LC's BBQ

If you a picky about the atmosphere of your BBQ places, you might want to wear blinders when you go to LC’s BBQ , but you should go.  Maybe you will want to buy your food to go like a slew of people did while the Pit Crawlers were there, but either way you should go.  It is some of the best barbeque our group has eaten since we started our tours and reviews. 

You could say that consensus was easier to achieve on LC’s because our original group of five aficionados’ had dwindled to three by the time of our visit.  We lost one to a career move to Boston, and one to graduate school in Pennsylvania.  We were about to lose a third to the Navy, so we decided to visit LC’s before we were only two.  Hence we launched Pit Crawl No. 3 with an itinerary of only one establishment.

We really wanted to work in LC’s because we had heard many good things about it, and we were not disappointed. 

LC’s is not fancy.  It is a smallish place, with the smoker and its delicious looking contents right inside the dining room where you get to glimpse the cornucopia of meats when they open the door to fetch out your choices.  Tables are functional if a bit wobbly, the table service is paper and plastic.  Floors are actually a bit slick under foot from the cooking that goes on in the same room where you order and eat.   The main wall is lined with the owner’s trophy fish, mounted and hung.  (If you’re a fisherman, you will be impressed with this lot, and one behemoth catfish in particular that was lying atop the drink cooler.)  Everything is pretty much squeezed into a space that doesn’t look like it was ever meant to be a restaurant.

The most important thing that is squeezed into this mix is some really good food.  We ordered a variety of items, which we then split among ourselves.  Our choices were:

·         Ribs

·         Burn ends

·         Sausage

·         Brisket

·         Pulled pork

The last review I wrote for the Pit Crawlers was not very favorable to that establishment, so it is a pleasure to be able to rave about the delicious fare at LC’s. 

We all had our personal favorites, of course, but we were able to pretty well agree that the pulled pork, the burnt ends, and the sausage were all excellent.  These were the best of the best.  I was particularly impressed with the burnt ends.  Two of our group thought they were perhaps a little fatty, but I thought they were flavorful and perfect, and I’m a guy for whom burnt ends are not normally on the list of preferred barbecue items. 

Another item we all liked, but which particularly impressed me was the sausage.  It was served without a casing and it was smoky and flavorful.  When I go back to LC’s, I plan to order a pound of this delicious stuff just for me.  We liked it well enough that since our LC’s visit we have tried to perfect a similar sausage of our own.

I named the pulled pork as top of our “best of the best” list because we were all very impressed with it.  Excellent tenderness, moisture, and smoky flavor are the descriptors that come promptly to mind.   

We only tried two sides.  One was the fries, and the other was the fried green beans.  Both were OK, but neither one was remarkable.  I like the stir-fried green beans you get at some Asian restaurants, so I was hopeful that the green beans at LC’s would be similar.  With all the excellent meats available at LC’s, I would not bother with sides again unless I wanted to try the baked beans.  We did not because after ordering the main items, we had so much food already!

Although LC’s had some delicious, tangy sauces to complement their meats, everything was tasty enough on its own to be eaten without that extra touch.  We ended up using the French fries mostly as a means to taste and compare these sauces.  However, if barbeque is not barbeque to you without the sauce, LC’s will not disappoint you.

Did I mention we had a lot of food?  We had a lot of food, so there was some to take away with us.  When we got back to our home base I gave some of the ribs to a young lady who said she had never had any barbeque she liked.  The best testimony I can give about LC’s is that when she bit into that tasty rib, her face lit up.  We think yours will light up too, if you give LC’s a try.

Dennis Constance on behalf of The Pit Crawlers