spray bottle.
The problem with cooking a brisket that size is the time it takes to cook. Rick said that at 180 to 200 degrees (F), figure around 1 1/2 hours per pound for cooking time. Cooking it at too high of a heat will really dry it out, even if you have a water pan in the smoker and you're spraying the meat periodically. Geez, at 12.5 pounds and 200 degrees, that's 17 to 19 hours of cooking! I gotta sleep sometime!
I put the brisket on at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. Once again, I used a combination of hardwood charcoal and Kingsford charcoal along with soaked mesquite wood chips. After the fire got up to about 250, I put the brisket on the grill, still in the aluminum foil, fat side up. I pulled off the aluminum foil on top and let it go. And, once again, I had trouble regulating the heat. I was able to get it down to about 200 degrees at about 2:00 a.m. and decided I'd go to bed, setting my alarm for 4:30 a.m. to come back out and check it.
I actually woke up about 4:00 a.m. and went outside. The temperature had risen to 250 degrees again. I thought, "Geez, at this rate, it will be done by 9:30 in the morning!"
I shut down all the bottom vents, sprayed the meat with the bourbon/cider mixture, added more water to the water bowl, added more mesquite, and went back to bed - this time setting my alarm for 7:00 a.m.
7:00 a.m. came and I went out to check it. By this time it had gotten down to 170 degrees. I added more hardwood charcoal, added more mesquite, added more water, sprayed the brisket, opened the bottom vents a little bit, and went back to bed for a couple of hours.
By the time 9:30 rolled around, it was cooking along at about 200 degrees. Oh, it would fluctuate plus or minus 10 degrees from that point for awhile, but it was averaging about 190 for the rest of the day.
I checked the temperature of the meat at 12:30 p.m. and it registered 140 degrees. Rick said that he usually pulls it off at 160 to 180 degrees. But for the last couple of hours, he covers it with aluminum foil and allows it to cook like that. Here's what it looked like after cooking for 12 hours. I quit adding mesquite to the fire at this point.
The rest of the afternoon was spent regulating the heat while simultaneously dodging large rain drops from pop-up thundershowers in the area. I had some friends coming over to help me eat the thing that evening and everyone started to show up around 3:30. I had just put the aluminum foil over the brisket when everyone began to arrive, spraying it down and adding one last bit of hardwood charcoal to keep the heat going down the stretch.
In the meantime, I made a great appetizer consisting of sausage and cheese-stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon on one of my Weber grilles. They turned out great. I'll share that recipe with you in the coming days.
Along about 5:15, nearly 17 hours after I first put the brisket on, I took its temperature and it was between 165 and 170 degrees. So, I pulled the brisket off the grill. I took it inside and let it set for about 15 minutes before cutting into it.
When I began to cut into it, the thinner end of the meat just began to fall apart. It was so moist and tender. The fatter end, under the remaining layer of fat (that I cut off before I carved the meat) was not quite as tender, but I could carve slices out of that end with no trouble. So about half of it ended up as shredded brisket and the other half sliced brisket. The perfect combination.
I served it with a big bowl of my famous Cold Fusion Baked Beans infused with some chopped smoked pork I made up a few days before on the smoker, some Texas Toast and a variety of barbecue sauces. There were six of us and we dug in.
Oh, man! Was it great. Great brisket, great baked beans, ice cold beer. The rain had gone away and it was a beautiful evening, so we sat on the deck. We were in man heaven.
Before we all got our food, I thought, "Man, I'm going to have a lot of meat and beans left over." Turned out I didn't have to worry. After second helpings, we were down to a few slices of brisket left, of which I promptly threw into the refrigerator; and just a small pint container-sized portion of the beans. It went over extremely well.
Next time I do a brisket, it will be for afternoon and not evening consumption. That will allow me to put the brisket on at 7 or 8 p.m. the night before. Then I can regulate the heat for overnight cooking - getting more than 2 hours of sleep at a time, I hope. I was pretty tired - and extremely full - when I went to bed last night.
But, boy, for my first brisket ever, it was outstanding!
I've always been a Kingsford Charcoal kind of guy when it comes to cooking on my various Weber grilles. I know how long it takes to get the coals up to heat, and how to vary the temperature to get the meat to cook just right.
After my recent blog entry regarding Smoked Chopped Pork, a friend of mine from Atlanta, Eric Van Fossen, contacted me and asked me why I never use hardwood charcoal. Eric is in the advertising industry and he had the Royal Oak account a few years ago. He learned the differences between hardwood and Kingsford-type charcoal favor the hardwood chunks. Most notably, hardwood charcoal cooks longer, burns hotter and is void of that petroleum taste you can get from low priced charcoal briquets.
(As an aside, about the only time I've ever experienced a petroleum taste on steaks or chops is when I've cooked them on high and direct heat. That's why I prefer the "low and slow" and indirect method of cooking.)
The biggest problem is that hardwood charcoal is expensive. And for as often that I cook on the grill, it would almost be cost prohibitive for me to exclusively do hardwood charcoal.
Right now, I can get two - 22 lb. bags of Kingsford at Sam's Club for $11.68 a two-pack. That's about 27 cents a pound. They last me about six to eight weeks.
After going back and forth with Eric in a couple three e-mails, I decided to try and find some hardwood charcoal. I had to look no further than the greatest hardware store in the world (in my opinion) K&K Hardware in Bettendorf, IA (see map). They had a 10 lb. bag of Qik Joe Natural Hardwood Charcoal for $8.99. Ouch! That's 90 cents a pound. Right there, I knew I wouldn't be using hardwood charcoal all that regularly.
I'd picked up a 5.5 lb. prime rib roast from Weber Meats the day before and decided to put it on the smoker on a Sunday afternoon. I added the hardwood charcoal to the smoker and got the chunks up to heat. While that was going on, I took the prime rib roast and covered the top with a rub that consisted of garlic powder, cracked black pepper and some Urzi's Italian Seasoning (dried basil, parsley, marjoram, oregano, sage, dehydrated garlic and dehydrated red pepper).
As the fire got hot, I added some water-soaked hickory wood chunks, then put the roast on the grill and turned the vents nearly all the way closed.
Well, I couldn't get the heat to go down. It got down to about 250 (F), but it was about 80 degrees higher than I wanted it to cook. After futzing with the vents for about 15 minutes and not getting the temperature to go any lower than about 240 (F), I ended up closing the vents on the top and bottom for about 45 minutes. I then opened the top vent slightly and one of the bottom vents a bit and checked the temp. It was 170 (F) inside the "bullet".
I let the roast cook between 170 and 190 (F) for about three hours before wrapping the roast in aluminum foil for the final two hours and raising the temperature to 220. This is what it looked like on the grill before I covered it in foil.
I let it cook for about six hours total - including the first hour of screwing around with the temperature. I brought the prime rib roast in the house and let it cool on the counter top for about 15 minutes. I was a little concerned because there weren't any juices coming from the roast as it sat on the cooking tray.
But my fears were quelled when I began to carve the roast. The juices POURED out of it and it was a perfect medium rare in the middle. And, oh, the taste. With the seasoning rub, mixed with the hickory smoke flavor, it was one of the better meals I've ever made on a grill or smoker.
However, I can't really say for sure the hardwood charcoal helped with the taste. I did have some problems with regulating the temperature. But once that got settled down, it seemed to go pretty well. As Eric said, the hardwood charcoal did last a long time and didn't ash up like Kingsford charcoal would. But using Kingsford with the smoker, I've never had that petroleum taste, either.
I'm going to have to try some different things on the grill with hardwood charcoal before I can declare it better than cooking with charcoal briquets. While I'm not too thrilled at the price of hardwood charcoal, it's still an interesting way to cook. I know there are some who swear by it, but - for me - the jury is still out.
I'm really starting to love the Weber Smoky Mountain smoker I got a couple months ago. The last couple things I've made on it have been pretty damn good. A couple weeks ago, I did some racks of baby back ribs on it. Other than the fact that I could have cooked them a little slower at a lower temperature, they turned out great.
Last week I smoked a whole pork butt on the Weber and then chopped it up for sandwiches. It turned out great, as well. And I wanted to share this with you today.
Cindy doesn't eat pork very often, which causes a major consternation for me - mainly because I love pork on a grill. I'm not bragging when I say the best thing I cook on a grill is a good ol' fashioned Iowa pork chop, usually with indirect heat over a pan of water to keep 'em moist and tender.
Sometimes, I'll make a pork chop for me and a chicken breast for her. She said not eating pork has something to do with her blood type - or at least that's what this "witch doctor" from Moline told her a few years ago. After she eats pork, she'll say that it made her feel "woozy" and out of whack. She's convinced that pork causes her to feel like that.
I told her that I wanted to smoke a pork butt - the shoulder part of the pig - and then chop it up for sandwiches. While she didn't do cartwheels when I told her this, she didn't say no.
I got a 4.75 lb. pork butt from the store and brought it home. I let it set on the counter for about a couple hours raising the temperature of the meat to room temperature. Then I made up the following concoction for the rub:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tblsp. paprika
2 tblsp. garlic powder
2 tblsp. cracked black pepper
1 tblsp. onion powder
(To make it spicy - add a teaspoon of cayenne powder.)
Mix all together in a bowl and set aside.
I started the fire in the Weber "Bullet" and let the coals get up to speed. As soon as I was happy with the way the coals were burning, I dumped a bunch more on top.
(As an aside - I never try to add more coals to the fire once the meat has been put on the grill. The initial burning of the charcoal sometimes adds a "petroleum" taste to the meat if you add charcoal as you're cooking.)
Then I put the top on, closed the air ducts and got the temperature down below 200 degrees (F). I went into the house and patted the rub mixture all over the pork butt. I placed the pork butt - fat side up - on a large piece of aluminum foil on the grill with the foil "bowled" around the pork butt so it would keep the juices from flowing into the water below. I added some pre-soaked (in water) wood chips - a combination of maple, apple and cherry wood - onto the fire.
After I got the temperature regulated to hover around 170 to 190 degrees (F), I just let it go. I checked it every 45 to 60 minutes, adding more wood chips from time to time, and either boosting or lower the temp via the opening or closing of the air ducts at the bottom and top of the "Bullet", making sure it didn't go over 200 (F).
I read somewhere the way to smoke a pork butt is for every pound the roast is, that's one hour of smoking at 225 to 250 (F). I'm a proponent of the "low and slow" method of smoking, which meant that for a nearly 5 lb. pork butt, it should take about 6.5 to 7 hours at an average of 180 (F).
For the last hour and a half of cooking, I enclosed the pork butt shoulder in aluminum foil to help keep the moisture from escaping. After nearly 7 hours of smoking, I checked the internal temperature and it was a tad under 150 (F). Time to take it off.
Here's a picture of what it looked like on the smoker before I took it off. (Click to enlarge)
Now, my friend Scott Schroeder asked me after seeing pictures of the beef tenderloin I did at Thanksgiving last year, why in the world would I take pictures of what I make on the grill? Actually, it's more of a tease for my Canadian colleagues - all of whom just love beef, pork, barbecue, etc. I e-mailed the photos just to tease them and some other friends, as well.
Everyone was jealous...
Here's a picture of the pork butt just as I was getting ready to cut off the top fatty portion before chopping it up. The top fatty portion had cooked down to about 1/4" to 1/3" in depth after being about 1/2" to 2/3" before cooking. And because the meat is so tender, the layer of fat is very easy to cut off. You can almost peel it off the top of the pork butt.
And talk about tender - I cut off a chunk of the meat and it melted in my mouth. Oh baby!! It was just killer. Then I began to just take chunks and chop them into small pieces, shredding some along the way. It was literally pulling apart in some places on the pork butt.
And here's what it looked like - the big pile of meat sitting in it's own juices ready to serve.
Cindy got home from her class soon thereafter and we had sandwiches. Topped either with barbecue sauce or HP Sauce, the smoked chopped pork was just outstanding on a bun. Sometimes I even surprise and amaze myself.
As I said, Cindy doesn't like to eat pork, but she sure devoured the sandwich. She said, "My God! This is great!" And to show how much she liked it, she ended up taking some of the meat and a bun to work TWICE in the days after I made it up. And she never once complained about being woozy or out of sorts after eating this pork.
I asked her over this last weekend if she liked the smoked chopped pork and she said, "Yeah, I really did. You need to make that again."
I'm getting a lot of confidence working with the Weber smoker that I'll definitely do another one, soon. Only the next time, it will be bigger!
Since I got an advance copy of the new Weber cookbook "Charcoal Grilling - The Art of Cooking with Live Fire", I've tried a few recipes and gotten ideas for a number more. But one part of the book deals primarily with the smoking of meats - ribs, roasts, brisket, etc.
I've always wanted to smoke a brisket, but have never done so. One of the recipes in the "Charcoal Grilling" book is from a guy from the state of Washington, Jim Minion, who was profiled in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He's famous for the "Minion Method" of smoking because you can cook the food up to 20 hours using the same briquettes you started out with. Jim's recipe is "Jim's All-Night Brisket". His cooking method allows you to start a brisket at night, go to bed and let it cook overnight, and be ready to serve it the next afternoon.
Throughout the pork and beef parts of the "Charcoal Grilling" book, there's references to Weber's Smokey Mountain Smoker Cooker. The Weber smoker has a porcelain coating over heavy duty grade steel. It has two 18 1/2" diameter racks so you can cook two different items in the smoker. There's a one gallon water bowl that sits just below the racks and a cooking bin for the charcoal in the bottom. Weber smoker enthusiasts affectionately call it "The Bullet" because of it's cylindrical shape.
I did some homework on smokers to see what else was out there. I checked some web sites including a web site called the Virtual Weber Bullet, the best site on the internet for all things connected to the Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker Cooker. All in all, I read enough to convince myself that I really needed a Smokey Mountain smoker.
Now, I've had a smoker before. My dad won what was called a "7 in 1" smoker one time years ago, and he gave it to me because he never used it. But it was a gas smoker and a pain in the ass to work with. It wasn't built very well and I was never happy with the results.
My good friend, Dave Haack, offered to get me a smoker for a housewarming gift when we moved in our current house, but I turned him down. I told him that I could do a lot of the same things on a regular Weber grill that I could with a smoker.
Well, I can and I can't. The key thing with a smoker is that you get the direct smoke and steam from the water reservoir going directly into the meat. Cooking indirectly on a Weber Grill allows you to add moisture while cooking, but it doesn't have the same effect as a smoker would.
The next thing was finding a Smokey Mountain smoker, aka the "Bullet". When I looked them up on the internet I was blown away to see these things retailed for $249.00! Holy shit! They're proud of these damn things! I was expecting them to be about $79 bucks or so.
Somehow, I found a web site called "Webergrillschicago". They had a special going on for the "Bullet" and were selling them for $199. It just so happened that I had to go into Chicago the next day with a rental van to pick up a pair of speakers and an audio rack from a couple of dealers, so I thought I'd call up the place and see if they still had the smokers.
It turned out the web site is run by a company called Waring Industrial Tools. That's right, it's a tool company in the Lincoln Square area on the north side of Chicago (see map). I called the place up and I asked the guy if he had any left at that price. He said he did, but only a couple. I asked him if he'd hold one for me and offered to give him a credit card number to do so. He said, "Just give me your name and tell me about what time you'll be in and I'll hold it for you."
So I gave him my name and told him I'd be in around 2 p.m. the next day.
I walked into the place just before 2 and the guy behind the counter said, "You're Will from the Quad Cities, right?"
I sort of stopped, looked around the place, then looked back at him. I said, "Yeah, how did you know?"
He said, "I'm a good guesser. Actually, you said you would be driving a van and be here around 2 o'clock."
As he was writing up the ticket, I asked him how a tool dealership became a Weber Grill dealer. He said, "Oh, just something extra to do."
I asked him why they had such a great price on the Weber smokers. He said they got a special price on them from Weber and decided to pass it along to the customers. I asked him if they sold a lot of Weber grills. "Oh, yeah. We don't sell many this time of year, but come the season, we're shippin' 'em all over the place."
Because the weather was so crappy for a couple weeks, I left the smoker in the box after I got it home. Finally, it looked like the weather was going to get nicer a couple weekends ago, so Cindy went out and got some country-style pork ribs. I put the smoker together in about 20 minutes (very easy to do), and we got things set up to do our first meal on the smoker.
I did a rub for the ribs and got the smoker fired up. I put them on around 3 p.m. and threw some hickory chips on the fire. Everything was going well, until I realized 4 hours later that the water had literally boiled out long before the ribs were done. I forgot to keep putting water in the pan. The ribs turned out too dry. Close to the bone where there was still moisture, they were great. On the ends, tough and dry.
Last Sunday, Cindy's dad, his lady friend and Cindy's son came down from Cedar Rapids for the day. I went out and got a 5 lb. pork roast fully intending to smoke it in the "Bullet" that afternoon. I prepped the roast with a rub of garlic, black pepper, kosher salt and Italian herbs and spices.
This time, I made double damned sure I had water in the pan the whole time. I smoked it for about 5 hours at around 225 to 250 degrees F using hickory chips. I'm glad I didn't cook it any longer - the meat was tender, moist and had that great pink smoke ring around the outside and on the ends. It was - in a word - outrageous.
So now we're up to FOUR Weber grill products at our house. Cindy is wanting me to give up one of the grills and I may just have to do that. As you can see, it's getting crowded by the back door.
My next goal is to do a brisket. I don't know if I want to do the "all-night brisket" as I'm still sort of feeling my way with the nuances of this smoker. There's some things I really like about the smoker and some things that I'm puzzled they didn't include (like a thermometer - I had to go out and get my own). I think I need to smoke a few other things on it so I can make sure the brisket comes out perfect the first time I try to smoke one on the "Bullet".
When I was in Kansas City recently, I traveled one day with an outside sales guy with ADI, a distributor of electronic parts and products. We went to see a dealer in North Kansas City and it turned out that he had an ulterior motive. He wanted to take me to one of the hidden secrets of barbecue in Kansas City, Smokin' Guns BBQ.
Smokin' Guns BBQ is located in an industrial area that is populated with a lot of light manufacturing or warehouse firms (see map). They're only open during the day through the week - 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The dealer we took to lunch told me that the place is packed from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. with people taking home barbecue.
For years, Phil and Linda Hopkins traveled the barbecue contest circuit piling up a number of awards. In 1999, they were the overall winner (scroll down at the link site to see their point total) of the prestigious Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational Barbecue. Their overall point total "smoked" the competition that year. Here's a picture of Phil and Linda with their two sons after the competition.
Friends and people they did catering for kept on them to open a restaurant. Phil still wanted to do some weekend barbecue contests and cater parties. When they finally opened up in the North Kansas City location in 2002, he made the decision not to open the restaurant over the weekend. At least, that's what the dealer we had lunch with told me. And since he's literally right across the street from Smokin' Guns and eats there all the time, he should probably know.
The menu at Smokin' Guns is typical of most Kansas City barbecue places. They're heavy on the pork ribs and brisket, along with burnt ends, sausage, turkey and ham. And the ambiance of the place is just like you'd find at any family owned barbecue joint. You go into the place and place your order at the front counter. You pay and then go get your drinks and sit down at these very basic tables. A waitress will find you and bring your food to you.
I wasn't all that hungry because it was a quarter to 12 and I'd eaten breakfast not knowing if we would have time to eat lunch that day. But the ADI guy knew that we would be ending up around this dealer's place around noon and he was starving for barbecue. The dealer told me, "It's best to go early or wait until after 1:30. It gets packed in this place during the lunch hour."
I ordered up the large brisket sandwich on regular bread with no sides. One of the dealer's guys was with us and he said, "Oh, man! They have the best broccoli casserole and potato casserole in the world." I told him that I'd had breakfast and didn't know we were going to do lunch. He said, "Well, that was your first mistake this morning. Your second mistake is not getting one of the sides of casserole."
The guy from ADI got the burnt ends with the potato casserole. And the other two guys from the dealer were good ol' Catholic boys and were observing Lent. One went with the smoked Salmon and the other guy got the smoked catfish.
My sandwich was very good. A lot of meat and the sauce they had with it was rich and sweet. I went up and asked if they had any hot sauce and the waitress, who was well into her 60's, said, "We sure do!" It was good and spicy, but could have been a little more hot.
The ADI guy said that he was disappointed in his burnt ends. One of the guys from the dealer said Smokin' Guns burnt ends are "hit and miss". He just missed 'em this time.
And the guys who had the smoked fish thought they were great. And they kept raving about the potato casserole and the broccoli casserole. OK, I told them. Next time I'll get one or the other.
My sandwich was $6.95 and the Burnt Ends were $10.95. The smoked fish were both $8.95 with fries. I didn't get fries (steak fries are two bucks extra with a sandwich) but that's OK. A steak fry is a steak fry.
Yes, I'll go back to Smokin' Guns BBQ. But I didn't want to pig out with a dress shirt on and in front of guys I hardly knew. I'm looking at getting the three meat platter the next time I go to K.C.
The only negative I see with Smokin' Guns? They don't serve beer. Damn... How can you NOT have beer with good barbecue. Oh, well. Smokin' Guns is able to pull it off.
I've talked about the Weber Grill restaurants on this blog before (see here), but I had never tried their barbecue items before until just recently.
I had been traveling around seeing a number of dealers in the Chicago area recently and it was getting late in the day, well past dinner time, when I saw my last dealer. I was near the Weber Grill restaurant in Lombard (see map) and I decided to stop in for a bite to eat.
Since it was late in the day I was pretty hungry, but I knew that if I had a big meal, I wouldn't sleep well that evening. I went into the bar area and sat at the bar so I could watch some football and read my Chicago Tribune.
I looked over themenu and the prime rib just kept jumping out at me. But something else kept catching my eye - their barbecue menu. In all my visits to the Weber Grill restaurants I'd never had their barbecue. But I thought I would go for something else that night.
I ended up ordering up the prime rib, medium-rare. The bartender took the order and about two minutes later she came back and said, "I was afraid of this, we're out of medium-rare prime rib."
Well, that solved that. I took the menu back from her and I looked right at the barbecue. I ordered up the beef brisket and meatloaf combination with garlic mashed potatoes. I thought I'd give their barbecue a shot.
And I'm glad I did. The meal came out and there were four or five large and thick slices of beef brisket on the plate along with a slab of meatloaf that they bake on the Weber Grills in the kitchen. Then when someone orders up the meatloaf, they slather on their rib sauce (which is nothing more than the Jack Daniels barbecue sauce) on both sides, then put the meatloaf on the grill for about three to five minutes a side, crusting the sauce on the meat. It's actually very good.
But the beef brisket was outstanding. Thick and juicy, the brisket was some of the best I'd ever had. Their secret is cooking it low and slow, I was told by one of the managers who stopped by to see if I was doing OK.
Their garlic mashed potatoes are good, but not as good as my wife's. Still they were a wonderful complement to the meal.
I was pleasantly surprised by the barbecue at the Weber Grill. The one thing I haven't tried at their restaurants are their burgers. I'll have to give them a shot sometime soon and let you know how they are.
This is more of a tale of woe than a review of a barbecue place.
I struck up a quick friendship with Tim Nanson from Elmer's Authentic Texas BBQ from Battle Lake, MN at the annual River Rockin' Ribfest in Davenport this past August. I felt that Tim's ribs were the best of the lot of traveling rib vendors that weekend. His sauce could have stood a little bit of re-vamping, but overall I thought he had the best ribs.
I told Tim that I travel up to Fargo from time to time to see a dealer up there and that I'd be sure to stop in the next time I went up. The next time happened to be about a month ago when I was traveling between St. Cloud, MN and Fargo. I thought, "Well, I'll just stop in and see Tim and get some of his ribs!"
Battle Lake is off of Interstate 94 a few miles. Actually, it's off I-94 by about 35 miles if you approach Battle Lake from the south. Elmer's is actually out in the middle of nowhere, about five or six miles north and east of Battle Lake, surrounded by dozens of lakes and bayous that populate that area of west central Minnesota (see map).
Elmer's history is sort of unique. A Texan by the name of Elmer Neumann retired in the lakes region of western Minnesota (it's usually the other way around) in the late 80's and early 90's. He missed having a good Texas pit barbecue joint. So he went back to Texas, bought a two ton barbecue pit and hauled it back to Minnesota. He and his wife opened Elmer's Authentic Texas BBQ in 1993.
In 2002, Tim and his wife, Ursula, bought the restaurant from Elmer and Tim promised to keep up the great tradition of Texas-style barbecue that Elmer had worked hard to recreate in Minnesota.
My stomach was doing jumping jacks just thinking about trying some of Tim's ribs in his restaurant while I was driving up to his place. I got thru Battle Lake and headed north on Hwy 78 toward Elmer's. My mouth was watering, I was fully ready for a pig out of monstrous proportions.
I came around a curve and saw a lonely building off to the east side of the road. It was Elmer's!!! However, there were no cars in the parking lot, there were no lights on inside and the sign out front wasn't lit. THEY WERE CLOSED!!!
I about crapped on the spot. I drove all that way and pulled in to see that it was closed. Then it hit me - a lot of restaurants and businesses in the lakes areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin are seasonal businesses. There haven't been tourists or vacationers around here for a month! CRAP!!
Well, it just so happened as I was walking around the place, I ran into Tim and his wife as they were leaving the side door of the restaurant. He was on his cell phone and when he saw me, he immediately recognized me. He hung up the phone and I said, "You're Tim, right?"
He said, "Yeah, and I'm sorry I can't remember your name but you're from Davenport!"
I said that I was on my way up to Fargo and thought I'd drop in for dinner. He said, "Oh, man! We're closed tonight!" Tim explained to me that this time of year they're open only from Thursday thru Sunday nights.
I said, "Oh, of course. I sort of figured that out when I pulled in and there were no lights on."
He said that from mid-May thru about mid-September, they're open 7 days a week. He said that they'll close for three nights through the fall, and then when December 1st comes, he's only open Friday and Saturday nights. He said he may not even open from mid-January to early March, then it's back to four nights until mid-May again.
He felt bad for me. He said, "Man, you should have called before you came up. I would have had something for you to eat. I don't even have a beer in the place because my beer guy is coming tomorrow."
I told him that I wanted to come up and enjoy the ribs just as any customer coming off the road would. I said that his ribs were so good in Davenport that I wanted to see how good they were in the restaurant. He said, "Well, I think you'll like 'em even more in here."
I told him that I had experimented with his sauce. I told him that I thought it could have used a little zip, so I took a cup of his sauce, mixed in a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a teaspoon of garlic powder and let it set for about 3 hours. I tried it later on and it helped it out tremendously. He said, "I don't have a hot or spicy barbecue sauce. I'll have to give that a try."
Before I left to go find another restaurant, Tim said, "Hey, man. I'm really sorry that we weren't open. But, seriously, next time call me. Even if we aren't supposed to be open that night, I'll come in and make something for you. I really do appreciate that you came all this way to give us a try."
I told him that I only travel to Fargo between May 1 and October 15, so it will be next spring before I can get back up that way again. He said, "Well, call me. We'll do it up right for you."
I was so bummed when I drove out of the parking lot, thinking that I'll more than likely have to eat fast food that night because it was 8:30 and I was an hour and a half from Fargo. Yeah, it was my fault for not calling in advance; or even remembering that restaurants like Elmer's close up right and left when the summer is over.
Oh well. Now that I know exactly where it is, I'll be back. His ribs were that good in Davenport...
(Update - I did make it back to try the ribs at Elmer's, but found out that Tim Nanson had sold the business. Click here to see the entry of my visit.)
I got into St. Louis one night recently and I was tired and hungry. I decided to give Smokin' Al's Barbecue a try, given that it was just around the corner from my hotel.
Smokin' Al's is located on Hampton Ave. (see map) near Forest Park. They've been in business for about five years and have won the best barbecue in St. Louis for four straight years in a poll conducted by the local restaurant review magazine, Sauce.
Smokin' Al's is a funky little place, not much to see on the outside or the inside. They have two cookers set up outside. One is out in front, the other one - much larger - is in sort of a recessed pit along the back side of the building. The wood they were using was sort of a sweet smelling wood. Definitely not hickory or mesquite.
Their menu is typical for most barbecue places. Slabs of ribs, brisket, pulled pork, chicken - things like that. And, thank God - they serve cold beer.
It was getting late when I walked in - about 20 after 8. They close at 8:30 thru the week. You have to order at the front counter and I asked if I had to get this to go. The girl behind the counter said, "Oh, no. You don't have to leave. We'll be here cleaning up well after 8:30."
I ordered the combo platter of pulled pork and brisket, and got a two rib sampler to go with it. I got two sides with the combo platter so I went with their baked beans and french fries. And I got a couple of ice-cold Budweiser's to go along with them.
Smokin' Al's serves their ribs in what they call "St. Louis-style", with the sauce on them. Actually, I was led to believe that St. Louis-style ribs were they way they cut the ribs and not how they served them. OK, whatever. It furthered my contention that there are no such things as St. Louis-style ribs.
The girl called my number and I went and got the food. The brisket and pork were piled high on buttered Texas toast, and the two rib sampler was laid on Texas toast, as well. They were covered with Smokin' Al's hot "Wolf Sauce". The sides of baked beans and french fries were generous, too.
But the one thing it lacked was a zip to the sauce. It was sort of vinegary, but didn't have the zest that I like in a barbecue sauce. The beans were completely different from the sauce - they were swimming in a brown sauce, heavy on molasses.
The pulled pork was good, the brisket was better. The ribs were, well, I've had a LOT better ribs than what they had at Smokin' Al's. They weren't too meaty, and they weren't very tender. The smokiness in the meat wasn't as much as I thought it would be. And the sauce, I felt, was a little too neutral with the ribs.
Actually, I thought the best part of the meal were the french fries. They had some sort of an herb on them and they were cooked to perfection. You got the full potato tasted to them and they were hard not to eat. I usually don't eat french fries, but these were damn good.
The meal with a couple of beers came to about $16.75, which I didn't think was too bad. But if people in St. Louis think that Smokin' Al's is the best barbecue in the city, I think they're sadly mistaken. My next trip to a barbecue place in St. Louis will be to Super Smokers. Hands down, the best barbecue in St. Louis, in my opinion.
(Update - Smokin' Al's didn't make it. I went to get some barbecue there recently and found that they were closed. Their web site is still up and I'm wondering if they do catering work, but the restaurant is definitely closed.)
Since 1977, Carson's has been serving barbecued ribs, chicken and pork chops to hundreds of thousands of Chicagoland people and tourists. I've been by the Carson's downtown on North Wells a number of times, but had never tried them. Until recently, that is.
Carson's was founded by Dean Carson who used a family recipe for ribs and sauce and has turned the combination into an institution known nationwide for Chicago-style ribs.
I was out in Deerfield in the far north suburbs of Chicago recently and it was getting late in the day. My last stop around 7:30 that evening put me right around the corner from Carson's Deerfield location of Waukegan Road (see map).
The Deerfield location is spacious and well lit, with a very nice outdoor dining area with a centralized gas fire pit to help keep people warm on cold evenings. As it was sort of spitting rain and the temps in the mid-50's that evening, there weren't a lot of people in the outdoor area.
I went to the bar area, much more dark and cozy than the main dining area. There were autographed pictures of famous celebrities and sports stars who have eaten at Carson's all over the walls. (A lot of current and former Chicago Bulls were featured on the wall - their practice facility is literally around the corner.) I saddled up at the bar and the bartender gave me a beer and a menu.
In addition to ribs, Carson's does seafood, steaks, pork chops and chicken. But I had to try this barbecue that people from all over the U.S. will overnight ribs to their homes or businesses. I went with the combo of a half rack of baby back ribs and a boneless pork chop.
About 15 minutes later, out came a small rack of ribs and one of the thickest center cut pork chops I've ever seen in my life. It had to be, at least, two and a half inches thick. On it's own, the pork chop was enough for one meal. And they serve two of 'em when you just order the pork chops on their own!
The ribs were OK, nothing special. Not too meaty and the sauce was OK. The sauce was very sweet and full of molasses. It made your hands very sticky. But I've had much better barbecue sauces.
And, unfortunately, the pork chop was over done and a little dry. I was disappointed because the pork chop looked like they had a lot of potential. Even adding the sauce to them to help wet them down didn't help that much.
OK, so I've been to Carson's. I don't know if the one downtown is any better. Carson's says that they cook their ribs at both locations in identical cookers. Like I said, the food was all right - I'd give it a C grade if I had to grade it. But, if the food at the downtown location is the same as the one in Deerfield, I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon.
I had the pleasure of being the head judge once again for the fifth Rhythm City Casino Rockin' Ribfest Amateur Rib Cook-off competition (whew - that's a mouthful). I like doing that because I get to learn some things from some of the amateur
Now, everyone who barbecues thinks their ribs are the best. This competition gives the common person the chance to show off what they know about ribs and barbecue. Many of these people take it very seriously. But at the same time, many friendships have evolved from the competition.
The day of the event, it began to rain around 8:15 in the morning. And it poured for a good portion of the morning up to about noon. But it didn't deter the 18 people (or teams) who were in the event. Many had tents or tarps to cover their smokers and cookers.
It's interesting to see how some people barbecue. No two people are exactly the same. I get a lot of ideas from the event.
But I also get a lot of ideas as to what NOT to do - such as use too much wood or smoke the meat too long. Sometimes the meat tastes like you're biting into a hickory log. I don't know how people can think that tastes great - it's detracting to the taste of the meat.
For the second year in a row, 5 members of the Rhythm City Casino's kitchen staff were judges with me. I always instruct the people judging that we're going primarily for the taste of the meat and how tender it is. Does the sauce help the taste or detract? Is is too smoky? Is the meat too tough or is it so tender that the contestant has boiled the meat in water before cooking on the grill? (Parboiled ribs really zap the meat taste out of the ribs, and then the cook usually slathers 'em up with a smoky/sweet barbecue sauce to hide the lack of taste in the meat.)
For example, if someone parboils their ribs, you've got to give them a high score for tenderness, but I always give them low scores on taste.
This year, at least three of the 18 contestants parboiled their ribs. Even the sauce on a couple of them couldn't save them.
With a couple of other contestants, their ribs tasted like they used fire starter logs to smoke the meat with. There was a horrific kerosene taste on both of them.
One person had kind of a mango chutney barbecue sauce, that wasn't all that bad. Another contestant had a sauce that was a vinegar base that was very good, as well. And there were two or three where they just used a rub.
On the other end of the spectrum, one contestant had a barbecue sauce that tasted like he just poured ketchup over the top and served 'em like that.
We get the ribs (which are cut) given to us in a styrofoam container and that's how they're presented to the judges. No big show, no garnishes. Just give us the ribs.
One of the things that you have to watch out for is eating too much. If you sit and gnaw on a bone and get all the meat off of it, after about 10 of those and you're full. And you have 8 more ribs to judge. So you have to watch the amount you eat. About four or five of them that I had I took one bite and that was all I needed. (With one, I had to spit it out - it was one of the kerosene tasting ribs).
I don't know if it's me or if my taste in ribs is getting more refined, but I didn't think that really any of the contestants had what I would call great ribs this year. The rain may have had a little bit to do with that. There were 8 to 10 that were good, but not good enough and the rest, well, they sucked.
But three really did stand out.
Brian Hollingsworth (helped by his father, Fred) took first place honors and a $250 check this year. Brian has been in the competition for the last couple years but never placed. He said that his father found some spices up in Wisconsin to help with the taste. Tenderness has never been problem for him, he said. But he wanted some pizazz. His ribs were ones that used just a dry rub. They were good - I had him second on my list.
Dick Bakeris - who has either won or placed in the top 3 each of the 5 years of the competition - won second place and $150. Actually, I voted Dick's ribs as the best. But picking between Dick's ribs and Brian's ribs, that's like saying what's better - chocolate or vanilla? They're both very good. Dick has a good mild sweet sauce that he puts on the ribs. It has a good taste to them.
And Jeff Gasper and Judi O'Neal, who have won it all three of the past four years, picked up 3rd place honors and $100 this year. Jeff took 3rd place with dignity. "There's a lot of good cooks out here. To be in the top three every year has been an honor." Jeff and Judi have the most tender ribs without parboiling. They use a fruity sweet sauce, but I like Dick's sauce a little better.
It's fun to do the judging. I think I know good ribs and I always take away an idea or two for something I'd like to do with mine sometime down the line.
First of all - let me say that it will be LONG TIME before I eat another rib...
At the recent Rhythm City Casino Rockin' Ribfest held here in Davenport, there were 9 different rib vendors vying for top honors for best ribs, best barbecue and "People's Choice" awards. Six of the rib vendors travel the country each summer going to a number of similar events like the one in Davenport. Two of the rib vendors - Jim's Rib Haven and Lil' Lou's - were from the Quad City area. And one vendor - Elmer's Texas Barbecue - had only participated in the 2005 Fargo Rib Fest prior to this.
(As an aside - I was told that Elmer's didn't participate in the 2006 Fargo Rib Fest because Famous Dave's Barbecue is a primary sponsor of the Fargodome - the home of the Fargo Rib Fest - and didn't want any other barbecue joint from Minnesota or North Dakota in the competition. Actually, Elmer's probably gave Famous Dave's a run for their money in 2005 and that's why they weren't invited back.)
The six touring rib vendors - Desperado's BBQ out of Ohio; Porky 'n Beans out of Florida; Cowboys BBQ from Texas; Pigfoot BBQ from Ohio; Rib-bins BBQ from Pennsylvania; and Chicago BBQ Company from the Chicago suburbs - all were vying for the $1000 first prize of best ribs and best barbecue with the other three rib vendors. And the coveted "People's Choice Award" allows bragging rights for both the national and the local rib vendors.
The judges for the event are a group of local celebrities, members of the Scott County Pork Producers, and one guy who is a certified rib judge by the Kansas City Barbecue Society (no shit!). The judging is done at noon on Saturday and the rib vendors usually work a good portion of the night before to make the best ribs possible.
(That's another little secret about the Rib Fest - or rib fests in general. The best time to get ribs is usually at the same time the judging is going on or that afternoon. They don't cook just one slab - they cook MANY slabs and pick the best one out of a dozen or so. All of them have been cooked equally so they're all pretty damn good.)
First of all, I tried 'em all. I had ribs on Thursday and Friday - mainly the three rib samplers they would dish up. Actually, being the stage manager and getting to know some of these guys over the years they've been coming also helps to get a couple more bones in the container.
Winning both the best ribs and best barbecue categories was new-comer Rib-bins BBQ. Second place in best ribs went to Desperado's and third place went to Cowboy's. For best barbecue (a combination of best sauce and best tasting ribs), Porky n' Beans got second place and Desperado's got third place.
Desperado's (right) got the People's Choice award for the national vendors, while Jim's Rib Haven won the local People's Choice crown for the eighth straight year. Elmer's placed second in the People's Choice award about 50 votes behind Desperado's.
(Another aside - Famous Dave's was here the last couple of years and didn't participate this year. I'm sure it was because Jim's Rib Haven beat them in the People's Choice awards both years by large margins.)
Now, I like to think that I know a little about ribs and barbecue and I have to respectfully disagree with the judges. Rib-bins was good, but I thought the best ribs - hands down - were Elmer's Texas BBQ.
Owners Tim and Ursula Nanson bought Elmer's about 4 years ago from the original owner, Elmer Neumann, who was a native of Texas and who had an authentic 2 ton smoker pit brought up from Texas for the restaurant. Tim's secret for the Rib Fest - he would smoke the ribs at a low temperature for 6 to 7 hours, about 225 degrees (F). Then he'd take them out of the smoker and wrap the slabs up in aluminum foil and put them in a low heat warmer, about 110 degrees (F), for another 4 hours or so. The meat would just fall away from the bone, it was that tender.
The only thing I didn't care for was that when Tim would serve the ribs, he'd sprinkle on some of the rub that he used to cook the ribs with. I thought that is was too salty and detracted from the taste of the ribs. I got to talking to him Saturday night and told him just that and he cut off a rib bone from a slab and gave it to me to eat plain. It was very good.
And their sauce was sort of plain. I did buy some and brought it home to play with it. I took about a cup of it and added a half of tablespoon of garlic powder and a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne. It zipped it up tremendously.
He told me to come back on Sunday as he was smoking a bunch of ribs on Saturday night and then put them in the warmer overnight. He said they should be unbelievably great the next day.
And he wasn't kidding. The meat was a perfect dark pink throughout and it fell off the bone when you touched it. They were, by far, the best ribs I had during the whole weekend.
Elmer's doesn't have a big booth like the others so they weren't as busy as the national touring vendors throughout the weekend. But Tim was pleased with the business he got and hoped he'd get to come back next year. I told him that I'd lobby for him.
And I told him that I get up to Fargo from time to time, and being that he's in the area (Battle Lake, MN is just off of I-94 east of Fergus Falls, about 60 miles from Fargo) I said that I'd stop in. He said, "Come up and spend the night. We'll show you a real good time."
I may just do that.
For the others at the fest - Porky n' Beans had, I believe, the best sauce. They had a hot sauce that wasn't too hot, but had enough zip behind it to make you notice. I was disappointed, however, to find that they weren't selling any of their sauces at the Rib Fest.
Right behind Porky n' Beans for best sauce was Pigfoot BBQ. They had four different sauces to choose from - a sweet, a mild, a hot and one they called "Killer". Actually, I mixed the sweet and the "Killer" sauce together (about 10 parts sweet and 1 part killer) and it was a very good combination. And I thought their ribs were very good, as well.
I was somewhat disappointed in the Chicago BBQ company. Tom Ferguson is sort of a legend in the Chicago area for his ribs and 20 years ago he began to travel to rib festivals and took a lot of top prizes along the way.
This year because the Super Bowl of Rib festivals - the Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook Off - was going to start a day earlier this year the following Wednesday out in Reno, NV, a number of the rib vendors who have been in Davenport in the past passed on coming this year. Chicago BBQ Company was going to Reno, too, but Tom Ferguson sent a secondary crew to Davenport for the Rockin' Ribfest. Their ribs were OK, but not to the level I was expecting. I was actually more disappointed in not being able to meet Tom Ferguson, who was back in Chicago preparing for Reno.
(By the way, in a somewhat stunning upset, Famous Dave's won the top prize of best ribs at the Best of the West fest in Reno this year. And validating my opinion of best sauce in Davenport, Porky n' Beans won for best sauce in Reno.)
And I was also somewhat disappointed in Cowboys BBQ. I've had their ribs before and I remember them to be much better. Also, they didn't allow you to put your own sauce on it. They had two sauces - mild and hot - and they ladled them on the ribs before they served them. And their hot sauce wasn't all that hot.
Other than the most obvious winner in my book - Elmer's - it was difficult to say who was the best. It's like trying to say what's better - chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chip or strawberry ice cream. They're all pretty damn good. But Elmer's, I thought, had the best ribs. Not the best sauce, but the best ribs. And I know a lot of people that I talked to thought the same thing.
But like I said, it will be a long LONG time before I eat another rib...
During our trip to Kansas City, I promised to take Cindy to at least three great places to eat. Our first night in Kansas City, the choice of the restaurant was a no-brainer. We drove out to Martin Cityon the far south side of Kansas City and went to Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue.
Now, I've talked about the Jack Stack barbecue places before (see my earlier blog post here), but I just had to tell you all about this one particular meal.
We ate there on a hot Monday night, not unlike the first time I ate there 20 years ago this summer when it was called the Smoke Stack before Jack Fiorella renamed it the Jack Stack. We got right in and sat at a booth in the dining room that allowed Cindy to look into the prep area for the kitchen.
Jack Stack has an extensivemenu and Cindy took her time going through it. That was fine with me, but I knew what I wanted.
Cindy and I both got the two meat combos. I got the spare ribs and brisket, Cindy went with the spare ribs and the burnt ends. Burnt ends are the end of the beef brisket cut off into chunks. I don't care for them myself, but Cindy wanted to give them a try.
We also went with a side of their baked beans, a small order of their huge and delicious onion rings, and Cindy got some cole slaw to go with her meal.
Like I said, for some particular reason this was the best meal I'd ever had at Jack Stack. The ribs were outstanding - tender and juicy. The brisket was wonderful. Cindy didn't care for her burnt ends. (I didn't figure she would, but she had to try 'em. Some people go nuts over the burnt ends. I don't see - or taste - what's so good about 'em.) But she did love the ribs. She stopped at one point when she was knawing on a rib and said, "These are the best ribs I've ever had in my life!"
About the only thing disappointing with Jack Stack are their sauces. Not that they're bad - far from it. They just don't have a lot of "pizzaz". They only have two different sauces - regular and spicy. The regular is vinegar based and not too sweet (which actually helps bring out the flavor of the meat it's used on), while the hot isn't all that hot. I like to add both the regular and hot together and put them in with their baked beans. It makes the beans even better than they are.
We got to talking with our waitress and Fiorella's Jack Stack now offers mail order ribs - ribs and meats that are cooked, then frozen and vacuum packed, and then shipped anywhere in the US. She said that the ribs she's tried that were mail order actually seemed to be more juicy and tender than the ribs they had at the restaurant.
She told us that Fiorella's had a facility in Kansas City for cooking and processing mail orders, but they quickly outgrew that. They now have a second facility in Denison, IA - of all places - that makes the food and ships it around the country.
As it always seems, I could hardly move when I got up to leave, I was so stuffed. The food has always been outstanding at Jack Stack - in my opinion the best barbecue in Kansas City. But for some reason, it was just exceptional this one particular evening. It was probably the best meal I'd ever had there and probably the best barbecue meal I'd ever had in my life.
The annual River Rockin' Ribfest sponsored by Rhythm City Casino began last night at LeClaire Park in downtown Davenport with three bands and a lot of ribs cooking. I'm the stage manager and the announcer for the music acts once again - my 8th year of doing that job.
The Ribfest is the best - and most popular - event of the summer season. We've had a lot of great bands play here over the years and the food is usually good to outstanding.
Tomorrow night, the headliner will be the Key West Band - a Jimmy Buffet tribute band that features Doyle Grisham, a world class pedal steel guitar player who has played with Buffet on a number of his albums. The Fry Daddies, Identity Crisis and The Juke Joint Sinners, an all-star band of some of the best blues musicians in the Quad Cities, will also play on Saturday.
Sunday is the annual car show that displays a large number of vintage cars and hot rods in the park. Blue Collar Band, The Royal Rockers and One Night Standards will play in the bandshell on Sunday afternoon.
Saturday is another highlight for me - the amateur rib cook-off is taking place and, once again, I'm the head judge and coordinator for that event. 18 every day "Joe's" and "Jill's" will go head to head in a competition that has become pretty competitive over the past couple three years. I'll have an entry on the competition in the coming days.
But I'm still checking out the rib vendors who are in town this weekend. There are seven national touring rib vendors this year (there are normally six), with four new ones who are here for the first time. We have Desperado's BBQ out of Ohio, Cowboy BBQ from Texas and Porky and Bean's from Florida who all have been here before. This year the newcomers are Pigfoot BBQ from Ohio, Chicago BBQ Company from the Chicago suburbs, Rib-bins BBQ from Pennsylvania, and Elmer's Texas BBQ from Minnesota. And two local rib joints - Jim's Rib Haven and Lil Lou's BBQ - are here, as well.
You can be sure that I'll have a full report on who I felt had the best ribs and sauce after the fest is completed on Sunday afternoon.
I'm always on the lookout for new places to eat while I'm on the road. It just so happened that I heard of a place in the western Chicago suburb of Westmont that supposedly had great ribs, Uncle Bub's Barbecue. I was in the area one night recently and decided to give it a try.
Uncle Bub's is housed in a large barn-like structure on Cass Ave. in the small downtown area of Westmont (see map). I read that the original building was pretty small, but they expanded about six years ago to their present size. Mark Link is the managing partner of the restaurant and I understand that he does a lot of the smoking of the meats himself.
As you walk into Uncle Bub's, you go through the entry way, then keep going through a little hallway that also houses a pay phone, then turn left and go order at the counter. There are tubs of domestic and imported beers at the counter, and you can also order 22 oz. draft beers. Cold 22 oz. draft beers. Ice cold 22 oz. beers. The cold beer and the barbecue gives Uncle Bub's kind of a "roadhouse" feel to the place.
They have nightly food specials and I got there a little after 8 p.m. and I was told they were out of the baby back rib special for the evening. No problem.
Since I'd never been there before, I went with the sampler platter - three pork ribs, a chicken thigh and leg, pulled pork, beef brisket and something called "riblets" which reminded me more of a pork jerky (if there is such a thing). Two sides came with that, so I went with the old stand by of baked beans and fries.
They give you a carved wood cow or pig with a number on it and you take it back to your table. They bring the food out to you in a jiffy.
I normally don't care for barbecued chicken, but Uncle Bub's chicken was pretty good. Not great, but not bad. Their pulled pork and beef brisket was moist and flavorful. The riblets were a little tough and not too meaty. The pork ribs were dry and not very good.
Uncle Bub's had two different types of sauces - a mild sauce that was sweet and smoky; and a hot sauce that sort of sneaks up on you after the initial bite. Uncle Bub's sauce recently won the "Best Sauce" category at the 2006 Naperville Rib Fest, one of the largest rib festivals in the Midwest. They were good, but I wouldn't say they were outstanding.
Overall I'd give Uncle Bub's a B-, but I think I'd like to try the place again. It has some potentially good food with their brisket and pulled pork.
