Question about BBQ resturaunts

Bama Ron said:
We have one here in town that everyone raves about. Sawdust on a bun with Bullseye sauce. Most people have not had good BBQ. They don't know what it taste like and are usually more concerned with the sauce that any thing else. Some people think a good bark is a sign of a burnt piece of meat. I personally do not eat BBQ out. I am always disappointed. I lived in Tuscaloosa while in college and could eat Dreamland ribs but never got as excited about them as everyone else.

My dad and uncles Qued old school, from a pig on the pit to a goat in the ground. I know what it is supposed to taste like and I like my ribs nekkid. My Bro in law gets Kraft BBQ on his ribs at my house, put on after I take them off the smoker. He thinks thats the way it's supposed to be.
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hahaha
 
I spent some time in the past on the National BBQ Association board. In that capacity, I interviewed a LOT of people about this question.

What/why do you like a particular restaurant?

Ask your friends the question. I do, when I teach class or just talk to people about Q.

9 out of 10 times, these people will say, wait for it...

"I love the sauce"

Nothing about smoke, nothing about the meat, but that they love the sauce.

2nd most common answer

"Had a great smoke ring"

We, the collective Q obsessed, tend to gauge by a different and most discriminate bar.
 
IamMadMan said:
I took my family and friends to a local BBQ restaurant called "Local Smoke BBQ" in Cookstown, NJ just outside McGuire AFB. They claim to be a national competitor in the name of "Fat Angel BBQ".

As a consumer I was greatly disappointed... All of the sides were COLD (not even warm), The ribs were charred black like they were put under a broiler for much too long, and the membrane was not removed which was like parchment paper glued to the back of the dry overcooked meat holding it in place on the bone. The brisket had the texture of dry sawdust in a pile and had no shape. The pulled pork dripped with water (Not meat juice) and was soggy and tasteless as if it were boiled.

Like I said as a consumer I was deeply disappointed, but as a member of the BBQ community I would be embarrassed to be associated with them in any manner.

Needless to say that will be the last time any of the six couples and our families will ever spend our money there ever again. The food was so bad I wouldn't go back for a free meal. So when you are on the road forget about sampling there product at competitions. This is my opinion of their products which I bought and tasted.

It is really sad when one cannot take pride in their craft and strive for excellence, but rather they are more interested in selling poor quality food for a quick dollar.
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They got good reviews on yelp at their Neptune location. http://www.yelp.com/biz/local-smoke-bbq-neptune
They are som e of nicest people you could meet on the comp circuit. Not saying that's an excuse, maybe you went on an off night. My worst experience at a diner turned out to eventually one of my favorite places to eat. I swore I would never go back after that first visit. Glad I did now.
 
As a competitor , I am also disappointed in restaurant bbq as I have posted earlier. But I must say I can't imagine how difficult it must be serving top notch bbq all day and night. It's not like a customer orders a steak and ten minutes later it is set on the table fresh off the grill.
 
Chain restaurants most likely boil the ribs prior to smoking to speed the process;
then everyone raves about the fall off the bone tender ribs. In contest that's a DQ.
 
My point about competition vs joint Q has nothing to do with pride in product or how superior many may think comp Q is. It has everything to do with cooking as a sport vs cooking as a commercial endeavor. I do not have the luxury of spending 24 hours on 6 racks in order to choose the 4 perfect ribs to give a customer. That actually has little if nothing to do with ACTUAL BBQ which is about cooking food for people - not judges. Add to it most KCBS standards also have no connection to real world Q consumption (as evidenced by so many here chasing some holy grail of "perfect" Q).

All offense intended when I say if you've never had great or good Q at a joint you either live in a very Q deprived area or are just being a BBQDBAG. There are many of us out there making & serving excellent Q every week of the year. You just need to look for us.
 
Boiled ribs slathered in sugary sauce is why I started doing my own Q. I have been to 4 different places out here and its all about the same. Good luck!
 
Sledneck said:
They got good reviews on yelp at their Neptune location. http://www.yelp.com/biz/local-smoke-bbq-neptune
They are som e of nicest people you could meet on the comp circuit. Not saying that's an excuse, maybe you went on an off night. My worst experience at a diner turned out to eventually one of my favorite places to eat. I swore I would never go back after that first visit. Glad I did now.
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I did see they had great reviews before we went, and I also saw they do well in NJ competitions, so I thought we would at least get an OK meal at worst. I don't think any of the 12 of us even ate half of what was on our plate.

If they served booze with it we might not have cared, we would have had an excuse to drink more. LOL

I was disappointed, but I do not wish them to fail, 12 dinners our of 12 were not appealing in any manner, I just have no desire to give them a second chance.

I'm glad you found a great place to eat, it's great to know you can always get a good meal and enjoy the place as well. We eat out 3 nights a week and have 2 favorites. We always try something new when we are off the beaten path in hopes of another great find. I like great food so much I travel 20 miles to get fresh homemade doughnuts and beignets with a taste unmatched anywhere else.
 
Lake Dogs said:
I dont know, IamManMan, I think the public can be and has been baffled by B.S. for many long years now where barbecue is concerned. I've only eaten at one barbecue restaurant in my life that I'd score their barbecue an A. Since that time the guys who started it sold it and now it's a C- on a good day. I've eaten at maybe 2 or 3 that I'd score C's, and the rest to me are F (FAIL).

My best friend and team partner, when I got him involved in this to start with, took us to one of the local restaurants that keeps winning BBQ restaurant award after award. I found the barbecue to be chopped, very fine, VERY dry, somewhat bland, and wasn't too bad if you slathered the crap out of it with sauce. But then, I could've been eating a cardboard sandwich at that time and couldn't tell... A year later we had a very old gentlemen ask if he could sample some of our left-over chicken at a competition, I said sure, help yourself. Was about an hour later that the wife punched me in the shoulder, saying "watch this". The guy would come up, get a chicken thigh, walk about 100 feet away, eat it, ponder a little, then walk back and repeat. I guess he consumed about 8 thighs. After the contest he came up and explained that he was the owner of the barbecue restaurant I mentioned above and would love to have my chicken recipe. Nice guy, but no thanks. For that matter, chicken is my worst category. We only cook KCBS because my cooking partner friend loves to eat brisket, otherwise we'd stick to MBN (that's another story).

Anyway, about 6 month later we were out truck shopping and just stopped in for a bite to eat. My friend, now having judged 10 competitions or so, and cooked in another 10 or so, said to me "Did I REALLY ever think this was worth a ****?".

And there it was. He's spoiled too.

If you've never had really awesome barbecue you end up judging Q largely on the sauce (IMHO).
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How true, I enjoy the flavor of the meat and if done right I don't use sauce. Even on a good steak, I like it plain.

But you are right, point well taken...... LOL
 
I guess that excellent BBQ can be cooked on a gas smoker but I haven't found one in my travels. There WAS a place in my town that had a 2nd location but they didn't cook anything there. They cooked it at the central location using gas cookers which were probably SP gas cookers. They had a cheapo smoker they bought from Walmart sitting out front with white smoke billowing out of it during the day as though that is what they were cooking on.

They just cooked meat until it fell apart, it had little if any smoke flavor and was mushy.

Now, if there is a restaurant that can cook using a gas cooker, the closest I've seen is Lamberts Downtown BBQ in Austin, Texas. The BBQ was good but it wasn't as good as the restaurants that cooked using all wood.

Also, regarding the aroma of "real" BBQ, we have a Bone Fish grill in our town that cooks on a grill fired with oak wood. That area of town smells sooooo good. So, aroma and taste can be different things and maybe they have figured out how to spread the aroma better than they have figured out how to cook BBQ.

And, by the way, it's amazing how little "BBQ aroma" you smell at some of the great Central Texas BBQ restaurants when you walk around and in the restaurants. But, when you taste the BBQ, you know it was well cooked on a wood fire.

So, I guess you can't judge a BBQ restaurant by the aroma.
 
chachahut said:
My point about competition vs joint Q has nothing to do with pride in product or how superior many may think comp Q is. It has everything to do with cooking as a sport vs cooking as a commercial endeavor. I do not have the luxury of spending 24 hours on 6 racks in order to choose the 4 perfect ribs to give a customer. That actually has little if nothing to do with ACTUAL BBQ which is about cooking food for people - not judges. Add to it most KCBS standards also have no connection to real world Q consumption (as evidenced by so many here chasing some holy grail of "perfect" Q).

All offense intended when I say if you've never had great or good Q at a joint you either live in a very Q deprived area or are just being a BBQDBAG. There are many of us out there making & serving excellent Q every week of the year. You just need to look for us.
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I can tell you this the Q I got yesterday that made me start this thread was from a well known BBQ chain restaurant.Now I know its my own fault for even goin their because I kinda thought it was gonna suck before I even picked it up,I was just cravin some BBQ.But like you said their are some very good BBQ joints in most cities,and the place I should have went to is Pappys BBQ.That guy serves his customers some d*** good BBQ.So yeah you can defentally find BBQ joints that serve up some very quality food.Their just spread thin in most areas.
 
kurtsara said:
So are you saying a person cannot make good BBQ in a Southern Pride or Ole Hickory?
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I can safely say that out of all the BBQ restaurants I have been to that us them (and I travel a LOT)..

No they cannot.

SPs and OH that use gas for heat and a tad bit of wood (If that) cannot make good BBQ, at least in my experience, which is pretty diverse.

However taste is subjective and personal.

I don't even eat most of what I cook at competitions, because it is not the BBQ I enjoy.
In comps, I'm not cooking for myself, I'm cooking for the judges.
 
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Actually SPs & OHs are nothing more than pits - machines to cook in using heat & smoke. They are no better or worse than an Oyler or Lang or Backwood as a tool for making Q.

Where they often fail - especially in a commercial situation - is restaurant owners buying them for "ease of use" & placing some clueless noob at the controls. I've lost count of the number of places I've been to where the "pit master" has had absolutely no background in Q other than reading the SP or OH user manual.

THAT is the real reason for bad Q in most raunts - not the machines producing them.
 
SirPorkaLot said:
However taste is subjective and personal.
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I like my barbecue to have a fairly pronounced smoke flavor but that might not appeal to a lot of other people, and it's my belief that it's generally easier to sell lightly-smoked meat to smoke lovers than it is to sell a smokier product to people who don't care for it. Do those of you in the business find this to be true?
 
Frank, If I contributed to the notion that only competitors can make fantastic Q and/or that restauranteurs can't, I certainly apologize. Frankly, some of the best competitors out there currently or in the past (KCBS included, but not limited to KCBS) make their living as restauranteurs. They'll even admit though that it's tough to make a living selling competition quality (winning quality) barbecue because of many factors, most of them are logistical factors of operating a business vs. entertaining a few people (judges) in a very defined time window. They're just not the same.

I have had very good barbecue at a few restaurants; one of them uses a very nice SP, but they pay very good attention and are using hickory religiously. I'd give them a C because they're inconsistent (one day it's REALLY good, the next it's so-so at best) and frankly they dont do a brisket worth a flip (but then, I'm in Georgia so brisket isn't a specialty 'round here).

The best I've had at a restaurant, however, happened to be one where successful competitors (won quite a bit) opened their own restaurant. It was absolutely an A, every time I went. Hot, moist, tender, flavorful, bark and tender meat both. They worked really hard to do this and my guess is that even with a packed house they cleared very little. They sold it a few years later. The difference was like day to night. The Q then, on it's best day, perhaps a C. I went back a few times hoping they'd bring it anywhere near where it was; it never happened... Oh well...

Almost all the rest of the restaurants I've eaten at around this area (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee) rely heavily on their sauce to carry them. Some have some fan-darn-tastic sauces (reference my earlier write-up). Chris Lilly is no exception. He makes fantastic barbecue and has a great sauce to go with it. Shoot, just watch some of his video. BUT, he'll take that perfectly cooked butt, remove the bone, then chop the ever-loving crap out of it. Two things result: 1) the meat chopped like this quickly becomes dry, and 2) he chops the fat into the meat. I've had sandwiches like this that were 30-40% fat before; disgusting IMHO.

> All offense intended when I say if you've never had great or good Q at a joint you either live in a very Q deprived area or are just being a BBQDBAG. There are many of us out there making & serving excellent Q every week of the year. You just need to look for us.

I suppose then that this (above) does make me a BBQDBAG. I dont think so. I think I'm passionate about it. I realize that restaurants have it tough. Really great barbecue is very expensive to bring across the table and almost impossible to be consistent with it and still be profitable. Plus, there is no way to duplicate the experience of eating the barbecue fresh off of the butt, while you're actually pulling it. Those are the best bites, IMHO.


All the above aside, do you have to be or have been a competitor to make good quality barbecue and/or do so as a restauranteur? Absolutely, without any doubt, the answer is: NO.
 
chachahut said:
Actually SPs & OHs are nothing more than pits - machines to cook in using heat & smoke. They are no better or worse than an Oyler or Lang or Backwood as a tool for making Q.

Where they often fail - especially in a commercial situation - is restaurant owners buying them for "ease of use" & placing some clueless noob at the controls. I've lost count of the number of places I've been to where the "pit master" has had absolutely no background in Q other than reading the SP or OH user manual.

THAT is the real reason for bad Q in most raunts - not the machines producing them.
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My place of work exactly.
Me, 30 years of bbq'ing and another fellow who grew up in his grandfathers bbq place........Front of House making sandwiches. We're not allowed around the smoker (SP) at all. :mad:
The Pit crew? A freakin egotistical CIA trained chef and his cohorts who know nothing about making 'que or the culture but because they've won a few James Beard awards and been in the media, they are supposed to know what they are doing :rolleyes:. There is a Big difference between fine dining and bbq, but you can't tell them that, they know everything.
Oh and a owner who looks down on you if you don't do comps like he does, even though he is nothing more than being a teams pit gopher. :crazy:
 
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