After succumbing to a raging, pregnancy-fueled craving for barbecue on Friday, Watoosa did some research and found a local place that was supposed to be pretty good: Beale Street Barbecue. We tried it out yesterday, and we were quite impressed.
Their basic sauce is tomato-based, so it resembles the kind you'd get in the mid-South. It has a delicious, vegetablish savoriness, and just enough heat to make it interesting without producing rivers of sweat from my scalp (not that it takes much to do that). They also have a habanero-fueled sauce, if you want some agonizing pain with your meal.
That basic sauce gets served with many kinds of meat: pulled pork, chicken, pulled brisket, and sausages. I got some pork and brisket, and while the former was quite good, the latter was fantastic. It comes served on a hunk of tasty jalipeno cornbread.
They also serve pork ribs. Friends and neighbors, I'm here to tell you...those ribs are amazing. They are smoked and seasoned with a dry rub, and the meat is so tender that a light breeze would pull it right off the bone. I put a little sauce on a few ribs, but Watoosa and I both decided they were even better with just the rub.
I wouldn't say it's the best barbecue ever, but we wouldn't be embarassed to take our Southern friends there. If there hadn't been several inches of snow on the ground with temps in the 20s, and if our waitress hadn't sounded like an extra from Good Will Hunting, I could almost have fooled myself into thinking I was in Memphis.
I say "almost," because the menu features lots of non-BBQ items, like crab cakes, burritos, pasta and salad. And people ordered them! At the table next to ours, as I was devouring those magnificent ribs, I noticed that none of the three diners ordered barbecue. And one of them--a petulant whelp of a teenager, I'm sure--ate only a salad with some chicken tossed on top. I didn't know whether to condemn them or grieve for them. Alas, they forfeited culinary riches for a bowl of pottage (or a salad and a couple burgers, to be more exact).
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2 comments:
It wasn't a pregnancy-fueled craving for BBQ, just a a regular craving. Esp. after watching a show on the Food Network about BBQ (darn the FN, they always change my dinner plans. I must stop watching at the gym).
Also, those non-BBQ-orderers should not only be condemned, they should be slapped about the face and head with saucy rib bones and then kicked out the door.
Oh, my, I really want some of those ribs right now...I am shocked, SHOCKED that we found such great stuff in New England.
Those people that ordered chicken salad and such at a BBQ place should have realized they should have been EMBARASSED to order that in a place with BBQ in the NAME! Alas, there was a more vegan time in my life that I, too, ordered the chicken at a meat-establishment. I felt no shame because I needed no fig leaves, and everyone thinks their choices are the best and, thus, should be copied by all. Food snobbery.
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