Pig-N-Out BBQ

Quest Log No 65 – Pig-N-Out BBQ
Huntsville, Madison County

Well, well, a BBQ in a gas station. I have seen stranger things, but it is certainly not the usual setting for such place. I also noticed that they have “Korean BBQ” on the menu, which is kind of no surprise given the fact that the owner is a Lady from this nice country.

The restaurant is surprisingly nice inside – not exactly what you may expect to find in a gas station. The place is impeccably clean, and the little corner where the tables and booths are situated is lovingly decorated, bright and friendly.

The BBQ though, is more like you would expect it from a place like this. The meat of the pork plate I ordered was lean but somewhat chewy, with no particular smoke aroma. It came neither chopped nor pulled, but it looked like it had been put through a blender. There are three sauces, a white one that I did not touch, a basic vinegar-pepper sauce without much pepper in it, and a thick red vinegar-tomato-pepper sauce – and that had some real nice kick to it, and was very flavorful. I scooped the sauce up with the roll that came with the pork plate at the end. Very delicious.

The sides are really almost not worth mentioning – the potato salad was bland and the baked beans were your standard supermarket variety.

The portions were not that big, and actually I was still kind of hungry when I was finished. But for not even nine bucks, including a big 32 oz drink, that is an acceptable deal. But just to fill your tank with some food that is better than a burger from one of them chains. For a real culinary experience, this place would not be my choice. 

Melvin's Place of BBQ

Quest Log No 65 – Melvin’s Place of BBQ
Huntsville, Madison County

No sign. No name. No indication that this place in a fairly run down inner-city subdivision of Huntsville next to a cemetery, is a BBQ restaurant, than the smoke that is coming from a mobile barrel smoker at the corner of the premises. You park either in one of the two parking spots on a gravel patch beside the house, or on the street. In the courtyard of the L-shaped building are some camping-canopies with well worn out leather chairs. A few orange traffic cones adorn the pavement. The entrance to the dining room is a simple red door. The dining room is surprisingly big, and not surprisingly dark. There is one camping table with six camping chairs, half a dozen of those well worn leather chairs along a three foot high wall, and a counter with an old office chair behind it that has an old shirt lumped over it that says “Melvin’s Place of BBQ”. Next to the counter stand an old TV, and some buffet gear. On the other side of the room, beyond the three foot high wall that separates this area from the dining area, and where it is really dark, there is a small stage with some musicians gear on it, several other camping tables, more buffet gear and other things. On the walls, there is one picture of a 1960s era soul band, and a framed article of the Huntsville Times about this place.

Some would call it a dive. Some would even call it a dump. Others would call it authentic. I would call it all of the above.

To be very clear – it is not a dirty place, not at all. It is just well worn, odd, eccentric, cobbled together. The owner, Melvin, is a very nice old man, with a serious passion for BBQ. When I asked him about his secret how to cook such a marvelous BBQ, I got a fifteen minute lecture. No, actually it was more like a sermon, with fire and brimstone, and preaching and praying.

Melvin does not believe in wood. He uses whatever is on hand – hickory, pecan, cherry, it doesn’t matter. The secret to get the flavor in the meat, he told me, is the rub, not the wood. He does his own rub and his own BBQ sauce – actually, he has nine different sauces, and each of them makes the chicken taste differently in combination with the rub. Melvin also does not believe in smoking the meat for hours. He has better things to do than fire up the smoker in the middle of the night, he said. Forty-five minutes is sufficient for a chicken - that is his believe. He also does not turn the meat halfway through the process, nor does he poke it with a thermometer, lest the juices would drip out. With all that, he is the most unorthodox pitmaster I ever met. But his chicken proves him right – it is divine. DIVINE!

I had heard so many good things about Melvin’s chicken that I broke with my rule to have pulled pork at each new BBQ place. The plate, rather the Styrofoam box, came loaded with two slices of regular toast (untoasted), baked beans, potato salad, and a two drumsticks and a chicken breast. The chicken was sitting in a puddle of his BBQ sauce (which of the nine different varieties, I have no idea), that apparently oozed out from the skin. The skin was a bit leathery and not crisp at all, but the meat under it was the most tender, juicy, flavorful and, yes, divine chicken I ever had. It had a very nice smoke aroma, too – something you do not necessarily expect with a smoking time of only forty-five minutes. The potato salad was top notch as well, being a mayonnaise based, fairly sour, concoction. The baked beans were okay, but nothing to write home about. They swam in a thin liquid and had some vegetables and meat in it, but the taste was really nothing special.

With a can of soda, I paid eleven bucks (the lecture was priceless, yet at no cost), which is more than can be usually expected in such a location. But it is well worth it, and I can only suggest that you let the, well, ramshackle environment and the very interesting interior design of the restaurant not deter you from what would become a defining moment in your live – when you take the first bite out of Melvin’s chicken. It is just divine!

Burger King

Non-Quest BBQ No 36 – Burger King

Huntsville, Alabama

During my occasional travels, I try to sample BBQ at those near and far away places outside the Quest area. I just really, really like that stuff ... 

So, once in a while one or another of the national fast food chains decides to spice up their menu with a BBQ-themed item. It should go without saying that those ventures cannot be compared to our local BBQ – they are worlds apart. But as an alternative to the regular menu items, it might just work.

So, now Burger King, too. It is called the Memphis BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich and comes with pulled pork, Memphis BBQ sauce, sliced onion rings and a sweet southern dressing. It looks quite nice in the advertisement pictures, so I thought what the heck.

Well, the one I got did not look quite as nice. After unwrapping it, there was this squishy, slobby, moist, and chaotic mass, which looked an awful lot like road kill. I am also pretty sure that the white sticky thing on it was cheese, which was not featured in the advertisement at all. Or, if it was supposed to be the sweet southern sauce, it was one rubbery concoction of a sauce.

Of course, the advertisement promises tender hickory smoked pork, but there was no way in the world to examine that – the whole thing was drenched in this supermarket-grade Memphis BBQ sauce, which was the only flavor I could determine. Even the onions tasted like it. Which is not to say that it was all bad. Not at all, if you do not expect a real BBQ sandwich. For a fast food offering it was acceptable, even more so because the small combo with fries and a drink only sets you back about five and a half bucks. But be warned – as the picture indicates, it is a real mess to eat. Get some extra napkins.

Ted's BBQ Five Points

Quest Log No 53 – Ted’s BBQ Five Points
Huntsville, Madison County

Ted is spreading his wings and going places. While the original Ted’s location on University Drive in Huntsville is a small, take-out-only hole-in-the-wall affair, the new posh Ted’s in the hip Five Points area has ample seating space, booths and a bar-like area, neon lights, flat screen TV, a Ray Charles poster on the wall, and soul and blues music coming out of the loudspeakers. Quite fancy for a BBQ joint, like a Redneck in a tux.

But do they serve food that an urban redneck like me would like? I mean, real, righteous, rapacious, rousing Q? Well …

I had my usual pork plate, which came with two sides – potato salad and cole slaw in my case, and a cornbread muffin that comes with it by default.

After visits to more than fifty BBQ restaurants in Northern Alabama and more than thirty more outside of this region, I think that I have a pretty good idea how BBQ pork should be done. Well …

The pork had an acceptable, but certainly not outstanding BBQ flavor. But it was a little chewy and definitely too dry. Without a good deal of lubricant, I had problems swallowing it down. They have two choices of lubricant there, a mild and a spicy sauce, both of the thick red variety, and both with the proud label “home made” on it. The mild sauce tasted kind of bitter (do I hear “celery” out of the audience?) and otherwise not like something I would voluntarily put on my pork, other than for lubrication purposes. The spicy sauce was not especially hot, but with a nice zesty kick and a hint of sweetness. So I chose that to drench the pork in – might have also made it a bit more tender when soaked for a few minutes.

So, the pork was merely tolerable with lots of spicy sauce on it. The cole slaw, on the other hand, was quite horrible. I will never understand the fascination some people have with celery – I can’t stand this vegetable, especially not in a cole slaw with a somewhat sweet vinaigrette. In stark contrast to that, the potato salad was a pure delight. Made with red potatoes, and a mustard-mayonnaise dressing, it had a very tasty sour flavor, just as I like it. I just hope it is home made, too, and does not come out of a can. Well, if it does, then can I have the address were to buy it?

The cornbread muffin, however, was clearly home made. It came with pieces of corn and jalapenos baked in it, which gave the natural sweetness of the cornbread a spicy counter balance. I am not a great fan of this kind of “fusion” food, especially not when it comes to BBQ. Just give me plain cornbread, and leave the fancy stuff out. I am a simple guy, with a simple taste, and do not need all that fru-fru stuff.

And for about twelve bucks with a drink, the amount of food was not that big. And since the quality was also not something to write home about (Mom, don’t read this here …), this urban redneck will go to different places when the BBQ cravings come. Places with grime on the floor, stuffed animal heads on the walls, dead flies on the window sills, and Q that has no fru-fru, but the four R’s.

Black Jack's and Thing BBQ

Quest Log No 51 – Black Jack's and Thing BBQ
Huntsville, Madison County

When a BBQ place has a somewhat special, odd, or downright weird name, it can mean either of two things: the owners have to hide their mediocre product behind a flashy name, or the owners are innovative not only in the kitchen, but also with everything else. During my travels through BBQ country, I’ve come across both varieties. There just is no telling from the outside, you have to go in and sample the Q to determine if the name is just icing on the cake, or it is all only smoke and mirrors.

Well, Black Jack's and Thing BBQ is truly some weird name – and I am sure there is a great story behind it. With that name, most people will probably imagine some kind of shack by the road side, next to the burned down grocery and the oily car repair shop. But no, you will find them in a small neat brick building next to a Papa John’s pizza delivery shop, adjacent to a gym and a gas station.

Not very exciting, and the interior is also not very electrifying. Light green walls with a few sparse decorative items, a floor that could use a serious makeover, half a dozen or so wooden tables with wooden chairs, and four of those rustic outdoor bench/table combinations. In a way, this has its own weird charm, but what energy they spent on finding a special name, they did apparently save when it came to interior design choices.

But enough of these rather nonessential things, let’s get to the core of the business – the food.

As usual, I had the pork plate, with slaw and potato salad, and my wife had half a rack of ribs with green beans and baked beans. Together with two cups of sweet tea, we paid a little over twenty-one bucks, which is a very fair deal.

Especially if you take the quality of the food into account.

The pork was very tender and lean, juicy and with a remarkable smoke flavor – very top notch. And the sauce (you have to ask for it, they only have Ketchup and some generic hot sauce on the tables) is nothing short of spectacular. Fruity and yet spicy, without being too hot – just perfectly balanced and very delicious. My wife thinks that there is Curry in it, but I think it is a mixture of different peppers. Be it as it may, I wish they would bottle that stuff and sell it to me.

The potato salad, made with sour crème, was very fresh, but I found it a bit too neutral tasting. More salt and pepper would have made it better, in my mind. My wife on the other hand loved it. I found the cole slaw, made with vinegar, very exciting. It was sour, without the slightest hint of sweetness, with just the right amount of salt and pepper, and very crunchy and fresh.

My wife’s ribs were a lot of meat, to begin with. Not overly fatty, but also not extremely lean, with an average taste. The sides she had, on the other hand, blew her away. The green beans were in her opinion the best she ever had. And the baked beans were totally without sweetness, but came with a spicy aroma instead.

So, does this place with a weird name serve some righteous BBQ? Yes, indeed, they do. And the little twist to abstain from the sweet side and venture into the sour/spicy side of Q is remarkable. As is the name.

Shane's Rib Shack

Quest Log No 50 – Shane’s Rib Shack
Huntsville, Madison County

Opening a BBQ place of your own is the dream of every backyard pit master. Very often, it is the sauce that everybody in the neighborhood just loves, which plants the seeds of the idea to go professional. Not a bad basis, but BBQ is more than that. If the meat is terrible, the best sauce in the world will not save the business. And what about the sides? Many of those restaurants of ex-backyard pit masters only concentrate on the meat and the sauce, and put rather pedestrian sides on the table.

And even worse, what can you expect from an ex-backyard pit master, who not only opened his own BBQ place, but then expanded the business into a franchise with about 70 locations in the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Northeast? Surely he had to cut corners, standardize the whole process, and rationalize the preparation of the food, so that it could be done with comparable quality everywhere.

That this does not necessarily mean adhering to the highest possible standards, but rather finding the least common denominator, should be self evident.

So, now Huntsville has been blessed with its own Shane’s Rib Shack. Hallelujah, just what we needed here to survive the BBQ shortage that plagued us all so terribly the last few decades.

It is located in a plaza with other eateries like Bonefish Grill, Subway’s, Nothing but Noodles, and Zoë’s Kitchen, so the local lunch crowd now also can have its BBQ cravings satisfied.

The fairly big inside of the restaurant is your typical sports-bar/family place, with wooden furniture and semi-booths dressed in red faux-leather.

You order at a counter in the back, put the sign with a number on your table and after a short while your meal is brought to you. The staff is very friendly and attentive, and the place is spotless clean.

The decoration mostly consists of flat screen TVs on the walls, and some framed football shirts. It was kind of odd to see a Raider’s shirt there, and no trace of a Tide or Auburn shirt, or maybe one from the Atlanta Falcons. The Raiders, really?! Not a team known for its success lately, like, oh well, some Alabama football teams. Just saying.

But it is surely a place you can go eat with the kids; they even have four different kid’s menu items.

Although the name of the name implies that they see their ribs as the main attraction, I refrained from that and had the pork plate instead, with baked beans and fries. They don’t have potato salad on the menu and I didn’t want to have chips or mac’n’cheese, and from the picture on the big menu behind the counter, the cole slaw did not look very special to me, so I deviated from what I usually order.

Big mistake, I should have taken something else. The fries were too salty, almost borderline inedible, and the baked beans were of the sweeter-than-sweet variety, and I could swear that I had very similar beans once out of a can from a supermarket.

The meat was very tender and lean, but a bit dry and with just a slight smoke flavor. Not bad, but I had better. The "Original" sauce, on the other hand, is a killer. Vinegar, tomato and pepper, with a hint of mustard, a little sweetness to it – I ate it on the toast when I was through with the meat.

But is that enough to justify a thumbs-up for this place? Well, it will find its fans, and since it is relatively kids friendly, my guess is that it will be there for a while. And what the heck, should I be ever in this part of town when a sudden BBQ craving overwhelms me, and my gas tank would only allow me to travel another mile or so, I would probably go there again. But instead of the two sides that come with each plate, I would order two additional slices of bread – for the sauce.

Lawler’s Barbecue Express #1 (Whitesburg Drive)

Quest Log No 45 – Lawler’s Barbecue Express #1 (Whitesburg Drive)
Huntsville, Madison County

The last Lawler’s on the list of BBQ places in the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area that I hadn’t visited yet is the one with the 1 as the sequence number.

It is located right next to a gas station, in a small building that it shares with the gas station’s office.

It has a drive through, and also a small but relatively cozy space to sit inside with about half a dozen tables. The furniture is wooden, the walls are decorated with some fishing related posters and plaques, and everything is in good shape and the whole place is very clean, with a health score of 99 out of 100.

Of course, after already visiting the other four Lawler’s Express Barbecue restaurants, the menu has no surprises for me anymore. The only item I did not try yet was the ham plate. And with that I chose the BBQ beans and the potato salad as sides, just because I didn’t feel like going with green beans and chips.

Unfortunately, my order was screwed up a little, and instead I got a combo plate with pork and turkey, plus a cup of ham on the side when the mistake was discovered.

Well, that was a lot of meat and really more than I had intended to eat.

And so I only ate some pork and some ham, and just a little bit of the turkey.

The ham did not taste real smoky, and it did not have even a remote BBQ aroma. It was just baked ham, very tender and kind of mushy, but also very sweet. I like the savory version of ham better, and I kind of expected the flavor to go in this direction, because of the hickory smoke it should have been smoked in.

Alas, it was just so sweet that I had to pour a mixture of the hot and the mild vinegar sauce over it to make it tolerable.

Also, the pork and the turkey seemed to have been of lesser quality than I remembered it. Here too I could not detect a real smoky aroma – I had better at other Lawler’s.

So, that concludes the Lawler’s part of the Quest – until they open Number 6 at the new Madison Hospital sometime in the next few weeks.

Lawler’s Barbecue Express #2 (Jeff Road)

Quest Log No 43 – Lawler’s Barbecue Express #2 (Jeff Road)
Huntsville, Madison County

Another day, another Lawler’s. They are spreading like wildfire across the county, the next one (Number 6) already in the making near the new Madison Hospital.

This time, we went to the maybe smallest of the bunch, located in a tiny strip mall on Jeff Road, a mile or so north of the Kroger store on Highway 72. They have a drive-through window there, a small room with a counter, a soda machine and other useful stuff, and outside, in front of the store windows, there are two tiny tables with two chairs each. Well, since this December feels more mike March, and it was actually T-shirt weather outside, my wife and I sat down there and had quite a lovely meal.

True to my credo to have something different each time I visit a satellite restaurant of a franchise, I ordered the ham sandwich this time. It comes with pickles, mayonnaise and lettuce and what can I say, I like it. It is very good smoked ham, nothing special, but very tasty.

So, up until now, I did not have any bad experience at Lawler’s. They are certainly not in the Top Five of my list of favorite BBQ places. But as an alternative to some greasy burger joint, they are unbeatable.

Lawler's Barbecue Express #5

Quest Log No 41 – Lawler’s Barbecue Express #5 (Memorial Parkway)
Huntsville, Madison County

The purist version of BBQ is certainly pulled pork on a plate, with a couple of sides and some sweet tea. Maybe a pulled pork sandwich does qualify, too. But if you put pulled pork on something else – is this even BBQ anymore? Like, on a gigantonomous baked potato, with cheese and sour crème and the kitchen sink?

Well, that’s what I had at the Lawler’s Barbecue Express #5 on Memorial Parkway in Huntsville today.

You know my rule – if it’s a chain, I’ll have a different item from the menu in each of the various locations.

So this time it was the stuffed tater with pulled pork, for about nine Dollars with a drink.

While I wouldn’t want to eat that every day – I am trying to preserve my girlish figure, you know, and this thing surely has a gazillion calories - I must say that it was very tasty. The pork was very tender, lean and succulent, and it harmonized extremely well with the other stuff they put on the potato. They had their four sauces on the table, but I did not need any of them – it was perfect how it came out of the kitchen.

And yes, I know, they do not smoke their meat in those satellite locations, but do it in a central place up in Tennessee and drive it down to Alabama then. The purist in me cringes at the mere thought of it, but the hungry man says, as long as it tastes good, who cares? It surely beats the food you usually get at the next burger joint.

Although, from the looks of it, this place on Memorial Parkway does not have many special features that would distinguish it from other fast food restaurants.

It is located at the corner of a small strip mall, and the interior is, well, functional. Some wooden tables and chairs, a few decorative signs on the walls, really nothing special. Other Lawler’s have a more special interior, with more attention to detail and a much cozier ambience. This place has a more factory like charm – which is understandable, because it is clearly not a typical family dinner location, but a place where Joe and Jack from the power company emergency unit get their lunches. Big taters and all.

.

Big Cove BBQ

Quest Log No 36 – Big Cove BBQ
Huntsville, Madison County

The King died because he stuffed himself with Burgers, Fries and Cherry Cola. Coming from Tupelo, and eventually living in Memphis, this was a somewhat strange choice – had he stuck with good old southern style BBQ instead of the junk food (and pills), he might still perform in Vegas. Because BBQ done right is not only soul food, but it is health food as well.

When you enter Big Cove BBQ, one of the first things you will notice is the life-sized cardboard cut-out of Elvis in his glorious years, standing in one of the corners. Whether he was placed there to remind the customers of the dangers of an unhealthy diet, or to serve as a tribute to the southern way of live, or as a guardian angel for all that is old style, I do not know. But it works – this place is as southern, old style and healthy as the young Elvis, straight out of Tupelo, once was.

You order at a small hole-in-the-wall counter just opposite the entrance door. The menu is of the k.i.s.s. variety – keep it simple, stupid. Pulled pork sandwiches and plates, stuffed baked potatoes, slaw, baked beans … nothing fancy here, just good old soul food.

The dining room has about half a dozen tables, decorated with neat red-and-white-checkered plastic table cloths. The chairs are of the usual black-metal with faux black leather seats variety. The walls are covered with wooden panels, with some old pictures, news paper articles, and the like as decoration. There is a gumball machine in one corner, and some pig figurines placed in a shelf next to the cooler that holds the soda cans.

Sitting there, it felt almost like sitting in someone’s living room – very cozy and homey, and spot clean. That feeling was certainly amplified by the extreme nice and attentive attitude of the staff – it never hurts to be polite, friendly and considerate.

There is also a patio with more tables in the back, but I doubt that this is used very often. Most folks seem to come here for take-out food and those who stay seem to be regulars. Well, given that this place is kind of hidden on a by-road behind a gargantuan WalMart SuperCenter, not very many outsiders will ever find this BBQ.

This is a crying shame, because apart from the old style atmosphere, they serve a righteous BBQ!

As usual, I had the pulled pork plate – which, for not even eight and a half Dollars including free refills for my sweet tea, ended up to be a killer deal. Not only was the portion enormous, but also the quality was excellent.

The pork was succulent and tender, very lean and with a good smoke aroma. They have two sauces, one thick red mild one that is of the common sweet’n’smokey taste. Nothing wrong with that, but this is the sort of BBQ sauce the WalMart carries, too.

But the hot sauce there is of a different breed. It is actually more orange then red, which should give you the first hint of its character. Yes, it is hot. My guess is a lot of cayenne pepper, some ground jalapenos, and a bit of black pepper mixed into a base of tomato sauce. First, it took my breath away, but after the third bite or so, I actually liked the tingling on my tongue that put a different twist on the smoky flavor of the pork.

The plate also came with three sides. The potato salad was, hands down, one of the best I ever had in a BBQ joint. Slightly sour, with big bites of potato, and a well rounded aroma. Superb!

The slaw was made with a yoghurt/sour crème based sauce and tasted very fresh and light. Actually, I could taste the cabbage, which is not always the case because most slaws are just smothered with mayonnaise and/or sugar and vinegar. Not so here, the flavor was very well balanced between a slight sourness, the freshness of the sauce and the aroma of the cabbage. Also, I like it a lot if the cabbage pieces are ‘bite sized’ – that means not shredded into oblivion, but also not cut so coarsely as to leave the leafs almost intact. This slaw had the ‘right’ size – which is hard to describe and certainly varies from person to person. But it worked for me.

The baked beans on the other hand were a bit bland, way too sweet for my taste. But I liked that they were enriched with green bell pepper, which gave it a little unexpected crunch.

Also part of the plate were two buns, which I did not touch – I just was full to the brim, it was a massive meal even without the buns.

The only negative experience there was that they have real nice T-Shirts for sale, with a guitar playing pig on it, but they were sold out of the 2XL size. Well, judging from the crowd you usually see eating at those places, this should be the most popular size in North Alabama. The skinny types ain’t into southern soul food that much, I guess.

Too bad, I would have proudly worn their T-Shirt, to let everybody know that I am now a fan of their BBQ. So, I guess that I have to return there once in a while to check on their T-Shirt situation – looking forward to it.

Texas Roadhouse

Non-Quest BBQ No 25 – Texas Roadhouse

Huntsville, Alabama

During my occasional travels, I try to sample BBQ at those near and far away places outside the Quest area. I just really, really like that stuff ... 

Line dancing servers. Buckets of peanuts on the tables. Peanut shells all over the floor. Big screen TVs with sports programs running on the wall. Willie Nelson as spokesperson. Andy the Armadillo as mascot. Margaritas with shot glasses inside. Over 380 locations in 47 states. One restaurant in Dubai. Annual revenue of over one billion dollars.

So, eventually we now have a Texas Roadhouse in the Huntsville area, too. Hurrah. Another chain, another “family steakhouse” restaurant. With the growth of this area, it is quite inevitable that places like this spring up more frequently in the future. After all, all the new people that are transferred from Army bases in the North need something to make them feel at home – you possible can’t expect them to eat in one of them BBQ shacks around here. Some of them have flies on the window sills, you know, it’s not sanitary and who knows what kind of road kill they smoke in their backyards to serve to the unsuspecting foreigner.

And if you think, well, maybe a Texas Roadhouse would only make folks from Texas feel at home, think again. The franchise was founded in Indiana, it has its headquarters in Kentucky, and most of the locations are above the Mason-Dixon Line, in the Atlantic North-East area. So much for authenticity.

But they have some BBQ items on the menu, so I was compelled to pay them a visit. To make it clear from the beginning, amongst all those Applechilithankgoditstuesday chain restaurants, the Texas Roadhouse is my favorite. They have very good food, the service is great, and even the extreme noise level works for us – it blends out the voices of our very active and loud kids.

So, although it would not classify as a BBQ restaurant per se, the fact that they serve pulled pork, BBQ chicken and ribs qualifies them to be part of this survey.

You can have the pulled pork and the chicken either as a sandwich, or a part of a two meat combo dinner.

I chose the pulled pork and ribs combo, with steak fries and green beans. No potato salad, no baked beans, no slaw on the menu. Bummer.

The first impression of the plate – lots of food, but my gosh, why did they drown the poor pulled pork in the sauce? That really borders on animal cruelty, just leave the meat as it is and let me decide what to do with the sauce.

My choice would have been to rather take ketchup instead. The sauce is one of those supermarket Kansas City style middle of the road non specific conglomerates, a little too sweet, and a little too sticky. Not really bad, but just the sheer amount of it made the pulled pork look like some kind of a stew. That’s certainly not the way to do BBQ. And how did the pork taste? No idea. Since it swam in the sauce, there was no one tiny piece of it left uncovered. It was tender, with just a very small amount of fat. But that is all I can say about it.

The ribs also came with sauce on it, but that was baked in as a wet rub. They had a very delicious and crunchy crust, but immediately under it came a thick layer of fat. There were some real nice chunks of tender and lean meat on the ribs, but that was hidden quite well by all the fat. The ribs were of the fall-off-the-bone variety, which seems to be the expected standard in those kinds of restaurants. The taste was quite smoky and actually very delicious, but it was frustrating to leave so much of the ribs, that is all the fat, on the plate in the end.

The green beans were garnished with some crumbles of fried bacon, and they tasted very good. The steak fries were okay, too.

So, while I would not recommend the Texas Roadhouse as a BBQ place, the food there is generally top notch for a chain restaurant. And for real BBQ, we have more than enough other places here in this area.

Little Paul's Gibson Barbecue

Quest Log No 34 – Little Paul’s Gibson Barbecue
Huntsville, Madison County

There are some strange places where you can set up shop for a BBQ restaurant. A former jail might qualify as mildly funny, some old barn on a country road in the middle of nowhere would probably not raise even one eyebrow, and an airport concourse could even be seen as innovative.

But across the street from a hospital emergency bay? That has to be the most morbid place ever. Imagine, sitting there, munching on your pork sandwich while a steady stream of ambulances, with lights flashing and all, disappear into the big grey building on the other side. And then, imagine the BBQ place crowded with hospital people in their green uniforms, some even still with those paper hair caps and masks on. Scrubs meets pulled pork.

Of course, on the other hand it is a very clever move to have a BBQ place at such a place - who needs soul food more than nurses, doctors, surgeons, and relatives of the patients? My guess is that Little Paul’s Gibson Barbecue in Huntsville, across the street from Huntsville Hospital’s emergency bay, is a gold mine.

And the equally clever move to incorporate “Gibson” into the name of the restaurant will not hurt business either. After all, everybody knows about the Gibsons here in the Tennessee Valley – they are for BBQ what the Kardashians are for the reality show industry.

Well, if I wanted to be cynical, it would be easy to say that this place combines a live reality show with a unique dining experience – like a TV diner, but only real and with better food.

But since I am not cynical, only sarcastic at times, this is not how I would describe the place. Actually, the interior is quite nice; it has a certain 1950s charm with tables covered with black-and-white checkered cloths, shelves full of quirky BBQ and food related stuff, fans on the ceiling and a tiny cross above the counter.

At this counter, you order from the quite extensive menu, pay and receive a sign with a number on it. Not that the place is actually so big that the servers would be lost without this numbering system for the orders. It has seating for about thirty customers, but I guess when it is really hectic during the lunch break of the emergency room people, it can help.

The food is then brought to your table – in our case, we only had to wait a couple of minutes, but we were there after the typical lunch time.

As usual, I had a (large) pork plate with potato salad and (vinegar) slaw. My wife had a two meat plate with brisket and chicken and baked beans and creamy slaw as sides. The plates come with a cornbread muffin and a tiny cup of sauce. At the table, there is a different sauce in a big bottle, and of course ketchup and some kind of hot sauce.

The pulled pork had a good smoky taste, and it was very tender. I found a few strands of fat in it, but not to an extend that it bothered me much. On the other hand, the pork was a bit on the dry side, so I was grateful that my wife relinquished her cup of sauce to me.

The sauce that came with the plate was a very simple mixture of vinegar, water and (cayenne) pepper. Not very spicy, but with some delightful kick nonetheless. And sour. But I actually like it that way, and it went very well with the smoky aroma of the pork.

The potato salad there is listed as “mustard potato salad”, which describes the flavor you get quite well. Also on the sour side, smothered in a mustard infused mayonnaise, I enjoyed it very much. The vinegar slaw, however, was a bit watery and of the sweet-and-sour variety. Not bad, but also not top notch. On the other hand, a third component that was “just sour” would have been probably too much, and so it was a welcomed diversification.

I am not a big fan of cornbread, but my wife is, and she assured me that the cornbread muffin that I traded for her sauce was excellent. And so was the chicken – tender and very flavorful, clearly the best meat of the three we had on our plates. Because the brisket, while also tasting very good, was a bit dry and without the layers of fat inside would not have been easy to chow. Of course, she could have poured the tiny cup of white sauce that came with the chicken over it – but that would have been pure barbarism. Plus, the white sauce was not so special, but merely okay. It needs the very flavorful chicken to shine, not the other way around.

The baked beans were a bit sticky and very thick – a clear sign that they had been sitting in the pot for more than just a couple of hours. But the taste was great, not very sweet but savory, without cinnamon but with some strands of meat in it.

The creamy slaw was crunchy and had a very good flavor.

Together with sweet tea for both of us, this meal for two cost us a bit over twenty-six Dollars. Not exactly cheap, but the food was very good, although not really outstanding. We did see some hospital personnel in the restaurant during our time there, but there was no ambulance that disturbed our meal with its sirens. And quite frankly, I do not believe the emergency room is something I ever want to connect with BBQ in my mind – let alone in reality.