ray i will try and stop in for one of your regional bbq days; i think its a great idea and i hope it pans out well for you

baby ray wrote:i was only thin skinned about more research comment and the sauce is good cause its sweet comment
regarding your comment i appriciate your nice comment but it doesnt change the fact that you would be wrong about not including baby back ribs as part of chicago bbq
and for the thousands of bbqer's that have different feelings about smokers it bears repeating that its now what you cook on but the results and the folks i hang around with and bbq with know lots and have lots of experience and have lots of peoples respect who know lots about bbq
those are the people i go to when i am feeling like talking about bbq

Dave,

I have strong opinions about BBQ, there are many points where you and I disagree, not the same thing as being disagreeable.

In your last post you seem to be saying you only want to talk BBQ with people who share your opinions about smokers, baby back ribs and most matters BBQ. I'm sure I read that incorrectly, but if so that leaves me out.

A disconnect you and I have, and seemingly continue to have, is that popularity/volume of production equals quality or, in the case of baby back ribs, inclusion as an iconic style for a region. If that were so McRibs would be Chicago Style BBQ.

Let me qualify, I am not saying baby back ribs, both tavern style and gas powered rotisserie style, are not popular in Chicago, as they are in most parts of the country. What I am saying is baby back ribs with sauce is not unique to Chicago, whereas an Aquarium smoker chugging out rib tips and hot links is unique to the Chicagoland area.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:Let me qualify, I am not saying baby back ribs, both tavern style and gas powered rotisserie style, are not popular in Chicago, as they are in most parts of the country. What I am saying is baby back ribs with sauce is not unique to Chicago, whereas an Aquarium smoker chugging out rib tips and hot links is unique to the Chicagoland area.

Real question, don't know:

Are the north side meat jello ribs more of a Chicago "delicacy" than in other cities? I don't know of other cities with iconic joints, or at least the same kind of popular, as Carson's, Twin Anchor's, Robinson's, Gale Street Inn, et al.

Not saying they don't exist, but I am entertaining (what seems to be) the argument that perhaps there is a northside Chicago rib specialty (leaving the question of whether it's BBQ out of it).

G Wiv wrote:Let me qualify, I am not saying baby back ribs, both tavern style and gas powered rotisserie style, are not popular in Chicago, as they are in most parts of the country. What I am saying is baby back ribs with sauce is not unique to Chicago, whereas an Aquarium smoker chugging out rib tips and hot links is unique to the Chicagoland area.

Enjoy,
Gary

I would agree with you that Aquarium smokers are probably unique to the Chicago area. I would question though the claim that because these types of smokers cooking tips and links are unique to Chicago, that they define what is Chicago-style BBQ. The variety of BBQ that is found in this town as well as in other cities makes this claim difficult to substantiate.

Frankly speaking, I think that sometimes we get so hung up on the delivery system and the BBQ mystique that we lose track of what is really important and that is the texture and taste of the finished product. While the stories of the 80 year old pitmaster who gets up at 3:00 in the morning to stoke the post oak fire are inspiring and fascinating from a sociological perspective, if the brisket isn't worth a damn, it doesn't really matter. What does inspire me though is consistency of product- something that I am still working on in my quest for great BBQ. Guys that produce a great product like Smoque, Homey 1 and Sweet Baby Ray's have my admiration and respect.

I'm off next week so I'm going to try to make it up to Sweet Baby Ray's for some lunch. If anyone would like to join me, let me know as I always enjoy company. I could also be talked into going to Katy's Dumplings as well.

Let's have us some BBQ.

Rich

Aaron Deacon wrote:perhaps there is a northside Chicago rib specialty (leaving the question of whether it's BBQ out of it).

Aaron,

But that is an important point, ribs baked in an oven, slathered in sauce and charred on a gas grill is not BBQ any more than a McRib is BBQ. We are talking about BBQ here, not whether meat jello style ribs from Twin Anchors, Gale Street Inn is popular on the North side of Chicago.

Enjoy,
Gary

Aaron Deacon wrote:Real question, don't know:

Are the north side meat jello ribs more of a Chicago "delicacy" than in other cities? I don't know of other cities with iconic joints, or at least the same kind of popular, as Carson's, Twin Anchor's, Robinson's, Gale Street Inn, et al.

Not saying they don't exist, but I am entertaining (what seems to be) the argument that perhaps there is a northside Chicago rib specialty (leaving the question of whether it's BBQ out of it).

Funny coincidence. In this thread, I posed almost exactly the same question. (With similar un-rhetoricalness.)

Muttster wrote:

G Wiv wrote:I would agree with you that Aquarium smokers are probably unique to the Chicago area.

For what it's worth, I have seen them once outside the Chicago area: at Cozy Corner in Memphis. I asked the guy at the counter if he knows of any other places that have them, but he said he wasn't aware of any.

The smoker at Cozy Corner (charcoal fired, no smoking wood):

riddlemay wrote:Funny coincidence. In this thread, I posed almost exactly the same question. (With similar un-rhetoricalness.)

I was reading some old BBQ threads, funny how the same points keep getting recycled, and was curious. Did you ever actually go to Smoque for BBQ?

hi gary
correct i did not agree with the comment about research
i have done almost a lifetime of research and you identified what actually happened
i did not agree with or appriciate the comment about sweet baby rays being sweet
as i stated there is a lot more to it than that and it was my life for 24 years and still is
i did not agree with your term for southern pride smokers and metal box smokers in general ( you know i and many people cook on them with a large degree of success and to refer to it as you did was in my opinion being disagreeable)
i did not agree with your comparison of baby back ribs cooked in a oven and on a southern pride smoker or old hickory pit smoker (again southern pride is the industry standard across the country and old hickory pits is high up if not #2 both illinois companys
most people would agree there is a huge differece i baking ribs and smoking ribs
i did not appricate you refering to me as thin skinned when im sure you or anybody else would be offended and feel the same way if this was written about them
your reference to quanity not equaling quality
as i have said before quanity equals experience
as in dont you think the guy flipping steaks at mortons and top steak houses do a better jog because they have done it 10,000 times
we can talk more about bbq the next time

i did a poor job of explaing my feelings when i was talking about my bbq friends
what i mean is my friends never would have said any of those things on a forum
we might talk face to face like you and i did
but to have to read it from people i dont know
who needs it

what i was trying to say earlier is some of you guys are tough on people
look at the thead from march 17 forward from dave hammonds post
how many picky things were said and resaid
its like people want to pounce on the little picky things instead of talking about the good stuff
i tried to suggest a little calmer approach for some
and to try to understand where others are coming from
those are the people that i want to spend my time with
my friends are people who care about each other doesnt matter worth a hill of beans if they like or know about bbq
in closing i will cop to being grouchy this week has been tough on me sorry
and say that i have and will continue to invite you out because i respect you as well as i respect much of what i read on the forum
i think you guys are smart and know tons of stuff about chicago, food and restrauants i am blown away by the diversity so many of you have (all i know about is bbq and maybe eating hot dogs pizza and hamburgers)
i will try to take my own advice and think of others before i write
best of luck with the book i appriciate you trying to make sense of it all
good night

baby ray wrote:i did not agree with or appriciate the comment about sweet baby rays being sweet

Dave,

Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce is sweet. That is not to say it isn't also complex, delicious to many and one of the best selling sauces in the market place, but it is sweet.

baby ray wrote:i did not appricate you refering to me as thin skinned when im sure you or anybody else would be offended and feel the same way if this was written about them

I apologize for the thin-skinned comment, I did not mean to offend.

Far as my characterizing gas powered rotisserie smoker with wood smoke chambers as FrankenQue's, let me, for the second time in this thread, quote Rob Walsh.

Rob Walsh
"There's not much point in complaining about high-tech barbecue. It serves a purpose, and it's here to stay. And no doubt the quality of it will keep on improving. But as the old barbecue joints slowly disappear, each one that remains becomes a bigger treasure."

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:I was reading some old BBQ threads, funny how the same points keep getting recycled, and was curious. Did you ever actually go to Smoque for BBQ?

No, not yet, although I hope to. But I don't see the relevance of the question to Aaron's and my non-rhetorical and non-contentious posts.

riddlemay wrote:No, not yet, although I hope to. But I don't see the relevance of the question to Aaron's and my non-rhetorical and non-contentious posts.

No, of course you don't.

Far as Aaron and your posts, I thought I answered. The thread is about BBQ, not ribs baked in an oven on the North side of Chicago.

ok lets talk about north side jello meats
to me it is a not a nice term
for the sake of understanding let me say this

i dont think anyone ever intends to serve jello meat
there is a certain level of texure, moisture, tenderness, taste and flavor we are all striving for
ribs shoud be chewed then release off the bone

it is better to have a overcooked piece of bbq than an under cooked this goes for ribs also

jello meat to my way of thinking comes from
not cooking fresh ribs and having to hold them at temperature for too long
comes from way over cooking them
comes from neglect and ignorance

not that it doesnt happen at our places smoque honky tonk but it should not happen too often

just like with ba's and honey 1 and the their smoker kind of like a grill effect when they cook to long the meat gets tough instead of jello

i dont eat at these places much any more and i know a lot more about bbq now than i did then

but i have to believe that management has pride in what they do and are trying to put out as good of product as they can

i have been to lots of places and sometimes they are really good sometimes not so good sometimes to done sometimes not done enough consistancy is a big deal the best guys i would agree with what rich just said are the guys that are the most consistant

baby ray wrote:i dont think anyone ever intends to serve jello meat

Dave,

I disagree. North Side baked rib style such as Gale Street Inn and Twin Anchors strive for "fall off the bone" and "you can eat it with a spoon" That seems the very definition of rib jello to me.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:

Aaron Deacon wrote:perhaps there is a northside Chicago rib specialty (leaving the question of whether it's BBQ out of it).

Aaron,

But that is an important point, ribs baked in an oven, slathered in sauce and charred on a gas grill is not BBQ any more than a McRib is BBQ. We are talking about BBQ here, not whether meat jello style ribs from Twin Anchors, Gale Street Inn is popular on the North side of Chicago.

Not saying it's unimportant, just a different question. If McRibs were only found in Chicago McDonald's, that would be noteworthy in Chicago foodways. Seems a reasonable hypothesis that the Carson's or Twin Anchors places might represent a school of Chicago-style ribs distinct from aquarium smoker ribs, kind of like Chicago-style deep dish and thin crust pizza. Thoughts?

i will call gale street and twin anchors tomorrow
i said its been a long time since ive been there
if they tell me they shoot for fall of the bones you can eat it with a spoon
i will apologize

G Wiv wrote:Far as Aaron and your posts, I thought I answered.

You did. But I did not see your answer to Aaron's post when I wrote mine. (The posts are happening fast on this thread, and your answer to him came while I was creating the URL links in my post.) At the time I wrote mine, I only meant to echo and support what I thought was an interesting point from Aaron. Had I seen your response to him, I would have stayed out of it.

rob has a beautiful quote
i agree with him but
he did not call it a franken what ever
im running out of gas i think this is it for me
have a good good rest of the evening
take care

baby ray wrote:if they tell me they shoot for fall of the bones you can eat it with a spoon

Dave,

I have been to both within the last year and, yes, they are fall off the bone ribs, in particular Gale Street Inn. Either way, neither are BBQ as even by the loosest definition of BBQ ribs baked in an oven with no interaction with wood smoke or fire is not BBQ.

Enjoy,
Gary

Aaron Deacon wrote:Seems a reasonable hypothesis that the Carson's or Twin Anchors places might represent a school of Chicago-style ribs distinct from aquarium smoker ribs, kind of like Chicago-style deep dish and thin crust pizza. Thoughts?

Aaron,

You are missing the point. While Carson's is BBQ as the meat has interaction with wood smoke, Twin Anchors is not BBQ as it is baked in an oven with absolutely no smoke interaction.

I feel like I've made my point three or more times in this thread alone, baby back ribs cooked in a gas powered rotisserie smoker, such as Carson's, is not unique to Chicago. Maybe I am being too literal, but the subject line of this thread is Chicago-Style BBQ.

Enjoy,
Gary

"My name is Chris and I sometimes enjoy meat jello." Feels good to get that off my chest. More specifically, I find nothing better then sitting at the bar at Gale Street occasionally to have a nice cold martini, some good company, and some good tasting pork. Pork that maybe has been boiled before being pushed under a broiler that caramelizes the sweet bbq sauce they slather over the whole thing. Is it bbq? Probably not. Does it taste damn good, most definitely.

What I hate is the way we pile on Dave around this place. Here's a guy that decides to do something fun with his restaurant and we chastise him. He tries to open up the masses to some things he enjoys and is knowledgeable about and we bitch about how they say the fries are on top. If you've ever met Dave you'd know that was not written by a PR agency. You'd know that Dave is a guy who traveled the BBQ circuit for years, and one day got lucky. Didn't get lucky, created his luck by creating a damn good BBQ sauce for the masses. And yes he did sell that BBQ sauce to Kraft which all of us would. And he did make a bunch of money off of it if I had to guess. Then instead of retiring he opened a few restaurants to give himself something to do and to experiment with some things.

Sweet Baby Ray's the bbq sauce is owned by a huge conglomerate. The restaurants definitely aren't. They're owned by a guy trying to do the best for his customers and himself. And he tends to keep coming back here even though he's considered public enemy #1 (which should be a certain high profile chef who is twittering his way through brunch in my opinion but that's a different story.) Let's give Sweet Baby Ray's a break, I personally think he's doing good compared to the TGI McFunsters of the world and shouldn't be grouped with them.

This thread would be a lot shorter and it'd feel less like a pile-on if dave stopped getting involved. Sure, it's clearly not PR, and I like his participation, but I think he's doing his restaurant a disservice by dragging out this whole thing. The tangent would have died down a while ago.

I've never been to his restaurant, but I do agree that the sauce is sweet. Not Salt Lick sweet, and it's a pretty good commercial sauce, but it skews sweet. I'm not a hater -- I have a bottle in my fridge and use it sometimes.

In all fairness, anybody who comes in here and states or implies that sales volume has anything to do with quality is going to get piled on no matter who s/he is.

(And rightfully so)

pizano345 wrote:Let's give Sweet Baby Ray's a break, I personally think he's doing good compared to the TGI McFunsters of the world and shouldn't be grouped with them.

If I'm interpreting this (and the two paragraphs preceding it), I take exception to this. I did bother to read this entire thread, and never did I get the impression that the LTH population is "piling on" to Sweet Baby Ray's, or the man behind it, just for the fun of it. I did, however, get the impression that some folks don't care for Sweet Baby Ray's retail sauces, and some folks feel that mushy babyback ribs are not representative of Chicago BBQ. And yes, a few people did make some snarky comments in the process.

I believe all of these people (even the snarky-comment-makers) have behaved in the spirit of LTHForum. I've been a big fan (and frequent lurker) of this site for years precisely because it's a great collection of straightforward, honest talk about food and all things food-related. It is my opinion that asking people to censor their opinions about a food or restaurant because the owner happens to be a really nice guy contributes to making this site less useful.

Let me put it this way: it's very likely that Ettore Boiardi was a super nice guy. Does that mean LTHers should extol the virtues of canned ravioli? Same goes for Ray Kroc - somehow I don't imagine many LTHers granting critical acclaim to processed chicken nuggets and gray burger patties, or even refraining from saying they think McDonalds' food is crap.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning being mean for the sake of being mean. But it seems to me that people in this thread have been expressing their opinions in a fairly even way, and I definitely don't want to discourage that. I rely on LTHForum for honest thoughts/reviews of places, not a bunch of overly-sensitive platitudes written with extra care so as to not hurt feelings.

And full disclosure: there is a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's Hot BBQ sauce in my fridge right now

Barbacoa, a term with a MUCH longer history than American barbeque, has suffered some of the same fate. Without question, the traditional preparation of barbacoa involves smoke; however, many, many places in Mexico now produce barbacoa that has been steamed, having never even sniffed a whiff of wood. And most Mexican restaurants in the USA use the smokeless, steam method for barbacoa. I find this sad, but it is so commonplace that I'd have a hard time saying that the smokeless version of barbacoa is not really barbacoa at all.

What's the point? When it comes to words, real-life usage often trumps the history of the lexicon. Twin Anchors and Russell's have been winning mainstream-press awards for their "barbeque" for more than 70 years. As a result, masses of people from in and out of town have been coming for their baked meat with sauce, and calling it barbeque, for at least that long. The new definition is here to stay.

I'm even resigning myself to the fact that Tweety Bird has lost claim of his signature sound to an annoyingly popular new technology.

sales volume is reflexive of experiece
experience tranlates to skill
sales volume over time in qualiy places denotes goodness
sales volume over time in not quality places equates to value
im not comparing a micky d's burger as qualiy
im say that a steak at mortons or gibsons will be better because they use better meat and have trained experiened people preparing them

Muttster wrote: Guys that produce a great product like Smoque, Homey 1 and Sweet Baby Ray's

I personally wouldnt put Sweet Baby Rays in the same class as Honey 1 and Smoque. I think in regards to taste, Sweet Baby Rays has more in common with Famous Daves(if thats good or bad that is a matter of opinion).


* edited for bad spelling and grammar(its early)

i have gone out of our way to make both the 36 seat place and the 200 seat place not like famous daves

we have professionally trained chefs
our places are uniquely designed
we have art on our walls in elk grove not junk
and my personal stuff in wood dale
we smoke our meats daily and dont use austin blues cooked ribs
we offer bbq shrimp and green chili mac and cheese prepared ala minute
food made by trained professionals not canned and jared stuff
red beans and rice and jerk chicken
shrimp po boys and sweet potato fries
daily regional bbq speicals
seasonal specials we just served 400 lbs of corned beef the last 3 days leading up to st pattys day
our ownership is the the restrauant every single day of the year
we have a 40 page full service catering division

id like to offer any and all a tour of our restrauants come see what we do in the back of the house and what, how and why we operate our business the way we do

baby ray wrote:i have gone out of our way to make both the 36 seat place and the 200 seat place not like famous daves

we have professionally trained chefs
our places are uniquely designed
we have art on our walls in elk grove not junk
and my personal stuff in wood dale
we smoke our meats daily and dont use austin blues cooked ribs
we offer bbq shrimp and green chili mac and cheese prepared ala minute
food made by trained professionals not canned and jared stuff
red beans and rice and jerk chicken
shrimp po boys and sweet potato fries
daily regional bbq speicals
seasonal specials we just served 400 lbs of corned beef the last 3 days leading up to st pattys day
our ownership is the the restrauant every single day of the year
we have a 40 page full service catering division

id like to offer any and all a tour of our restrauants come see what we do in the back of the house and what, how and why we operate our business the way we do

thats all very impressive, and shows your dedication & variety, I just base my comparison on the taste, and style of ribs I had on my one visit to Sweet Baby Rays. It just wansnt the style of bbq I like. For me bbq sauce does not belong on the meat, but on french fries, or to dip a hot link in.

different strokes.

jimswside wrote:For me bbq sauce does not belong on the meat, but on french fries, or to dip a hot link in.

If you don't specifically ask for it on the side, sauce on meat is the way BBQ is served throughout Chicagoland. In this sense, and in line with your comparison, Lem's is a lot like Famous Dave's, too.