BARBECUE, one of the great American cooking idioms, has been slowly gaining in popularity around here. That must make proponents of the Slow Food Movement, which started in Italy during the ’80s, deliriously happy.
Because good ’cue requires time. As the owner of Memphis Minnie’s, my favorite barbecue joint in San Francisco, puts it, “Barbecue is the opposite of grilling.” Picture a giant smoke pit with meats turning slowly over smoldering embers, and you’ve got the essence of it. If oven-baking a rack of ribs meets your barbecue standards, you may be missing the point.
The Salt Lick Photo By: Iris Dumuk
Some say the term originated from the Spanish word barbacoa, but the origin is unclear. We do know that there are myriad forms of it all over the world, from the aromatic spices of Chinese barbecue to the chili-rubbed kind you might find in any Mexican village on the night of a local festival.
Vegas now has several traditional American barbecue restaurants, as well as places that specialize in the ’cue of Hawaii, Latin America and various Asian countries. Here is a list of 10 well-known local places in which to indulge your taste for smoked meats. –Max Jacobson
K’s BBQ
9620 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 641-5277
K’s BBQ, a modest place run by a pit-master from Garland, Texas, and his Hawaiian-born wife, is off the radar screen for most locals because it is located on the south end of the Strip, near the South Point Casino. But the restaurant consistently serves some of the best ’cue in town, and the huge portions make the prices a bargain.
“Never trust a skinny chef,” says a poster here. The three-meat combo, at $14.99, is enough for three, a huge pile of meat, two sides and a toasted hamburger bun. We ordered the addictive Polish sausage, almost dripping smoke; the ribs, colored a deep bronze; and the fork-tender beef brisket, cut to order, which came exactly as requested.
Three-meat combo at K's BBQ Photo by Iris Dumuk
Sometimes there is a really smoky chicken, the result of being slow-cooked outdoors in a smoke pit fired with hardwoods, and there are always homemade sides like saucy beans and creamy coleslaw. The good potato salad, made for them, is equally formidable. If the restaurant had more than one sauce, a mild, smoky one, and a few desserts, it might be an improvement. There is little else about K’s BBQ that needs to be, though.
Memphis Championship BBQ
1401 S. Rainbow Blvd., 254-0520
2250 E. Warm Springs Road, 260-6909
4379 Las Vegas Blvd. N., 644-0000
For many locals, discussion of barbecue in Vegas begins and ends with Mike Mills’ chain. (His mad skills recently got him noticed by big-shot New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, who brought Mills on as a consultant.) This is family-recipe barbecue, the secrets of which involve a top-secret vinegar-based sauce developed by Mills’ mother and a “magic dust” spice mix concocted by Mills himself.
Mix these potions with quality meats—and wood imported from Murphysboro, Illinois, for just the right smokiness—and you have the food that has won Mills numerous barbecue awards.
So the question becomes, what to order? The ribs are good enough to make you wish he’d use the ribs of some much larger, meatier animal; but the hot links are equally tasty, and then there’s the pork shoulder ...
Luckily, the restaurant has a sampler plate.
Don’t make side dishes an afterthought—Grandma’s Baked Beans and the baked sweet potato are both recommended.
Famous Dave’s
1951 N. Rainbow Blvd., 646-5631
This is the only local representative of a Midwestern chain that started in Hayward, Wisconsin. Meats are prepared with real hickory in a walk-in Southern Pride smoker that is about the size of a Mini Cooper, and although there is nothing exotic on the menu, the slow cooking and high quality of the products make this place a good bet.
The unit is designed to evoke a cabin in the North Woods, and it doesn’t skimp on the hokey. Antlers are used as chandeliers, and plastic muskies, that iconic Great Lakes fish, are suspended overhead. All is forgiven, though, when you taste the smoked salmon that is finished on a grill, the soft brisket and the excellent St. Louis cut ribs, which are done with a nice, spicy rub.
Side dishes score high, as well. Wilbur’s beans are a must, made with leftover chunks of rib meat and hot links, and the creamy coleslaw and ridged fried potato wedges, here called Famous Fries, are equally estimable. If there is still room for dessert, try the eggy Famous Bread Pudding, which almost lives up to its hyperbolic moniker.
TC’s Rib Crib
8470 W. Desert Inn Road, 451-7247
Chased from Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina, the Harrell clan settled in Las Vegas with a handful of secret recipes, including the tangy-sweet sauce that coats the tasty meats here. (It was created in 1902.) We like the perfectly cooked one-quarter chicken (crinkly outer skin, juicy meat, braised in a tangy sauce) and meltingly tender beef brisket. The ribs are easily among the best in town—well-smoked and unfailingly tender. The sides—fluffy potato salad, collard greens, mac and cheese—are uniformly good, too.
The family vibe extends from the kitchen (where several family members toil) to the accoutrements (plastic plates and forks) to the décor (family photos). Louisiana’s loss is Southern Nevada’s gain.
Mother’s Korean Grill
4215 Spring Mountain Road, 579-4745
Speak to local Koreans, and the consensus seems to be that this is the best Korean food in town. It’s certainly a handsome room, designed with a stone floor, black marble-topped tables and soaring stainless steel hoods over the barbecue tables.
Although it is a varied and venerable cuisine, Korean cooking in this country is synonymous with barbecue, generally cuts of beef or seafood marinated in chili, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce, that the diner cooks slowly over a charcoal brazier that is fitted into his table.
Kalbi, the best known of the beef cuts, are opulent short ribs on the bone that blacken beautifully when placed in the center of your grill, the smoke sucked skyward by the vent just over your head. And it’s wonderful at Mother’s, with a deeply smoky finish and lots of sesame oil perfuming the marinade.
There are many options here: eel, beef tongue, Berkshire pork, even octopus. Whatever you choose is accompanied by at least a half-dozen complimentary side dishes, like sliced bean pancakes or fiery kim chee, plus a pot of perfectly steamed white rice. Don’t forget to order an OB, the malty Korean beer, best ice cold, to put out the fire in your mouth.
Lucille’s Smokehouse Bar-B-Que
In the District at Green Valley Ranch, 257-7427
Go straight for the ribs. Baby backs, St. Louis, beef—they’re all slow-cooked and smoked for hours using secret recipes that, naturally, originated with Lucille Buchanan’s grandma years before Lucille opened her first joint, in Long Beach, California, back in the WWII years.
The meats are pink inside from the lavish hickory-smoking, and it’s all good. If you prefer not to gnaw on bones, we recommend the brisket or tri-tip. Roasted garlic mashed potatoes make for a terrific side dish, and if you really want to get your South on, try the creamy cheese grits.
All this is served up in a homey back-porch setting that nicely complements the homespun deliciousness of the food.
Sam Woo Bar-B-Q
4215 Spring Mountain Road, 368-7628
Those bronze-skinned birds hanging from hooks in the busy takeout section of this Chinese barbecue chain are soy-rubbed chickens, but there are also crackling sides of pork, five-spice duck and fragrant Chinese sausages in the offing here.
Sam Woo started in Southern California’s heavily Asian San Gabriel Valley, where it is as much a way of life as it is a barbecue pit. The anchor of the popular Chinatown Plaza Mall in the heart of the Vegas Chinese community, it is also a busy restaurant with more than 200 items on its menu.
Chinese barbecue is an art unto itself, but the flavor tends to be sweet, aromatic and vaguely medicinal, thanks to exotic ingredients such as camphor, tea leaves, star anise and the mysterious five spice powder, which you can buy a few doors down at 99 Ranch Market. Unless you know what you are doing, leave it to the experts. Otherwise, you may end up with a perfectly good bird that tastes like a black Jujyfruit.
Spare ribs, chicken livers and pig’s intestines also see their way into the pit, for the true aficionados among you.
The Salt Lick
Inside Red Rock Casino and Resort, 797-7535
Inside Santa Fe Station, 658-4900
If the meats at the Salt Lick, a Driftwood, Texas, import that came to Vegas as a result of a national barbecue search, have their own distinctive cast, it is due to green oak, the wood responsible for the sweet, almost medicinal flavor they have. The pork ribs have a telltale smoke ring, despite only three hours on the wood, and the link sausage will make you weep, it’s that delicious.
The restaurant serves wonderful barbecued turkey, smoky, tender and moist, especially appealing piled on top of the house Caesar. One of the best appetizers is something called shrimp Diablo, a Texas-all-the-way dish composed of bacon-wrapped prawns cooked in a sauce redolent of pickled jalapeños and onions.
There is no tomato in the house barbecue sauce, made from cumin, vinegar, sugar and mustard, as well as sweet peppers to help it caramelize the outer surface of the meat. The Santa Fe Station location, it should be mentioned, is open for dinner only.
Tony Roma’s
Multiple locations around the Valley
Some may balk at the presence of a corporate chain—some 230 restaurants around the world—on a list mostly devoted to small chains or family joints. But, hey, Tony Roma was an actual guy, too, who opened his first rib joint in Miami in 1972. Perhaps 200-plus stores just means people like his cooking.
If so, here are four good reasons: Original, Carolina Honeys, Blue Ridge Smokies, Tony Roma’s Red Hots—the perky signature sauces used by the chain. Parked on the tables, they turn pretty much anything—a hamburger, for example—into a barbecue experience.
But the Tony Roma’s slogan isn’t “famous for hamburgers,” so you’re here for the ribs, whether it’s the baby backs that made Roma famous or the beef or St. Louis numbers. The pulled-pork barbecue sandwich is also worthy. We hear there are non-barbecue items on the menu, but you couldn’t prove that by us.
L&L Hawaiian Barbecue
Multiple locations around the Valley
L&L might be the McDonald’s of Hawaiian grub—ubiquitous, quick—but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. So maybe the menu is a touch greasier than you might prefer; it’s still hard to resist the kick and sweetness of the barbecue sauce that drapes their beef and chicken plates. Add the charm of plastic utensils, side items like thickly textured macaroni salad or spam masubi (spam with rice wrapped in seaweed), and nutty entrees such as the Loco Moco (hamburger, poached eggs and gluttonous slab of gravy), and you’ll be vibing the feel-good Hawaiian energy in no time.