Smoke N Babes

                A few months ago when we started this BBQ Pit Crawl I think all of us had one major thought in mind. What a great excuse to get out and eat at our favorite BBQ spots. But it quickly became more than that. A chance for five guys to make each other laugh, de-stress from the daily  grind, help people find where to go for good CUE, and most of all adventure. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”.

                   So while taking a detour from Baldwin City, Kansas and passing through Gardner Kansas, out of the corner of my eye there it was -Smoke N Babes BBQ. Never heard of it? Neither had I till then, but that’s when I decided that all of my choices on this tour were going to be places I’ve never been and with a bit of luck places I’ve never even heard of. So this Adventure begins at 213 E. Main Street Gardner, Kansas 66030. The place is small, so don’t blink as you drive by, and when you go in be prepared to bump knees with the rest of the patrons. It’s about the size of your average bedroom with something like four or five tables strategically placed. The walls are mostly painted like a chalk board for customers to draw on while their food is being prepared. Their hours are short during the early week 11:00am to 2:00pm, However they're open till 8:00pm Thursday through Saturday. So if  its dinner you want go later in the week.

                    Jack our chicken man had the chicken dinner with fries and corn nuggets, Zach had the burnt ends dinner with beans and cole slaw, Travis had the half slab baby back dinner with fries and fried green beans, Dennis had the carolina style pulled pork sandwich with corn nuggets, I had the burnt end sandwich with fries and beans, and Dennis and myself shared a half slab of baby back ribs and a combo sandwich that had spicy sausage and brisket.

                   So lets start with the meats! The chicken was smoked perfect with nice texture and  a good flavor. It pulled from the bone with ease and was tasty and moist. The ribs were also smoked well with great texture, pulling from the bone nicely. We had the baby backs because they were sold out of their spare ribs which I was told was their specialty. The ribs were sauced but only after they were pulled from the smoker, so if you're on the dry side of the WET VS DRY RIB WAR you might ask to not have them sauced. The pulled pork on the carolina style sandwich was good, but we thought the slaw didn’t have much flavor. The burnt ends were among some of the best I’ve ever had. Cooked with the perfect amount of smoke and as tender as any I’ve ever had the pleasure to eat. The sausage was a huge hit as well. We had the spicy sausage on our sandwich. For those of you who don’t like the heat they also have a regular sausage. It was tender and sweet with the right amount of heat and no toughness. Last but not least comes the brisket. Wow I loved this brisket. It was chopped not sliced-- which is a bit more common in the south. Personally I like it both ways, however in this case it was the perfect texture for the flavors used to cook this meat. Sweet and spicy with hints of smokey hard woods.

                   Now Lets talk sides and sauces. Two sauces sat on the tables regular and hot. Between the two we all felt the spicy sauce was far better. Nothing wrong with the regular just not nearly as memorable. The fries were good, but just fries. I’m a seasoned fry guy myself. The cole slaw as we said earlier didn’t have much flavor, and the corn nuggets were a bit under cooked. I should note Dennis thought they were cooked fine and even though I thought they were a bit under done I also thought they were sweet and tastier than many I’ve had. The fried green beans had a perfect batter on them to complement the bean and the baked beans were some of our favorites as well.

                   All in all we greatly enjoyed our visit along this path and I hope we left a trail for others to follow.

          Cary

The Salt Lick, Round Rock Texas

The Salt Lick

3350 E Palm Valley Blvd
Round Rock, TX 78665

photo by Jack Wier

The Salt Lick is everything a destination barbecue joint should be.  There are a few locations, one in the owner’s home town of Driftwood, Texas, another in Round Rock, Texas and a two others at  the Austin and Oklahoma City airports.  I went to the Round Rock location. When you park in the huge parking lot your mouth starts to water because the scent of smoking meat is everywhere.  Walking in the door you see a huge open pit barbecue with several cooks working around it.  The apparatus can probably cook a dozen beef briskets at once, which is good because they are in great demand. The Salt Lick is not an establishment that that worries about decor. The only decorations on the walls were a framed Texas Flag and an awesome picture of Nolan Ryan holding a guy in a headlock while punching him.   The Salt Lick is known for its beef brisket. When my family sat down at our table, we asked the waitress for her recommendations.  She said that the ribs and brisket were fantastic.  She also mentioned that the Point was her favorite cut of meat and went on to tell us a bit about the smoking process that the brisket goes through at the Salt Lick. This woman knew her barbeque.  My Dad ordered the brisket and said it was the best he’d ever had.  This statement is important because before we went to the restaurant my Dad had all but given up on smoking brisket; saying that he just couldn’t seem to smoke it in a way that keep the meat from drying out.  I should also say that my father is no novice when it comes to barbecue.  He is a devotee of the Smoke Ring, knows about the Bullsheet and I got him a Ro-Man Porkpuller for Christmas. My Mother ordered the pulled pork sandwich and she said that it was very good as well.  The pulled pork at the Salt Lick is Caroliona Style; bun, pork, coleslaw, sauce and bun. I had the half a chicken and got a half with all white meat.  All of the chicken I had was moist and flavorful.  Accompanying each meal was a side of coleslaw and potato salad.  The coleslaw was bland but it, like everything all on your plate, I really enjoyed it with lots of sauce on it.  The potato salad was actually a brick of yellow mashed potatoes served at room temperature which I really enjoyed.  Traditional Texas barbecue has no sauce just a rub.  It is only in the last few decades that barbecue restaurants there have started including sauce on their meat. At the Salt Lick all of the meat was served dry though each table had a good-sized bowl of both sauces. Though it’s a relatively recent phenomenon; the Salt Lick has a tasty pair of barbecue sauces, Regular and Hot.  The sauces are mustard based which is something I had not tasted before.  Both sauces were also heavily flavored with sugar and onions. Depending on your personal point of view the sole drawback to these sauces was that the hotter one was not very hot.  In my opinion “Hot” barbecue sauces should be approached cautiously, used sparingly, and blow your head off while bringing out the flavor of the meat.  I used both sauces liberally on my entire meal and it wasn’t until my plate was almost empty that I was sweating and my nose was running. Whatever you choose to eat, The Salt Lick deserves all of its acclaim as a great barbecue restaurant.  Any barbecue aficionado should go there in you’re in the neighborhood.  

As always, may your pits inspire awe. - Jack

The Shack

Guy Fieri might want to consider coming back to The BBQ Shack in Paola, Kansas, and taking down his posters.  When the Bit-By-Bit BBQ Pit Crawl arrived at the Shack with high expectations, based on Guy’s endorsement on his “Diner, Drive-Ins, and Dives” program, and on many word-of-mouth recommendations over the years, we were very disappointed.  Very little lived up to all that we had been told.

Admittedly, when we walked into the place shortly after noon, they were busy.  A girl’s softball team had arrived just ahead of us and pretty well filled the seating.  That circumstance caused some of the problems we experienced, but is not an excuse for the generally mediocre to poor quality of the food we were served.

One of BBQ’s basic staples, ribs, were not available to our group.  A little more than an hour after the Shack’s stated opening time, they were sold out.

Of the menu items we were able to try, our group found most to be very run-or-the mill, or inferior.  The list of our opinions is as follows:

·         The burnt ends were rubbery and chewy, and not very flavorful.

·         The beef brisket was dry, and hard, and again not particularly tasty.

·         The sausage, likewise, was dry.

·         The pulled pork was tender and moist, but it too was not very flavorful, as if not enough rub had been used to prepare it.

·         The Carolina-style pulled-pork sandwich was OK, but the slaw used on it wasn’t as tangy as I prefer.

·         The ½ chicken was OK, but not noteworthy.

·         The seasoned fries were under-seasoned.

·         The fried pickles were generally inferior to those we have tried at other BBQ restaurants.

·         The fried okra, cheese sticks, and corn nuggets were acceptable if you discount them being tepid instead of hot.

The few things our group sampled that we found to be good were:

·         The Atomic Buffalo Turds (bacon-wrapped jalapenos stuffed with creamed cheese) were quite good.

·         The Sweet Fire BBQ sauce we found to be very tasty, with the Hot Sauce being a close second.

·         The Onion straws had good flavor and were cooked and seasoned well.

It should be noted that none of our food was really served hot.  It was mostly just warm, as if it had been sitting awhile.  If that were the case, and we believe it was, that would not have helped the quality problems.

The service was not good.  To start with, our group of four was not greeted or seated by the restaurant staff, but by the bus driver of the softball team, who juggled their group to make space for us.  When a waitress finally came to take our order, she warned us there might be a wait, but we had no expectation that it would end up being almost 2 hours.  That particular problem became increasingly annoying as more and more people who came in after we did, started getting served ahead of us.  When that number reached seven parties, we complained.  At that point, our food magically appeared within moments, and it was clear that it had been sitting awhile.

In picking the establishments we planned to visit and review, The BBQ Shack had been high on our list of places to try.  We left very disappointed and The Shack had fallen so far down the list that it will be some time before any of us try it again.

Dennis Constance on behalf of The Pit Crawlers

Johnny's

Shawnee Mission, Kansas

Chicken is my favorite meat.  When I was born there was an ominous thunderclap, and a series of dark clouds could be seen over poultry farms throughout the Midwest. I picked Johnny’s for this leg of the pit crawl because their chicken was supposed to be the best in the region.  Before I get to the chicken, I should mention that a trip to Johnny’s is worth it just to see the way the place is decorated.  Hundreds and hundreds of barbecue sauce bottles adorn shelves on the walls when you first walk in.  My personal favorite was Fartless Barbecue Sauce, though I’m pretty sure that’s flagrant false advertising on the company’s part.  The guys and I spent several minutes looking at all of the bottles for names, places of origin and sauce ingredients.  In addition to the bottle collection there are numerous pictures of “classic” outhouses in and around the bathroom. 

Before I even sat down I got the impression that the people at Johnny’s knew what they were doing.  I believe that Johnny’s does have the best barbecued chicken I have eaten thus far.  I have not eaten as much barbecue as some of the other Pit Crawlers but I am the group appointed chicken connoisseur.  The dark meat was really really flavorful and moist.  Even the white meat had a lot of moisture to it, which is hard to do when you are barbecuing chicken. 

The other Pitcrawlers also spoke highly of the ribs there.  If you go to Johnny’s be sure and add a rib. Two of our number went so far as to say that the ribs were perfect, yep perfect. They may not be perfect every time but the staff at Johnny’s has it in their capacity to smoke a perfect rib. Although we didn't love all the sauces, the hottest sauce they offer is fantastic.   Also if you go, be sure and get the fried pickles.  Johnny’s pickles are cornbread fried, well-seasoned and firm.  When you bite into one you taste more than just salt.  We enjoyed them immensely.  Johnny’s BBQ is well worth the drive.  If you go, tell them the Barbecue Pit Crawlers sent you.
- Jack

Our Shirts

This is the design for most of our t-shirts.

Here's Zach's (he didn't show up when we made them)

Zarda Q

A few weeks ago Cary, Jack, Dennis and I sat down and made a list of five BBQ spots that we wanted to visit in KC for the first official leg of our crawl.  My choice was Zarda-Q. A few years ago one of my friends (a man we lovingly refer to as "loud ass Derek") had a birthday party that his family's restaurant catered.  It was Zarda Q.  Later on in the night, when I got the beer munchies I went downstairs to find multiple racks of deliciously cooked ribs waiting for me.  The meat was cooked perfectly (just the right amount of texture while still tender) and the sauce was a decent Kansas City flavored sauce.  I was blown away at the time but until this last week I've not had the opportunity to visit the restaurant's actual storefront.  That being the case, I didn't know if my friend got special treatment (being that he was a part of the family) or if everything at the restaurant was really that good.  Believe me when I tell you that it is that good!

Going to the restaurant was bad ass.  I ordered the sampler plate.  The sampler plate (although it says it feeds 1-2) feeds two people.  I was able to get through all my meats but goddamn it was an ungodly amount of food. Included in the plate were burnt ends, ribs, ham, brisket, sausage a quarter chicken and two sides (which for me were sweet potato fries and corn on the cob.)  The only bad thing out of that bunch was the corn.  It seemed undercooked and wasn't very sweet-- after all of that meat, it didn't really matter though.  The meats were cooked perfectly. The brisket was tender and not in the least bit dry.  To me, the ribs had a good texture and were tender throughout although Dennis said that his were dry at the ends. The sides (other than the corn) were great as well (I sampled other people's plates) but the star of the night were the burnt ends.  They were absolutely fantastic.  Tender enough and with a great Kansas City sauce. After the meal everyone seemed pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food and we're already talking about returning to Zarda Q (even though we have about 30 more BBQ restaurants left to hit on our crawl.) 

I guess the best pro tip for visiting this restaurant is to request the other sauces that they have at the counter.  The main sauce is located on the table but their best sauce is by request only.  I forget the exact name of the sauce but it was something generic like "bold."  It had the most flavor and is what it says it is-- a bolder version of the original sauce.  The other sauce that is available by request is the hickory sauce-- which I didn't think too much of.  I wish that they had a spicy sauce as well. I think it would round out the options and provide a better BBQ experience (whatever the hell that means).  

All in all, the service was friendly, the meat was fantastic and the atmosphere was good.  Everyone involved in this barbecue crawl felt like we hit a lead off home run by visiting Zarda-Q.  The only picture that we took was blurred because Dennis was in the process of sitting down to eat his food as he was taking it.  All in all, Zarda Q seems to be one of the unsung greats of Kansas City BBQ and I reccomend visiting this restaurant with no reservations!
-Travis

  

Our First Post

So while you've been out at your favorite Kansas City BBQ spots lately you may have seen a group of weirdo's wearing matching t-shirts and eating obscene amounts of meat.  We are the Bit by Bit BBQ Pit Crawl.  We don't have enough time or money to hit up all the BBQ spots that we want to visit all at once so like the way we cook our meat, we're doing our crawl nice and slow.  Sure, we've all been to the Kansas City staples like Oklahoma Joe's, Gates, Jackstack and Arthur Bryants but we wanted to get a broader picture of the Kansas City BBQ palette.  In order to do this, we compiled a list of forty of our favorite (past and present and in some cases just favorite names) BBQ spots in the region, divide them into groups of five and give ourselves about three months to complete each smaller group.  Here is the Big List and the current list that we are working on.

Big List (In no particular order)
1. RJ's
2. Zarda Q
3. Oklahoma Joes
4. Papa Bob's
5. Johnny's BBQ
6. Benny's BBQ
7. LC's
8. Arthur Bryant's
9. Gates BBQ
10. Jake Edward's
11. Smoke N Babes
12. The Shack
13. B B's Lawnside BBQ
14. Jack Stack
15. Three Little Pigs
16. Biemers BBQ
17. Granddaddies
18. Guy & Mays
19. Smokin Guns
20. Lil Jakes
21. Boss Hawgs
22. Grovers
23. Quicks BBQ
24. Rosedale
25. Buffalo Bobs
26.Bigg's BBQ
27.Lonesteer BBQ
28. Vermont ST. BBQ
29. Pat's Pig
30. The Filling Station
31. Wyandotte BBQ
32. Haywards
33. Winslow's BBQ
34. Big T's BBQ
35. Flamethrowers BBQ
36. Dave Sweet Savour
37. Big Pappa's
38. Hickory Log BBQ
39. Danny Edwards
40. Summit Hickory Pit BBQ

With Zarda Q, Johnny's, Smoke N Babes, Oklahoma Joes, and the Shack as the first five that we are visiting.  We've already gone to Zarda Q and Johnny's and we should have reviews for both coming soon.