Not even Memphis-STYLE BBQ

My new old beau and I (he will henceforth be called TomClancy as he is ultra paranoid and would loose it if he found out I was using his real name on the INTERNET WHERE ANYONE COULD SEE IT or something like that, despite the fact that the only people who read this blog are a few, very bored friends and some guy in Indian who stumbled upon it by accident and accidentally set it as his homepage and can't figure out how to unset it!)

So wait, where was I?

Oh right, TomClancy and I went out for BBQ this weekend, as I mention at a local joint called The Piggy Bank. While I knew, in my heart of hearts, this was a bad BAD idea. I did it anyway. People at work had raved about it. It was Zagats rated. We weren't in NYC, so there's plenty of land to have a real smoker on. It could work, right? Wrong. It's not that the barbecue was bad, but it wasn't great and it certainly WASN'T Memphis-style BBQ, as advertised. If anything, I'd say it was more Texas style. It was runny, in that vinegary way that Texas barbecue has. And it was tomato-based, so it tasted like what I consider real BBQ, as opposed to North Carolina barbecue, which is very heavy on the vinegar and yuck and light on the yum and sauce.

I had a pulled pork sandwich. Uninspired. The slaw was pretty good, though. TomClancy had the Carolina-style pulled pork sandwich, which was based on the South Carolina mustard barbecue. It was also very vinegary, though. Though TomClancy is from South Carolina, he hadn't had the mustard-based 'cue before and didn't care for this version of it.

We also ordered a small side of ribs. These were immensely better. Though it was the same lame sauce and there was no dry rub on the meat, it was actually cooked well. Moist and falling off the bone the way good barbecue is supposed to be.

The best thing we had by far were the chicken strips, though. They were an appetizer and nothing to do with barbecue at all, but were deep friend to perfection.

I don't get it, though. They had the meat right - that's the hard part. Anyone can make a decent, thick BBQ sauce. How did they screw that up? Hmm...maybe they need someone to help them in the way of Memphis-style BBQ? Do I smell a job possibility? Or maybe just a reality TV show in the making?