Barbecue Sandwiches, Good & Bad

Before I get into talking about the subject at hand, let me begin with a mea culpa: it has indeed been quite a while since I posted to the Sandwich Tribunal, and you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d lost interest once the novelty wore off. It’s much closer to the truth to say that I was completely overwhelmed–between my job (which is stressful and high-pressure under the best of circumstances), a freelance gig that quickly became the bane of my existence, and a quest for a bed I can actually get a good night’s sleep on, this past month has been so full of stuff to do that Sandwich Tribunal just fell right off the bottom of the priority list for most of it (along with a lot of other things I normally love to do).

But then it started getting towards the end of the month, and I kept thinking about how much I had wanted to write about barbecue sandwiches while it was still relevant to the List project. Last Sunday, with only a few days left in the month, I randomly ended up at a barbecue joint, and I thought my problem was solved. But, well… let me tell you what happened.

The place I went to on Sunday is called Q Barbeque. It has three locations so far, all in the Richmond area, and I’d heard good things about it before I ended up there on Sunday. Unfortunately, I was a bit underwhelmed by what I found. It certainly looks nice enough when you’re walking up, but with its location in a suburban strip mall and its ultra-clean decor, it’s about as far from the kind of down-home barbecue place you think of when you think “good barbecue” as you can get. I wouldn’t say it’s upscale, exactly; you still have to walk up to a counter and order your food, and the prices are reasonable if not cheap (about $10 for a meal). But it doesn’t have any real soul to it either–and for a barbecue place, that’s a definite strike against it.

Really, I think Q Barbeque must have come into existence as the result of a really amazing-sounding marketing pitch, which I figure went something like this: “I want to create the Chipotle of barbecue joints!” And I mean, more power to ya, guy-who-came-up-with-this-idea; I love Chipotle (and Qdoba, and Moe’s, and probably any other knockoffs of the slightly-upscale yet still fast food burrito joint), and “the Chipotle of barbecue joints” sounds brilliant on paper. But you’ve got to do that shit right if you want it to really take off, and I just don’t think Q Barbeque is managing–at least not yet.

Because see, the barbecue chicken sandwich I got there was not, specifically, too good. It came with two sides and a drink for my $10, and I got french fries and mac & cheese, both of which were decent as these things go. The barbecue sandwich itself was not horrible, by any means–it just didn’t really have anything to recommend it, either. I always get my barbecue sandwiches without coleslaw, because for whatever reason I can’t stand the stuff (as with many things in life, this is probably mayonnaise’s fault). It’s not usually a problem, though, because the meat in a barbecue sandwich is usually generously sauced. Unfortunately, that was not the case with the sandwich from Q Barbeque.

No real sauce to speak of.

I was at least provided with a choice of three different barbecue sauces to top my sandwich with–an original sauce, a sweeter sauce, and one sauce that was supposed to be hot. If, like me, you’ve ever boggled to hear someone in Taco Bell tell one of their companions to “stick with the mild sauce, it’s plenty hot enough!”, you’ll understand my disappointment with the hot sauce on offer at Q. I didn’t exactly expect something that’d light my hair on fire (though I sure wouldn’t have complained about that–I love hot sauce), but I did at least think it’d hit a nice Sriracha-level heat. Nope–this stuff was more like a less flavorful Texas Pete–strictly for beginners and total wimps. I was bummed.

One thing I will give Q Barbeque–they didn’t skimp on the meat. A big lump of chicken fell out of my sandwich right as I picked it up to take the first bite, and I still had plenty of meat left on the bun, so I decided to eat that leftover lump with a fork after the sandwich was done. When I did so, I tried the original Q sauce on it instead of the hot sauce, hoping for more flavor to make up for the loss of (relative) heat. Eh… it was something, but not much. I never did try the sweet sauce, but I’m not a fan of sweet sauces anyway, so I think it’s fair to say Q struck out on the sauce level.

Not so Zing after all…

And what that made me realize was how important the sauce is to a good barbecue. There’s nothing wrong with a nice slow-cooked pile of pulled chicken, but I’m just not gonna be stoked about it if you haven’t spiced it up at all. If you weren’t gonna do that, I’d rather you baked the chicken, serve it to me for dinner with rice, green beans, and a sourdough roll, and let me slice some leftover white meat for a sandwich at lunch the next day. I’d take that hypothetical sandwich (which bears a less-than-coincidental resemblance to the kinds of sandwiches my mom would send me to school with when I was in junior high) over the barbecue sandwich I got at Q any day. Again, not that it was a terrible meal, or that I had any trouble finishing it–it just didn’t make me the least bit excited. And where barbecue is concerned, that’s a tragedy in itself.

I didn’t want my barbecue sandwich post to be about a bad sandwich, or at least not ONLY about a bad sandwich, so over the final few days of October, as things got down to the wire, I tried to figure out a way to cover something else. My evenings were mostly filled with plans and activities, and my work lunches are generally TV dinners heated up in the office microwave and eaten at my desk, so I had to figure out another plan. Halloween presented itself as the perfect solution. I know I will be seen as a grinch by many for saying this, but I hate Halloween. To paraphrase a brilliant statement by one of my favorite writers ever, Al Burian, it’s a no-win sort of holiday. Either you wear a costume and then walk around feeling awkward for hours because you’re wearing a costume, or you don’t wear a costume and then walk around feeling awkward for hours because you’re pretty much the only one not wearing a costume. As much as I enjoy checking out pretty girls in skimpy costumes and watching local bands play Misfits covers, I have no problem skipping out on this particular holiday to stay at home and do work.

The view from my table.

I had to actually purchase and consume a good barbecue sandwich first, but I knew exactly where to go to fill that particular need. There are partisans for both sides, but it’s universally agreed that the two best places to get barbecue in Richmond are Buz & Ned’s and Alamo BBQ. Back when I lived in The Fan, I was really close to Buz & Ned’s, and walked over for sandwiches quite a few times on my days off. I couldn’t ever really go on a lunch break or anything, because there always seemed to be a 30-minute line in which you’d have to wait–even if you went in at 3:30 PM or something. But then, I guess that’s what you get when you’re eating at a place that’s beaten Bobby Flay on Throwdown (they used to play that episode on a loop on the TV inside the restaurant–rumor has it Buz has a bit of an ego).

Earlier this year, I finally moved across town to a punk house in Church Hill–which, for those of you not familiar with Richmond, is analogous to an old punk rocker finally giving up his ever-more-expensive Manhattan apartment to move in with some young Brooklyn hipster kids. After living in this city for over 20 years, it amazes me that there’s any part of it I’m not that familiar with, but I’ve had to completely re-orient myself since I moved. But luckily for me, my new house is almost as close to Alamo BBQ as my old one was to Buz & Ned’s. For some reason, I’ve only made it over there twice since moving in in July, but this felt like a good night to change that.

Alamo couldn’t be a more marked contrast to Q Barbeque if it tried; with its dining area under a tent canopy and a tiny window into the kitchen where you place all orders, it’s as no-frills as they come. And while the prices aren’t dirt-cheap here either, $10 still bought me a good meal, and in a place with a much more comfortable local atmosphere. With the temperature down in the 50s by 5 PM when I stopped by, sitting outside under the tent wasn’t as comfortable as it can be in the summer, but it was certainly dealable, and I enjoyed watching passerby and making note of passing cars and bicyclists containing costumed revelers on their way to the evening’s festivities.

They weren’t that busy when I was there–I think I beat the dinner rush by about 30 minutes; go me–so my food was done way quicker than I expected. I wasn’t able to get french fries–they aren’t on the Alamo menu–and I ended up drinking a hand-mixed Arnold Palmer instead of a fountain soda because Alamo doesn’t have a soda fountain, but I wasn’t complaining about either of these things. The mac & cheese Alamo serves is homemade jalapeno mac & cheese, and the kick provided by the chopped-up chunks of pepper stirred into the creamy cheese sauce was a very welcome development.

And then there’s the sandwich itself–which, let me tell you right off the bat, was delicious. Unlike Buz & Ned’s, which always manages to leave me a total mess when I eat their sandwiches, Alamo doesn’t overdo it with the sauce or the chicken. Sure, I got a bit of sauce on my hand, but I was able to hold a book in my other hand and read while eating without fear of spilling my sandwich everywhere or getting sauce all over my book. On the other hand, the sandwich wasn’t dry by any stretch of the imagination, either. Once again, I went without coleslaw, but this sandwich contained a well-spiced, well-sauced portion of pulled chicken, and I was totally happy with it in its untouched state.

Mmm, barbecue.

That, of course, did not stop me from pouring some additional sauce onto the sandwich before I consumed it. Here’s what’s funny–remember earlier when I complained about wanting a Sriracha level of heat and instead getting Texas Pete? I had both Texas Pete and Sriracha available to me as table condiments, along with Tabasco and Cholula hot sauces–and I reached for the Texas Pete. Having eaten at Alamo multiple times before, I knew the Texas Pete flavor would mesh well with the taste of an Alamo barbecue sandwich–and I knew the sandwich was going to be good enough that I didn’t particularly need it to be hot to keep it enjoyable for myself. Funny how that works, huh? Plus, of course, there was always the jalapeno mac & cheese to add some spice to my dinner.

I tore that sandwich up with alacrity. Boy, was it good. Honestly, I could probably have eaten another one, but I knew I had leftovers in the fridge from two previous dinners that I could snack on later, so I decided to hold off. But I’ll be eating at Alamo again sooner rather than later–I sure hope they can heat up that area under the canopy during the winter.

I think the moral of the story is that, with barbecue, it’s best not to put on airs. A good slow-cooked piece of meat will only get you so far if you can’t put some real distinction into the overall flavor. Memo to the next guy attempting the whole “Chipotle of barbecue joints” concept: barbecue is about sauce, spice, and soul, not clean, well-lit dining rooms in suburban strip malls.

Drew

I’m a transgender weirdo who loves music, books, comics, and all kinds of other geeky crap. I edit an arts/music/culture magazine in my hometown of Richmond VA (rvamag.com). But let’s not talk about my day job. Let’s talk about food. I love food.