Rave: BBQ shacks and smokehouses

[JL21]

Salt + Smoke had some phenomenal brisket. They were sold out of ribs though.

Yeah, I love their brisket. And their ribs. And their deviled eggs. And their bourbon. And pretty much everything else about the place.

[Cheddar Tom]

Have you guys had the trashed wings? Really good....also love the brisket toasted rav.

[JL21]

I haven't done the wings but I have done the brisket t-ravs.

[33anda3rd]

Anybody get Aaron Franklin's cookbook? I'm going through now and it's really great. The first half of the book is just like listening to him talk about non-recipe stuff, like his approach, how he picks wood, how he picks meat, his journey to becoming what he is. It's very good.

[Cheddar Tom]

I will have to pick that up...I like how he only uses salt & pepper.

[Fat_Bulldog]

I haven't done the wings but I have done the brisket t-ravs.

How are the brisket t-ravs?

[haltz]

Delicious

[33anda3rd]

There's an abomination called Q-Tine that opened in Chicago. It's near home, so I walked in tonight. Jesus. Gray, bark-less, light-on-the-smoke meat, these flimsy and also gray fries. The only redeeming thing was the gravy on the poutine.

I had a friend over to the house today to talk about some events, the guy I mentioned upthread who does the crazy [expletive] like smoking stuff in a tee-pee over bourbon barrel staves. We were talking about BBQ in Chicago and why it's so bad and he believes it's because there's not a good place to do it. He does pop-ups and stuff, and he'll smoke out back of The Garage in West Loop, the Goose Island Barrel House also in West Loop, the back of Table Donkey & Stick in Logan Square, the patio at SmallBar in Logan Square, all these places that have him in. But he said the first couple times they're cool with it and see the pig coming out of the China Box or the pig heads in the smoker, but then the neighbors complain about the smoke, or the restaurant doesn't like all the smoke blowing in from out back, or whatever, and they lose interest in having him do pop-ups. Most buildings there's no space to build a smokehouse out back, or there's room but the neighborhood won't go for all the smoke. So the answer to having a good Chicago BBQ spot I guess is to put it somewhere where there are no neighbors to complain, like some weird out-of-the-way spot. But then of course it can't be so out-of-the-way that it's impossible for people to get there. So we have this thing that means we can't have good BBQ in Chicago. Sucks. Makes sense, but sucks.

[33anda3rd]

I'm taking another spin through this and the Official Meat Smoking Thread (which really would win an award if we had our own Oscars, called the Gibbys or something, Kyle if you could get on that as our new overlord that would be dope).

I was in Asheville, NC in April and then drove to Charlotte for a couple nights. On the way, stopped at Red Bridges BBQ Lodge in Shelby, NC.

Was the best non-Texas BBQ I've ever had.

Roadside spot.

[SHOW]

Big ol smokehouse out back with a wood pile that stretches forever.

[SHOW]

You walk in and the waitress is the owner, her grandfather started the place and she's third generation. She knows about 60% of the people in there by name. She can't be sweeter. When she asks how we found out about them and we tell her we are from Chicago and stopped in town to eat at her place, she's genuinely flattered, which is cool considering her place won the Garden & Gun Magazine bracket thing of the best 'cue in the US. The BBQ comes with a basket of hush puppies that's a meal in itself, the slaw is a BBQ slaw, and the pork is incredible. The sweet tea, however, is the same as all sweet tea: gross.

[SHOW]

If you're in Charlotte or Asheville and love BBQ it's probably worth the hour-long drive each way to check this place out.

[33anda3rd]

I've often wondered if bad* ingredients (ie, meat, especially at a bbq joint) can be overcome with a good chef. Sometimes, I doubt it.

In re-reading this thread, I have a different opinion than I had about this before. I had kind of an 'a-ha' moment when I was in SF last month.

The ingredients out there, on the west coast, are unparalleled. They just have an embarrassment of riches. As a result the cooks don't have to do much. They don't have to manipulate items in interesting ways to get the best out of them, they don't have to pickle anything because everything is fresh all year, etc. Several years ago David Chang said something like "Every f-ing restaurant in SF is just figs on a plate." I didn't get that then, but I do now. They don't cook that much out there. Not a knock on the restaurants, mind you, great food, just different.

In the midwest especially in the winter we don't get that much good produce. Beets, potatoes, other roots. Yawn. So the cooks have to be enterprising. What can I do with this beet that no one else is doing with beets? How can I utilize grains, proteins, sauces? What did I pickle in summer that I can use in winter? How can I make our bread program better? In the midwest, the cooks technique is way ahead of cooks in SF or LA or Portland or Seattle.

So I think that a good technical chef can overcome having inferior product available. Ideally, (s)he will have the best ingredients to work with, but if not the result can still be good if the cook has strong technique.