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.

David's Barbecue

Non-Quest BBQ No 21 – David’s Barbecue
Arlington, Texas

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 ... 

Since 1910, now in ownership of the forth generation of the family, David’s Barbecue in Arlington, Texas, serves Texas style BBQ. That means no pulled pork, only beef and pork ribs, turkey and sausage.

That’s fine by me, cows or pigs, I don’t care as long as it is good and tasty.

Still full after the big dinner at Bodacious Bar-B-Que the other day, I went for the two meat plate this time – only to find it to be just the same amount of food, only distributed on two instead of three different meats.

In case you need a refresher how Texas style BBQ works – it is like an assembly line. You grab a tray, and at the first station order the meat. Brisket and Links, please.

Then it goes on to the sides. Hmm, the potato salad looked kind of familiar – the also use caraway seeds as spice, so I passed on that and took the baked beans and the slaw instead. Last station, drinks and cash register. The sauce, which comes in classy glass carafes, stands on a little cart in the dining room, where you also find onions, pickles, jalapenos and the like.

The dining room is separated in two areas, which actually comes from the fact that at some time the original restaurant, which is located in an old, rather decrepit strip mall, was extended into the shop space next to it. Nevertheless, the atmosphere there is very authentic, a lovely mixture of country style and 1950s urban chic.

So, after finding a nice secluded corner to sit down, I dug into my meal.

The Brisket, although lean and very tender, did not have any discernable smoke flavor whatsoever. Same goes for the sausage links, which were not spicy but had at least a faint smoky aftertaste.

Clearly, here was some serious sauce action needed – and good Heavens, this action was provided by a delightfully sour reddish-brown concoction with just a hint of spiciness. That really rescued my mood from the unfolding disaster of turning into a foul and hostile creature.

But what truly really saved this meal were the sides. The slaw was crunchy and fresh, with a bold sourness to it. And the baked beans did not arrive in the sweet variety one is getting all the time, until all resistance and hope are crushed under the constant onslaught of molasses and cinnamon. This one was different – sour and a bit fruity. A new taste, indeed! Brave David, you have the moxy to liberate us from the death grip of the industrially acquired taste of mainstream baked beans.

You also get a Texas Toast with all that, which for about fifteen bucks including a fountain drink is not the cheapest deal, but the value received for that makes it a fair deal, indeed.

And so, after this experience and that with Bodacious Bar-B-Que the day before, I have to admit that, yes, there is decent BBQ in Texas. Just avoid the dreadful chains and trust your car’s navigation system to lead you away to some hidden corners, and you will be able to find the occasional gem. 

Bodacious Bar-B-Que

Non-Quest BBQ No 20 – Bodacious Bar-B-Que
Arlington, Texas

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 ... 

The name – Bodacious – is a bit misleading. There are no tassels involved, no pole and no red lights. Just extremely well smoked red meat, spicy sauces and tender butts.

There is no TV, just some good ol’ country music radio station for entertainment, sweet tea that comes in a (plastic) jar, instead of a dispenser, wagon wheels and cow’s horns as decoration, and a not so subtle country style atmosphere in the dining area. Classy and classic, veritably old school.

And when in Rome … or in Texas, for that matter, do as the Texans do. So I decided to go all out and had a three meat plate with Brisket, Links and pulled Pork. A manly sized portion in most parts of the continental US, but here in Texas that’s probably what a ten year old gets for breakfast each day.

The Brisket was just short of heavenly – very tender, lean, with a distinctive but not overwhelming smoky taste. Best brisket ever for me – but also only the third or fourth time I had that, I have to admit. So the measuring stick was not too big in this case. But anyhow, a very delightful experience.

The sausage links had a good spiciness on them, which suppressed the smoke flavor for the most part. There was a hint of it, but only if you really wanted to find it. No matter, they too were absolutely delicious.

The pork was also very tasty, but not due to the faint smoke aroma they sported. Very tender and very lean, you needed the sauce to support the flavor, which was absolutely not necessary with either the Brisket or the Links. 

The sauce, which you got out of a pot at the counter, was red and thick, fruity and deliciously spicy. I am more a fan of the vinegar-pepper sauce variety, but if it has to be a thick red sauce, than this offering from Bodacious would be on my short list.

Too bad that the sides could not hold up to the lofty standards set by the meat and the sauce.

The cole slaw, though crunchy and fresh, tasted a quite bland. And the potato salad came with little dark speckles that could have been mistakenly identified as ants, but in reality it was caraway seeds. Funky tasting, to say the least. Not really bad, but also not what I would classify as “must have”. I took one bite and the affair was already done before it begun.

But all in all, because of the excellent meat and the overachieving sauce, and certainly because of the very homey atmosphere of this place, I wouldn’t mind to dine there again during one of my next trips to the region. With almost sixteen bucks for the whole meal, it sure ain’t cheap – but if the alternative is to spend half the money at one of those chain restaurants, it is a no brainer. Quality beats cheap every time, at least in my BBQ world.

4Rivers Smokehouse, Winter Garden

Non-Quest BBQ No 15 – 4Rivers Smokehouse

Winter Garden, Florida

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 ... 

The area around Orlando has a confusing variety of settlements that have “Winter” as part of their names. Winter Park, Winter Hills, Winter Garden … you name it, they have it. This is even more confusing if you take into account that the normal winter in this region consists of low temperatures around the half hundred mark, blue skies and sun all day, and that most people can’t even remember how it feels to make a snow angel. Maybe it is some kind of reverse psychology at work here, indicating that these places are the perfect sanctuaries to flee to from the dreary cold and dark skies usually involved with real wintery conditions.

So, after visiting the 4R Smokehouse in Winter Park the other day, I decided to try out the second of three locations of this small chain in Winter Garden.

Why, you ask? Good question, since I really did not like their food that much the first time, at the Winter Park location. Well, when I left the restaurant that evening, something caught my eye which intrigued me. They have a dish there that is called the “Six Shooter” and I just had to absolutely try this.

The Six Shooter consists of cheese grits topped with pulled pork, southern slaw, pickles, jalapenos and 4R sauce.

Strange concoction, isn’t it? But let me tell you this – it works. Even with the dreadful 4R sauce on it.

Or maybe because of it. There are so many layers of different texture and flavor, and they all work together splenditiously.

Except for the jalapenos, which I removed right away – too much Tex-Mex for my taste. I like them in burritos or tacos, but do not necessarily need too see them with anything related to BBQ.

The whole heap of food, again slapped directly onto the paper on the tray, looks less inviting than your typical road kill. Think exploded carcass, a big blob of anything that can be scraped off the blacktop on a hot smoldering summer day.

The process of preparing this culinary extravaganza starts with a block of compact cheese grits that is chopped into dice-sized pieces. Then comes a good helping of the pulled pork – unnecessarily drenched in the red 4R signature sauce, but since I already discussed my dismay of this practice exhaustively in the post before, I’ll let it slide this time – followed by their extremely good southern slaw, the jalapenos and the pickle. And then some more sauce. Lord have mercy.

But this time, the sauce actually is a perfect match, because it provides sweetness and a hint of bitterness to the heartiness of the cheese grits and the creamy sourness of the slaw.

The grits could as well stand on their own merits, they have a very creamy texture and a wonderfully full cheese flavor. Together with the other ingredients, it forms a very unique symbiosis of flavors. And for just under ten bucks with a drink, and taking also into account the sheer volume of food you get, this Six shooter hits the mark.

For this, I would come back gladly to the 4R chain. It seems to me as such a natural thing to combine grits with pulled pork, that I wonder why I haven’t seen this in one of our BBQ joints here in Northern Bama yet. How fantastic it could be with real good BBQ sauce, one can only speculate … and dream.

4Rivers Smokehouse, Winter Park

Non-Quest BBQ No 14 – 4Rivers Smokehouse

Winter Park, Florida

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 ... 


“Some people heat up some meat, slap some sweet’n’smoky sticky sauce on it and call it BBQ. That ain’t right.”

That quote from one of my buddies, although he is an avid Auburn Tigers fan and thus his judgment should be considered, well, questionable in many areas, hits the nail on the head.

Sure, the sauce is important for BBQ, but it should not be the main ingredient, or even the one aspect which qualifies using those three holy upper case letters.

As I stated repeatedly already, the Orlando, Florida region is not quite a hot bed for good or even real, BBQ. The area is littered with chain restaurants and most of them serve what the average tourist from overseas expects under the moniker of BBQ.

And that is, sadly, some heated up meat with a red sticky sauce, which has this rather uniformly smoky sweet and spicy taste, otherwise also known as “St. Louis style”.

During my numerous endeavors to find a halfway decent BBQ joint in Orlando, I came across just one so far – the subtly named Bubbalou’s Bodacious BBQ.

But then I heard about this fabulous place, 4Rivers Smokehouse, and was practically urged to go there by people who knew about my conundrum.

Spoiler alert – it was not bad, but the sauce …

You can visit a 4Rivers Smokehouse in one of three locations outside of Orlando. I chose the one in Winter Park, a virtual extended suburb of the big city, about fifteen miles to the north.

When I arrived at about six in the evening, the place was already packed and when I left the line of would-be BBQ customers extended outside the building to the curb. It seems that this is a very popular place for the locals. I reckoned that I was the only bloody tourist there, because it is located quite far away from the typical stomping grounds of the Disney crowd. Plus, I heard more Spanish around me than any other language.

The place in Winter Park is predominantly a carry-out affair. They have a covered porch with simple wooden picnic-style furniture, but what is really lacking is enough parking space. The one small parking lot at the main street was packed and the other one, also very small and of the gravel variety, behind the building was also almost full. As I said before, this seems to be a very popular place with the locals.

The main area of the restaurant is the tiny room were orders, preparation and payment of your meal is done. You chose from the quite extensive menu, which is written down all across the wall behind the counter, step to the counter and state your choice. A plastic tray is grabbed by the order guy, who then slaps a piece of thick white paper (or thin white cardboard, if you like …) on the tray and scribbles the initials of your order on one corner of the paper – PPD for Pulled Pork Dinner in my case.

Then the tray behind the counter and you in lockstep in front of the counter, progress to the next station – the meat.

Different from other Texas style BBQ joints, where the use of this assembly-line style system is quite typical, here they do not carve the meat before your very eyes, but some guy just scoops up a few spoons of pulled pork from a metal holding box and slaps it right onto the paper on the tray. Then he spouts a good helping of the signature 4R BBQ sauce on it. Lovely.

But, no time to pout, on it goes to the next station – sides.

Potato salad, slaw and BBQ beans, please. The sides are filled in Styrofoam cups, a biscuit also finds its way on the tray and off you go to meet your dinner plate at the cashier. The whole meal, including a bottle of Red Rock Cola (they have a very nice assortment of gourmet and specialty soda refreshments there …), was mine for about fourteen bucks.

When I stepped outside, to go around the small side of the building to the covered porch, I could not help but wondering how in the world I should eat this heap of saucy meat and the equally wet sides (… more 4R sauce on the beans … mayonnaise on the slaw and the potatoes …) in any form of a civilized manner – nobody had offered me a fork, and I hadn’t seen any inside, either.

The mystery was lifted when I saw the fork, universal spoon, and knife dispenser next to the Coke machine. Nice touch, it works just like a toothpick dispenser.

Thus armed with plastic utensils, I tried to find a piece of meat that was not drenched with this signature 4R BBQ sauce, to find out if they knew how to smoke a pig. No such luck. The color of the meat told me right away that the real taste of the meat would stay shrouded in obscurity. Although it was quite tender and succulent, it was red, like in “after we pull the meat, we drown it in our signature 4R sauce”. Well, that was a bit unfortunate, but I could maybe overlook it if the sauce was something special and exquisite. Not the case. I bet there is chicory in it, because it had a somewhat bitter aftertaste. And at the same time it was sweet, so damn sweet that it actually hurt one of my sensitive molars on the right side of my teeth. Yes, it has some spiciness to it, and at the table they have another variety of this sauce with a bit more kick to it. And I really can’t quite lay my finger on it, but the sauce tasted rather artificial, with too many preservatives and synthetically enhanced flavors in it perhaps.

Their web site states that “The recipe is multi-regional making it a perfect combination of sweet and tangy with a smoky spice finish.”

A multi-regional BBQ sauce. And what regions should that be? The web site does not give an answer, but it was a rhetorical question anyway – I really don’t wanna know.

Too bad that the BBQ beans swam also in this 4R sauce, bottles of it you can buy also directly in the restaurant, of course.

The potato salad’s taste was very good, with a hint of dill and just the right mixture of tangy and fresh. But unfortunately half of the potato pieces were basically raw, so I refrained from tormenting my guts with that indigestible stuff, tasty as it may be.

Actually the best part of the meal was the slaw. Crunchy and fresh, with a light yoghurt sauce that does not smother the flavor of the vegetables, and a creamy overall texture, it was a delight.

So, overall, this experience just fortified my conviction that Texas-style BBQ and I will never become best buddies. It was a big amount of food, and it was certainly eatable. But the taste was, mostly through the overly generous use of the sauce, not what I would call my personal favorite.

Harlon's Bar-B-Que

Non-Quest BBQ No 13 – Harlon's Bar-B-Que

Houston, Bush International Airport, Texas

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 ... 

Seriously, what can you expect from airport food? Exactly.

But since it was there, I just had to try it. Good thing they have all kinds of other restaurants there at Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas, because unfortunately my travel schedule for the next weeks will require that I eat there at least a few times between flights.

So, they have a Harlon’s Bar-B-Que counter there in one of the food courts in Terminal B. Hurrah.

Another Harlon’s is to be found in a Houston shopping mall, two others are in the city of Houston and one in a town called Nacogdoches, and they also sell pre-packaged meats in local supermarkets. Amazing.

Okay then, give me a two meat plate with sausage and beef, and please try not to sneeze on the meat while you preparing it, thank you so much for your consideration.

Well, of course there is no potato salad, we are in Texas here and those folks eat … Mac’n’Cheese with their BBQ?! What the heck, when in Houston … And also give me some green beans, I better counter the bacteria from your constant sneezing with some vitamins.

Yeah, I guess I’ll have a drink, medium un-sweet tea, please. Here you go, almost fifteen Dollars for you, a plate with two meats, cheesy noodles and boring vegetables, and a very generous helping of flu particles for me. Yippieh.

Since this place is in an airport food court, the atmosphere there is like you are sitting in an airport. Doh …

But at least it’s BBQ, right? Well, kind of, in a matter of speaking, you could probably refer to it as such, if you are very polite and don’t mess with Texas.

First of all, the meat came drenched with some kind of spicy ketchup. Great.

The sausage was fatty and tasted only spicy; no room for any real taste here, just the hot sensation of the spices.

Whereas the beef was very lean, but also kind of chewy and had an aroma not much unlike cardboard.

It came as a surprise to me, how good the Mac’n’Cheese actually tasted. Although I think the creaminess of it was more a product of it being under a heating lamp for hours than the actual cooking prowess of Mr. Kraft.

The green beans, on the other hand, which came with little pieces of red pepper, were really good – crunchy and very tasty. And I sure hope they had lots of vitamins to contribute to my body’s flu resistance forces.

So, now that my curiosity is satisfied, next time I am at the Houston airport, I can look out for some, hmm, … healthier … better … tastier food – even if it does not contain the magic three letters. 

Dickey's Barbecue Pit

Non-Quest BBQ No 11 – Dickey’s Barbecue Pit

Arlington, Texas

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 ... 

Dickey’s Barbecue Pit has started as a family business in Dallas, Texas, in 1941. Since then, they franchised their business model and today there are about 140 Dickey’s all over the United States. With the conspicuous exception of the States of Alabama and Tennessee. They are certainly successful, and also obviously wise enough than to test their luck here in the BBQ belt. And rightfully so, because they don’t hold a candle to even most of our more average BBQ places.

This is not to say that the food is bad at Dickey’s – not at all. But if you had the choice between a V8-Truck and a Smart … that’s what I mean. No contest. Game over. Move on. Get out of the way. Now.

The restaurant exterior and interior are strictly and clearly designed to appeal to the usual Sports-Bar/Family restaurant crowd. Nice wooden furniture, a few neon signs and antique looking photos on the walls, a couple of flat-screen-TVs in the corners, booths on the walls, tables in the middle, blue-and-white checkered table cloths, plastic plates and metal silverware. Standard issue American family restaurant equipment, no style points for authenticity here, that’s for sure.

And then there is the misleading name – Barbecue Pit. Laughable. They use gas powered smokers, which by my count is as far away from anything you could justifiably call “Barbecue Pit” as I am from being mistaken for Brad Pitt.

So, although the original place in Dallas still exists, and the franchise is also still owned by the original family, their restaurants aren’t exactly Mom-and-Pop-style joints, and they also cut some corners in other areas during their growth to national food chain. But how is the food now, actually?

Well, to find this out, I ordered the two meat plate – with pulled pork and polish sausage, and baked beans and a so called baked potato casserole on the side. And for good measure, and because it just happened to stand there so invitingly at the counter where you load your side on the plate, I also took a cup of apple cobbler. And good thing that I did, because that was definitely the high light of the whole meal.

First of all, the pork was not pulled. It was kind of cut into big chunks, which where not very tender and also contained a good bit of gristle and fat, while the meat around that was unbelievably dry. The taste was actually surprisingly acceptable, but after spitting the third chunk of gristle into a napkin, I really wasn’t in the mood to enjoy it any more. And it also didn’t help much that the pork was smothered with sweet sauce – vinegar and pepper to bring out the flavor, anybody? Goodness gracious.

The polish sausage on the other hand was real good – a little spicy, but that was complemented in a very nice manner by the thick red sweet barbecue sauce the carver at the counter had poured over it. Although the sausage was certainly not of the lean variety, taste and texture were really pleasant.

The baked beans on the other hand were just merely acceptable, and you can get the same quality out of almost every canned brand from the supermarket.

And then the baked potato casserole – what a grand name for mashed potatoes with bacon bits and cheese on top. It was kind of a tasteless concoction, only resembling anything flavorful when I happened to have bacon, potatoes and cheese together on the fork. Don’t those people (outside of Alabama and Tennessee) know what potato salad is? And cole slaw? Maybe it is good they apparently don’t – it would end in certain disaster anyway. So, Texas (and Florida and everybody else), stay with your potato casseroles and fries, and leave the real stuff to those people who can handle it.

As mentioned above, the apple cobbler was very good, not too sweet and without that dreadful cinnamon spice. Also, you get a free ice-cream cone with each meal, which is always a crowd pleaser. And for such a lot of food, including a large drink, the price of just over thirteen buckaroos is a very fair deal. But I would gladly have paid more to get decent pulled pork. And potato salad. 

Cecil’s Texas Style Bar-B-Q

Non-Quest BBQ No 10 – Cecil’s Texas Style Bar-B-Q

Orlando, Florida

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 ...

What exactly is this “Texas Style” that so many places carry in their name? Is it the fact that you order at a counter where the meat is prepared before your very eyes? Or is it the different wood that they use to smoke the meat? Or is it the sauces that are different from what we have here in the BBQ Belt? Is it all of the above?

Or maybe it’s just the posters of dudes in Cowboy hats on the walls. I don’t know, but I will find out next month when I will be on ravel to Dallas.

But right now, I have to be content with “Texas Style” places outside of that great state, in this case namely Cecil’s Texas Style Bar-B-Q in Orlando, Florida.

Which is a nice clean and somber classical restaurant, with wooden furniture split half and half between four-person tables and four-person booths, a few Texas-oriented pictures, posters and mementos on the walls, and an overall no-frills atmosphere to it.

You order at a counter and the meat is prepared before your very eyes. Then the plastic plate is handed to you and you go around a corner to the buffet with the sides. They have beans, beans, and some more beans there, in different varieties. You put two sides on your plate and proceed to the cashier, get your drink out of the soda machine, and then go to an island in the middle of the dining room where you will find the sauces, condiments, pickles, onion rings and the like.

Cecil’s is only the second place in Orlando where I found pulled pork, so I got that, and chose BBQ beans and some strange potato-casserole like thing as sides. A slice of the usual Texas toast comes with the meal, too.

Apparently, they know how to smoke pork in Texas – it was very tender and juicy, with a nicely pronounced smoke flavor, and surely well within the acceptable standards. Nothing really spectacular, though, just plain good ol’ pulled pork.

You have the choice between three sauces, and here is where the trouble begins. The sweet sauce is a notch better than pure ketchup, the mild sauce has the color of charcoal and tastes like burnt chicory, whereas the hot sauce is more bitter than spicy. A cup of the sweet sauce with just a few drops of the hot sauce generates an acceptable mixture, but quite frankly the sauces are not the strong point of this joint.

This can also be stated for the sides I had. The BBQ beans were nothing special, maybe a bit too much on the sweet side, but this potato-casserole thing was downright blah. Half-cooked potatoes with onion rings, all covered with American cheese – and it tasted like cardboard. So, still no sighting of potato salad in Orlando.

The Texas toast on the other hand was not too bad, but then again, what can possibly go wrong here?

One nice touch is that with each in-house dinner comes a free ice cream cone. The machine they have for this is a rather picturesque apparatus but the vanilla ice cream that comes out of it tastes very good.

For just under fourteen bucks, which seems to be a standard Orlando price tag for BBQ, including a drink and an ice cream cone, the meal was not a bad deal. The highlight was certainly the meat, followed by the ice cream as dessert, and it is a nice non-fancy restaurant. All in all, an acceptable dining experience with okay food, but I am clearly anxious to see how they do it in Texas proper.

Cracker Barrel

Non-Quest BBQ No 4 – Cracker Barrel
Madison, AL

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 ... 

I know, I know – Cracker Barrel ain’t a BBQ place. And that’s why I list them under the Non-Quest topic, to be fair. But they are serving a BBQ brisket plate there, so of course I needed to check that out, right?!

Everybody here in the South knows Cracker Barrel, of course. It is a big restaurant chain that serves you good southern cooking on a mainstream level, but nevertheless, while it may not be the original finger lickin’ home cooking of your great-aunt Bobbie Sue, it is still in a different league than those ubiquitous Burger joints and “Family Sports Bar Restaurant” thingies.

They also have a store in each restaurant, where you can purchase all kinds of neat stuff, like John Deere Christmas ornaments, College Football Team memorabilia (Roll Tide!), Quilts, Candy and Condiments.

So, there I was, having a Country Brisket Plate at Cracker Barrel – “…slow cooked hickory smoked beef brisket slices on Texas toast. Comes with a side of sweet BBQ sauce, thick cut steak fries … and a sampling of cole slaw …”.

Well, it wasn’t bad at all, and for a mainstream restaurant, it was downright exceptional. The brisket was very juicy and tender, and it had a real nice hickory taste, and just a small amount of fat. I would not rank this at the top of the crop, but it was clearly much better than I had expected.

And in combination with the very garlicky Texas toast, it actually soared to culinary heights never reached by such a mainstream joint before. You really do not need the BBQ sauce with it, which is a good thing, because the sauce is not as sweet as advertised, but rather on the sour side. And that does not complement the brisket on the toast too well for my taste. Don’t get me wrong – the sauce in itself is not bad, but for this particular brisket I would have chosen a more sweet and tangy concoction.

As for the sides – the slaw is a bit watery in all its mayonnaisy glory, but I certainly had worse and though it would not hold a candle to the top dogs in a stand-alone competition, it certainly complements the brisket real well.

And the fries are just that – fries.

So, was it worth the ten bucks with a drink (take the raspberry lemonade, if they have it …)? Although the portion itself was not very generous, the quality of the food was real good, so I guess that is a fair deal. Another bonus is, that in being a chain restaurant, certain sanitary standards apply – no flies on the window sills, for instance. On the other hand, the big dining room is not the least bit cozy or authentic. But the food is served on real china, with actual metal silverware – a far cry from the Styrofoam plates and plastic utensils in most real BBQ joints. But that, a real BBQ joint, Cracker Barrel ain’t – and the very decent brisket plate they serve ain’t gonna change that anytime soon, too.

Chuck Wagon BBQ

Quest Log No17 – Chuck Wagon BBQ
Madison Boulevard, Madison, Madison County

Chuck Wagon BBQ in Madison is a bit different, in many ways.

First of all, it is Texas style BBQ. Yes, they have pork, but their specialty is brisket and sausage. You order at a carving station, where the owner will carve the meat before your very eyes, measures the weight on a scale that has a very visible sticker “Made in the USA” on it, then puts it on a plate and gives it to the guy who puts the sides on it. In the meantime, the owner has discarded the excess juices from carving the meat into the bowl with the BBQ beans. Yeah! That’s how they freakin’ do it in Texas!

Needless to say that the BBQ beans are the very best I ever had – not only does the meat juice go in there, but there are also real big chunks of beef in it, too. Yeah! Or Yippieh, or Yeehaw, or whatever they do in Texas when something is really outstanding.

And that is true for the potato salad, which is, of course, home made, too. It is of the mayonnaisy variety, but has a nice sour note to it. Oh, and one more thing about the beans, which are the owner’s great-grandfather’s recipe and are cooked campfire-style over the wood fired grill – unlike many around here, these do not have this overwhelming cinnamon taste, but have a very strong meaty flavor instead. Yeah! Yippieh! Yeehaw!

But enough of the sides - although those alone would make it worthwhile to go there. But if you decide to pay a visit, arrive early. They open at 11 AM and usually by that time a line has already formed that wraps around the place two or three times.

The restaurant itself is rather small, it holds maybe half a doyen tables for four in the main room and maybe a few more tables in the adjacent expansion room. That room was apparently attached after the word about the beans got around and the place was overrun by the masses.

The interior decoration is very authentic for such a joint. Wooden tables and chairs, a few very small booth-style tables in the back, plastic table cloths, wooden walls and floor, a few Western-style decorative items – nothing fancy, nothing special, just homey and kind of snuggly.

Outside of the building there is a big trailer - it looks like one of them horse trailers – where the meat is smoked, Texas style. That means that the fire never touches the meat, so that only the smoke cooks the meat. Which is, kind of, the way we all do it here in Bama anyway … any other way would be just uncivilized and not real BBQ, am I right?! Thought so.

Usually, I would have pulled pork, but this time I decided to go with the brisket instead. It just looked so fantastic when the owner prepared it for the lady in front of me, and plus it is really their staple, so I decided to break with tradition.

Didn’t regret it for a second.

The meat was moist, very tender, extremely tasty, with a hint of mesquite wood, and with just a little fat on it. There is really no need to pour sauce on it at all. But if you must, they have two kinds – mild and hot, which are of the dark red, thick, tomato-fruity variety. The hot sauce is a bit more spicy than the mild sauce, but it is really not that hot at all, it just has a nice kick to it, that’s all.

You have to grab a small cup and fill it with sauce when you get your plate after it is loaded up with the sides, so no sauce drowning orgies at the table here. Which is okay, because - really, trust me - you don’t need the sauce. Well, maybe to dunk the toast that comes with the plate in it.

There is also the special Chuck Wagon Sandwich that is not on the menu – just ask for it. This comes with two meats of your choice, and whatever your second meat might be, let the first meat be the smoked sausage. I heard that there are people who came back several times to try out any possible combination with the sausage.

With a drink – you can buy a can of Soda, no glasses or cups here – the brisket plate cost me about thirteen bucks. Not really on the cheap side, but the quality of the food, the fantastic taste, the BBQ beans (Yeah! Yippieh! Yeehaw!), and the really nice atmosphere at the Chuck Wagon BBQ makes this a very fair deal.

Remark (23 April 2013): The now also have a killer white sauce, a killer vinegar-pepper sauce and a über-killer mustard based sauce. If this is not heaven ...