All Entries in the "Barbecue" Category
Restaurant Review: Datz Delicatessen
When I hear the word “delicatessen”, I usually think of the meat counters of old New York with a fat man in an apron slinging together meat, bread and cheese for a quick and cheap sandwich that is best served in paper and to-go. Datz Delicatessen (2616 S. MacDill Ave., Tampa, Florida 33629, 813.831.7000) takes this concept and throws it on it’s ear, keeping the sandwiches but serving them up in a fancy feast, complete with many optional Microbrews and some specialties that would bend even the most comprehensive Deli’s budgets.
I found myself there to celebrate the departure of a military friend who was being transferred out west. When I got there, I was a little confused by the layout, a seemingly standard deli to the left with refined seating and wine all around me. We were seated upstairs, which has it’s own bar and a buzz of people running around. From what I hear from regular patrons, this is pretty normal. Datz never really slows down. This is evident in their service, which is a little slow but does get it right when they aren’t being overwhelmed.
The menu is comprehensive, from simple sandwiches you’d expect through complex favorites like Brisket and seafood. Want something other than a sandwich? Their menu includes many salads, 75+ specialty beers, 150+ kinds of cheese, 1700+ bottles of wine to choose from and 20 kinds of artisan breads. I doubt anyone would find Datz to be inadequate when it comes to selection. That said, I was here for what they do best… the sandwiches.
I ordered the Cue the Brisket, a hand-sliced pile of smoked beef brisket, cole slaw, bbq sauce all on a sweet sourdough bun. It came with a side of homemade potato chips covered in this creamy, slightly sweet ranch dressing. Everything about this sandwich was top notch. The brisket, and I say this is a bbq guy, was just right. It was actually smoked, and properly. It fell apart as soon as I pushed the hearty sandwich together, compacted so I can put it in my mouth. The coleslaw was chunky and a bit spicy, not runny and pasteurized as I’ve seen before. The BBQ sauce was a semi sweet concoction and they used just enough to enhance the meat without overwhelming it’s smokey essence. The bun, a meal all of it’s own, did it’s best to hold everything in place. At $9.95, this isn’t a cheap sandwich. That said, it’s a great value. There’s probably a half pound of meat here.
Along with the sandwich, I decided to try some of their fried pickle spears. I haven’t had a good fried pickle since I left New Orleans. Datz gets it right with a light tempura crust and ranch sauce for dipping. Like any good fried pickle, the crunch was intact and the sweet and salty within stayed within. Every bite was fresh and flavorful, just as it should be. At $2 (on special!) these were a bargain as well.
Drew wanted to split a desert, so we ended up doing a four-way split of a piece of their red velvet cake. Stacked 5″ tall and as decadent as you can get without chocolate, this cake was creamy throughout with a series of cream cheese layers stacked on moist cake layers. Every fork full very well could have sent me into diabetic shock, but it would have been totally worth it.
Datz offers weekend brunch from 8:30AM to 3PM. That will be my next review of them, elbow deep in whatever wonderful breakfast concoctions they’ll be serving up.
Restaurant Review: Alex’s Southern Style Bar-BQ
Last night, Dereck and I went to Alex’s Southern Style Bar-BQ off Ehrlich Road (5362 W Village Dr, Tampa, FL 33624, (813) 269-0050), a tucked away piece of culinary oasis in an otherwise desert wasteland of taste. I’ve been in this neighborhood several times (as I used to work down the road) and most everything has been slim pickings of flavor. Alex’s BBQ stands on it’s own.
Alex’s is very much your typical BBQ restaurant on the surface. A smoker sits out front. Everything is very simple and unassuming. All of the food is served in either take-out containers or paper plates. It has that feel and smell that all good bbq places should, a combination of smoke, cooking meat and comfort food.
It’s important to note what a great value this place is just based on posted prices. Then when you add in a Restaurant.com coupon for $25 off and you’ve got more food than any two (or even four!) people can eat. We ended up ordering two of the family specials: one wing platter and one beef platter, along with the full set of sides.
While waiting, I noticed that every table had two important facets of good barbecue. Firstly, there was the house-made sauce, a thin and sweet sauce that was distinctively Georgian. This sauce was too thin to be Memphis style, too sweet to be Texas style and wasn’t hot enough to be Kansas City style, but had elements of each to make a good sauce. Next to it was “Hot Rod Sauces Hot Sauce”, a sauce I had never heard of but really enjoyed. It was hot but not so hot that it made your tongue numb. Reading the bottle gave away that this sauce is made locally here in Tampa.
The food came out in waves, as I looked through the open kitchen and see them hacking and scooping out portions for us. When the first bit of food came up, we walked to the counter to pick it up. I was amazed by the portion sizes, especially considering these were only the sides.
The Okra was the first up, fried lightly without being overly done. The inside, all starchy and hot, was perfect. Good okra is such a hard thing to find, and getting so much of it for so little is impressive in and of itself.
The next wave included one of our main dishes, the beef brisket. While I’m used to brisket sliced, this pulled/chopped version was quite good. I’ve found that when it gets chopped up it dries out quickly, but this retained it’s moisture and was good with or without the sauce.
A hearty plate of potato wedges came next, golden brown and delicious. I liked this because they tasted like the true southern potatoes I had eaten when I was in Georgia, a lightly browned cut potato that is fried to a hot inside and slightly crunchy outside.
The baked beans, also a large portion, where my favorite side item. These were incredibly sweet with honey and brown sugar, syrupy and starch filled. Every bite was more and more like candy than traditional baked beans. These were a delicious compliment to both the beef and the other sides.
The green beans were alright. Nothing noteworthy, but not bad either. The issue I always have with green beans is that they don’t hold up under any kind of cooking except possibly flash steaming. Like all green beans, the slow cooking or direct boil methologies tend to leave them tender but soggy. There were flavorful, even if I wasn’t a fan of the texture.
A pile of onion rings soon joined the party. These were lightly seasoned and fried just right.
The second star of the show, the 30 wing platter, were exceptional. The sauce they use, a lightly sweet glaze with a slight kick, is comparable to many wing houses “medium” sauce, but I wouldn’t consider this to be that spicy. The wing portions were all quite large, crunchy on the outside and hot within. I haven’t had wings this good in a while.
The aftermath of our meal left both of us full with enough left over food to feed at least several more people.
I recommend Alex’s BBQ if you’re looking for big portions, good value and darn good southern style barbecue.
Restaurant Review: JR’s Floribbean Outpost
It doesn’t get much more secluded and off the beaten path than JR’s Floribbean Outpost (1001 W US Highway 92, Seffner, FL 33584,(813) 655-1760), a small BBQ shack on the long 92/Hillsborough road out of Tampa into Seffner. Serving up a combination of barbecue and backwoods favorites with a collection of hot sauces that could impress even the most adventurous of us, JR’s is both a bargain and a great place to eat.
When you finally do find it, and it’s a place I missed a half dozen times trying to find previously, you’ll find that it’s incredibly busy. All the locals know about this place and come here for the food, the company and the standard watering hole atmosphere. The front area, a small outside sitting area attached to a bar, is filled with good ol’ boys, talking about work and enjoying beer.
As you wind your way through the place, it’s that delightful combination of trashy and trinket-filled that reminds me of my grandma’s house, or a farmer’s market or eclectic backwoods store. Politically incorrect bumper stickers fill the walls, parsed by witty signs and random hillbilly artifacts. You could most likely spend days just trying to take in all the sights. That is, if the smells don’t get you first.
From the second you walk into the bar, you’re overwhelmed with the smell of good slow cooked barbecue. I asked the bartender, a delightfully friendly good ol’ girl, what she recommended. “I’ll fix you right up, honey.” she said so convincingly that I didn’t even bother asking her what she was going to bring me. Service was very quick, both with my beer and the food. Total time from order to my first bite of gator tails and pulled pork sandwich was less than 10 minutes. It was also a real bargain at around $15 including my beer.
Aside from the friendly staff, the patrons took an interest in welcoming me as well. I sat at the bar near another guy who showed me his new tattoo and talked to me about his job. Another gentleman (who I think was the owner of this place) sat across from me making small talk about the food and why I was there. It was all very welcoming, a lot like what I was used to growing up at family get-togethers.
The food was really, really good. Gator tails usually end up being tough, chewy, overly done pieces of meat that you have to drown in sauce to get any kind of satisfaction from. JR’s Gator tails were meaty, slightly chewy but full of flavor and were good with or without the sauce. Aside from the standard dipping sauce, you have a choice of many different hot sauces as well. Many of these sauces are made locally by small sauce houses, so you really get a taste of Florida when you’re enjoying them.
Aside from the gator tails, I got a very large stacked thick bread sandwich made of pulled pork. The pork was sweet and tender, slightly smokey with a big mouth bite that fills you up quickly. For the sake of documentation, I had a few bites of the potato salad as well. It was probably the best potato salad I’ve had in a long, long time. It wasn’t like anything you’d expect. There were overtones of sour cream and cheese. It was far more like loaded mashed potatoes than potato salad, and it was delicious. I was only able to eat half the sandwich, a few bites of potato salad and the gator tails before I was stuffed, forcing me to take the other half of the sandwich and the included potato salad home. It will make a delicious left over lunch today.
After dinner, I took the tour of their hot sauce collection. It literally needs it’s own library. There were hundreds of bottles, arranged neatly in wood cases. Next time I stop by, I’m going to pick up a few of the local favorites.
Restaurant Review: Nick’s Smokehouse BBQ
Good BBQ can come from anywhere, but I find the small and out of the way places tend to make the most of it. Because they don’t have prime real estate or big marketing budgets, they rely on their food quality, attention to detail and service to make them stand out. One such small establishment with a big commitment to taste is Nick’s Smokehouse BBQ (3101 N. Himes Ave, Tampa FL 33607, 813-875-2800), an off-to-the-side building on Himes near Columbus.
The building itself is very small, and made mostly for takeout. Of the few tables available to customers, I took the one against the wall next to another patron who was enjoying the baked beans. I was greeted by the head cook, who recommended the chopped pork, collared greens, beans and brisket. I took his recommendation, and I’m glad I did.
The chopped pork was excellent. A lot of times with picnics or butts, you end up with a hard outer edge and either undone or not-quite-right middle pork. This was soft throughout, easily coming apart when you forked it up. The taste was sweet with a bit of zip, courtesy of the included sauce.
The collared greens were some of the best I have had since I moved here. It amazes me how many BBQ places mess up something as simple as collared greens, but these were as good if not better than greens I’ve had at competitions. They had a buttery overtone and a nice foliage mouth feel, all while being easy to eat and without all the extra salt you often see put in collared greens to compensate.
The baked beans were thick and tangy. They were actually way more starchy than I am used to, and I think this helped keep them a nice smooth consistency. A hint of maple sugar gave a sweet flavor without being overpowering. The beans were definitely a nice compliment.
The brisket was satisfactory. There were a few minor issues with it, but none of these took away from the taste. The meat itself was far more oily and fatty than I’m used to with brisket. I ended up pulling it all apart by hand before eating it to be sure I had the large sections of fat away from the lean portions. Additionally, it was pulled into strips instead of being chopped or cut into the against-the-grain strips I’m used to. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but unexpected.
Lastly, the included toast was a bit dryer than I like. Even after making a sandwich of the succulent pork and brisket portions, the toast wasn’t quite right. Since it makes up such a small part of the meal as a whole, I didn’t rate down because of it.
If you’re looking for smokey flavor in your BBQ, Nick’s Smokehouse does it. Their smoker is proudly on display outside the building. The smoke ring is evident in all of their meat selections. Everything tastes like it was prepared slowly and with intent. If you’re over by Raymond James Stadium, this is an out of the way restaurant that shouldn’t be marginalized.
Pricing is competitive with many other smokehouses, putting my lunch at about $15 including both the standard pork meal and the 1/2 pound of beef brisket.
Restaurant Review: Hungry Harry’s BBQ
Yesterday, I found myself on the way out to Lakeland and stopped in Seffner to get some gas. While I was there, I hit up Hungry Harry’s Famous BBQ (2006 S Parsons Ave, Seffner, FL 33584, (813) 643-0063), an off-shoot of the huge Hungry Harry’s in Land-O-Lakes.
Harry’s has a lot of things going for it. Firstly, they have all-you-can-eat chicken a few days a week for $7.99. They also have all-you-can-eat pork and chicken for $9.99, which is what I got. Along with all you can eat meat, you also get a choice of sides which you can order new each new plate. If you’re hungry, Hungry Harry’s will suit your need.
Secondly, their waitstaff is made of beautiful women. Aside from their beauty, they’re also incredibly knowledgeable. Every question I asked about their BBQ was answered quickly and concisely. You can’t go wrong with a belly full of good BBQ and a smart, pretty woman tending to your needs.
Lastly, it’s a “no frills” kind of restaurant, the way you’d picture a BBQ stand if it had a more permanent residence. This no-frills approach keeps your mind on your belly and the barbeque they serve.
This is where I have to apologize to my readers. I make a point of getting a “before” picture. I ended up jumping headlong into my plate as I was really hungry. So this is an “in progress” picture instead.
All in all, the food quality varied. The meat was excellent. Big portions, succulent smokey flavors throughout. The chicken (you can get white meat or dark) was large and sweet all the way through. The pork was your typical shredded variety, flavorful and delicious. I also managed to get a single bone of their ribs, which was tender enough to fall off the bone.
They also bring you a very large drink served in a styrofoam cup. I’d say it was somewhere around 40 oz. They serve Pepsi products, so I got a frothy Mugg Root Beer. It really hit the spot, and the waitress continually topped it off for me and gave me a lid to go.
Their sides, from what I experienced, had ups and downs. The potato was soft and hot inside, with a crunchy outer crust. While I usually like my potatoes a little stiff on the outside, this was bacon-crunchy. Since it’s all you can eat, I didn’t let this stop me. I ate all of the insides, discarding the rest. The collared greens were unremarkable. Not bad, simply unremarkable.
All in all, a great value for all-you-can-eat BBQ. If you find yourself in Seffner with an empty stomach, you’ll be hard pressed to do better than Hungry Harrys for the money.
Restaurant Review: Grandpa Johnson BBQ
Off the beaten path from my normal Tampa adventures, I found myself in Plant City for the Strawberry Festival and Bike Fest events and decided to try out a legend of local barbeque. Grandpa Johnson’s Barbecue (1305 W Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Plant City, FL 33563, (813) 759-0009) has been in business for over 50 years, working in conjunction with family-owned Fred’s Market to provide some of the tastiest food in Plant City.
The smoked food is on par with great barbecue that I’ve found all over Tampa. Meat is tender and hearty, without gristle or fat overwhelming it. The sides, especially the fried squash, were surprising. I’m not normally a fan of squash, and frying it always seemed like a bad idea, but this was exceptional; tender and hot inside served with a crunchy crust served with ranch dressing. An unusual and very tasty side.
The portions were decent size for the price. For under $30 (including tip), Kara and I were able to try just about everything they offered. We had the ribs, which were a very meaty cut that slid right off the bone. We had brisket, chopped with lots of stringy and succulent segments. What surprised me about the brisket was that there was seemingly no “outer crust”. While I personally enjoy the crust, many people only want the inside tender meat and that is the portion we were served. Baked beans and greens were standard.
Kara continued to remark how tasty the rolls are. Large and covered in a buttery glaze, these are piping hot on the inside and so incredibly tender. They literally melt in your mouth. I used mine to sop up BBQ sauce as I was plowing through the rest of the meal.
Speaking of the sauce, there’s one thing that fell slightly under par. They offered two versions, a sweet and a traditional. Both seemed pretty similar to me, tasting a bit like Heinz57. The one had more of a vinegar tone to it. Neither was bad, but I don’t feel like they were needed to make the meat taste great (which is a good thing!) and I think they may have actually detracted from the experience because the flavor wasn’t what I expected.
On top of the great food, I have to note how friendly the staff was. Not only were they all sweet and quick and accurate, but the dedication to Johnsons could be seen in everyone there. Even the owner, Owen Johnson, was seen scrubbing tables, helping bus dishes and meeting with customers. The generally care-free and happy feeling I felt while there brought me back to the family barbeques I had as a kid with my aunts and uncles.
Restaurant Review: Sooo Good Southern BBQ
In my never ending quest for quality BBQ around Tampa, I found myself at Sooo Good Southern Bar-B-Que (13855 W Hillsborough Ave, Tampa, 33603, 813-234-8780), a few hundred feet down Hillsborough from my beloved Taco Bus.
Unlike some of it’s fancy BBQ cousins, complete with indoor dining and servers and beer, Sooo Good keeps it simple. Their walk-up window is brightly lit from mid day until late night, serving up styrofoam containers packed with smoked food and sides that are tasty and inexpensive, the way BBQ should be. If you know anything about the root of BBQ, then you know that it thrived on the idea of providing good food in quantity to everyone. Sooo Good really captures this spirit.
Their smokehouse is a rickety-looking building behind a barbwire-lined fence. Keeping the secrets in and the would-be thieves out, the only thing emitting to the public is the sweet smell of smoke.
Family owned and operated, I was greeted at the window by a smiling face and that southern draw that can only come from years spent in the backwoods of the south. I sized him up quickly, telling him of my own BBQ experience. “You know what you’re talking about.” he said with a big smile on his face, “You’re going to like this.”
His confidence was justified. I ordered the Combo plate, a mix of two meats of your choosing and two sides. I went with two classic southern meats, the brisket and pulled pork. For the sides, baked beans, fired okra and a roll filled out my container. I rushed home to eat it, as the smell wafting through my car was making my stomach grumble.
The meat itself was good, though I had a hard time initially telling the brisket from the pork. I generally like my brisket shredded and my pork sliced, but these were both served chopped. Each piece of meat had the same blackened outer hull with juicy and smokey inner flavor. Some of it was a bit chewy, but overall a good mix of smoke flavor and classic bbq texture.
The beans themselves were as universal as bbq beans get. Sweet and a bit salty, but not overpowering. I would have liked them a little tangier, so I added some hotsauce. The real star of my platter was the fried okra. Okra, much like any fried vegetable, can easily succumb to either over or under frying. If you don’t fry it long enough, it’s mushy and oily. If you fry it too long, it’s hard and oily. To get that light brown outer crust texture with a warm but not greasy inside is the handy work of a master, and this was a master at work.
Sooo Good shines in it’s value. This would make an good lunch of dinner on the run, and for under $10. Like any good BBQ, it sticks with you for several hours after you eat it. You find yourself full when you finish your plate and still full when you’re ready for bed. That’s what good BBQ is to me.
Restaurant Review: Hot Rod’s BBQ
It’s no secret that I love BBQ. I have built BBQ smokers. I’ve cooked and catered BBQ. For a while, I was consuming BBQ 5 to 7 times a week. I’ve been able to try most every region of BBQ, with sauceless, thin sauce, thick sauce and blackened varieties of most every animal that walks or swims. BBQ is a big part of my life, and because of it, I’m a huge snob about what constitutes good BBQ and not-so-good BBQ. Just as it takes a lot to make “great” bbq, it also takes a lot to make “bad” bbq. The trick is to separate that which is mediocre from that which is exceptional.
When it comes to good BBQ, you can’t do much better in the Tampa Bay area than Hot Rod’s BBQ (18430 Livingston Ave, Lutz, FL 33549; 813-948-7988, open Wednesday – Thursday 11:00 – 8:30 and Friday – Saturday 11:00 – 9:00). I was introduced to this BBQ joint over a year ago by Loren Williams, a fellow Tampa Bay Miatas member.
Hot Rods is the kind of out-of-the-way place which is easily missed. It’s a bit of a trek up into Lutz, down Livingston Road some 4 miles or so off from Bearss. It sits in a densely wooded area, in an inconspicuous looking building that could just as easily be mistaken for a hillbilly’s yard or an abandoned cabin as it could a thriving business. Chances are, you’ve driven by it a dozen times if you live or work in that area and have never seen it. That’s part of it’s charm, actually. Within this downtrodden looking structure is housed some of the greatest smoked flavor I’ve had.
When you get out of your car, you smell it immediately. The smell of a place that smokes food as often as Rod’s does has an odor that is undeniable. You can feel it soak into your skin as you exit your vehicle, permiating your lungs and throat as you walk to the front porch. When you walk in the door, you’re greated by a hodgepodge of images. Hot sauces line the walls, old caps hang from the ceiling, various old-country-store decorations fill the walls. I get the feeling I’m in my grandmother’s house the way I remember it as a child. It feels like such a natural family run place because it is a family affair.
As taken from their website’s “About Us” section:
HOT RODS is a family owned and a family oriented restaurant. We’re open four days a week; Wednesday through Saturday for lunch and dinner. Bring your children and a hearty appetite!
Hello, I’m Hot Rod. My wife Helen and our daughters, Hopie and Debbie, introduced to Lutz a BBQ and Grill, unique to this area. I was born in New Orleans and raised on a farm in Bush, Louisiana. Helen is a third generation Tampa native. We like to think we have produced a culinary blend of Louisiana and Florida taste.
Debbie, our daughter, is general manager or “The Big Boss”. Debbie is married to James Taylor Curtis, a rising country singer who hails from Land O’Lakes, Florida. Their new addition is James Taylor Curtis IV, born in March 2005. Our daughter Hopie, is our Events and Marketing Manager who is married to Rodney Smith, (our #1 Son-In-Law also born and raised in Tampa). Their newest addition is Hannah Hope Smith born in January 2004.
We attribute our restaurants’ success to our many friends and neighbors and their continuous support. Our family will always do our best to bring you a good meal at an affordable price, and will always be proud to be a Lutz business. Opening a restaurant was a boyhood dream that came true!
You feel good being there before you even see a menu, and that’s a hallmark of a good BBQ restaurant that I can stand behind.
Once you’re seated, you’re greeted with a fun menu concept. It looks like a simple old newspaper, printed on news print with old-style coupon-like layout. Imagine opening the sunday grocery ad in a small town and you’ve got the look and feel of Hot Rod’s menu. The menu has all the standards that any BBQ restaurant would including pulled pork, ribs, chicken, steaks, burgers and all the trimmings. Then there’s the oddities that everyone is curious about but few dare to order: BBQ’d Bats (yes, the flying rats), glazed spam and grilled meatloaf. No matter what you’re craving, Rods has something that will appeal to your inner grill fan.
If you have a large party or are just a glutton, they have the 15 pound All American Buggest Burger. Combine 10 pounds of 100% American USDA Beef, 1/2 cut BBQ sauce, hot sauce, onions, mustard and fully dress it on a custom-baked bun. Imagine a large pizza. Then imagine it 6 times thicker and filled with hamburgers. That’s what this $50 burger is. It’s enough to feed a small army and still have scraps left for your dogs. It’s that enormous.
Kara and I decided on the “Hillbilly”, which is a slab of ribs and a selection of meats (pulled pork, wings, etc.) with four sides of your choice. They claim it feeds 4-6 people. I always take these warnings as pure crap, as I could easily eat the entire thing myself. Boy, was I wrong!
The food that comes out fills the platter, which in itself fills much of the table. All of the meat is piled high, giving you gigantic succulent portions that will tame any hunger. If you can divert yourself from the meat, you will be pleasantly surprised by the sides as well. We chose the potato salad, baked beans, green beans and corn bread pudding. Every option was good.
Of all the sides, I have to hand it to both the cornbread pudding and the baked beans. The cornbread pudding was so moist and satisfying. Every bite reminded you of fresh cornbread that your grandparents most likely ate. We quickly plowed through a good portion of it so we ordered another quart to go.
The baked beans take their places as some of the best I’ve ever had. They are peculiarly sweet, thanks to a heaping serving of both brown sugar and locally-produced honey. Every bite mixes the candy-rich taste of the honey and brown sugar with the smokey-sweet taste of baked beans and pork. A person could live on the baked beans alone, making this meal difficult to choose what to consume next.
Hot Rods is an example of how great BBQ should be. Good people, good food, good atmosphere and everything quick except the low-and-slow cook time that obviously goes into their daily routine. I can only imagine how early they have to get there to produce this amazing food, but they’ll have a life-long customer as long as they keep doing what they do.