Bring some towelettes, and appetite, on rib ride
Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007

Note: This is the second column in a two-part series.

In August we began to chronicle our recent “rib ride” — a 300-mile journey in search of true barbecue.

With friends from Texas and Florida, we sampled barbecue meats by Pier 4 Cafe & Smokehouse in Alma, J & J Barbecue & Catering in Nelson and Hog Wild Barbecue & Grill in Luck.

The ride continues today. Bring some moist towelettes — at least two per diner and restaurant — and don’t wear a white shirt.

Main Street Barbecue, Rice Lake

Rob Davis was executive chef at the original Famous Dave’s in Hayward from 1999 to 2002.
Sure, similarities exist between Dave’s and Davis’. Both restaurants use the squared-off St. Louis-cut spareribs. Both smoke ribs with hickory wood, then char them on a grill before serving. Both purchase semi-cooked beef brisket from Hormel and smoke it until done. Both serve roasted, not barbecue, chicken — and corn-bread muffins with caramelized tops.

But Davis’ Main Street Barbecue is not a Famous Dave’s knockoff. It’s a one-of-a-kind barbecue place with food emphatically its own.
Consider that brisket. We admit, we don’t like culinary compromises. True barbecue means buying whole briskets, rubbing on spices and smoking them for maybe 18 hours.

But Davis does the next best thing. In his hands, the purchased brisket becomes as pink as corned beef and thoroughly smoky. Also moist, tender, utterly lean. Gently tug on a slice; you’ll see the gorgeous marbling gaps from which all fat has melted.

Eat it without sauce. It’s carnivore candy.

Davis’ ribs are superb examples of the craft of barbecue: juicy and tender, with crisp bark, a tasty rub, beautiful smoke rings and good levels of smoke, porkiness and chew.

And Davis’s roasted chicken is a masterpiece, with magically crisp-dry, salty skin enveloping luscious meat.

Mike’s Smokehouse

Kathy and Richard Halverson purchased Mike’s Smokehouse in 2001 from founder Mike McGrouray. Kathy comes from a restaurant family — a grandfather was executive chef for Van de Kamp’s foods — and she managed four restaurants in Rochester, Minn.

The Halversons were great fans of Mike’s. They’ve preserved his original menu while adding chicken potpie, pulled chicken and new soups.

And they still proudly fire the restaurant’s venerable barbecue smokers with hickory and cherry wood.

On the Midwestern barbecue continuum of smoked versus stewed meat, dry-cooked versus wet-cooked, Mike’s meats fall somewhere toward the stewed and the sauced.

The regular rack ribs are smoked, coated in the house barbecue sauce to keep them moist while refrigerated, then slathered again before being reheated at service.

This yields soft, fall-off-the-bone meat whose flavor comes mostly from the sauce.

The beef briskets and pork butts — the shoulder cut preferred for pulled pork — are smoked for around four hours, then slowly finished in large cookers. Both emerge from the kitchen with light meat flavors and light smoke.

Mike’s meats are all exceptionally lean. Except for the ribs, therefore, each meat can arrive less moist within than it could and should be, making the use of barbecue sauce not merely advisable but necessary. This is doubly true for the smoked chicken, which was dry each time we tried it.

Mike’s barbecue sauce is tomato-based, simple and decisively tangy with an undertone of gentle sweetness and perhaps a little smoke.

Famous Dave’s

We don’t review chain restaurants, for many reasons.

Here’s one: Chain food is not the creative expression of owners or chefs, but the result of largely invisible corporate decision-making that may value efficiency and profitability over freshness and flavor.

Take the corn on the cob that garnishes many plates at Famous Dave’s. It’s flat-out terrible: starchy, gummy, always overcooked. It wouldn’t last a minute in a non-chain restaurant. Alas, corporate menu redesign moves slowly.

But on a tour of barbecue restaurants, Famous Dave’s must be included. Excepting the brisket, each restaurant still makes true barbecue in-house, smoking its meat from raw, low and slow.

Dave’s ribs are deservedly famous. Ordered “naked,” they have grill-crisped skin, remnants of the chain’s mass-market rub — whose major aftertaste, unfortunately, is sweet — and usually excellent tug and chew. Twice in four visits we found significant portions of an order dry and chewy; all the meat was tasty nonetheless.

Consistency can be a problem. On one visit, the chopped pork was a beautiful, moist, delicious smoky mess of chunks and shreds in pinks, beiges, soft reds and brown-blacks (from the “bark”). On another, it was mostly threads in monochromatic beige with smoke, no bark and little flavor.

The brisket arrives in grayish-brown slices that are dry- and tough-looking, with some rub at the edges and no smoke ring. But the bite is tender and moist enough, with good smoke and beefiness.

The roasted chicken? A disappointment. Pre-injected with lemon-pepper marinade, it had a muted muddy tanginess in the flesh and disappointingly flabby skin.

Where’s the Stain Stick?

Main Course, the Leader-Telegram’s restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month.