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| - Pretty sure that the only research behind this place was 1.) watching season one of The Dukes of Hazzard and 2.) reading the label of a bottle of KC Masterpiece.
I've been craving a good barbecue place since I moved to Pittsburgh, and I'm still searching. Granted, I think my standards are high: I grew up in SC and lived in eastern NC, south Ga., and Kansas City, and my dining partner grew up in eastern NC. Not easy to please, but I was open.
We both had pork shoulder. (Go figure - pork shoulder = barbecue in the Carolinas.) I also had some brisket just to try something else. The pork comes out in chunks - very good flavor, but the cubes are weird - don't allow it to pick up any grease or sauce. It's much better if you mash it up into pulled pork and douse it with the vinegar - four stars after you do something that should've been done in the kitchen. The brisket was, meh. Both meats were obviously hit with a blowtorch. Barbecue is about slow cooking - any charring is a side effect - acceptable, but not a key, and too much is, well, too much. This was too much - some bites tasted like charcoal. Way too much fat, too. The fat definitely adds to the flavor, but only when it's rendered and soaked into the rest of the meat - big chunks should be cut away and not served. (Only the crappy 'cue places down South serve up as much whole fat as this place.) This seems to be sous-vide, so much of the fat stays whole - not awful, but it gets to be a bit much after 3-4 mouthfuls of straight charred fat. The sauces need a lot of work, too. The vinegar needed more spice, more flavor. The red stuff was pretty flavorless. The other stuff was just a Caribbean pepper sauce. Not bad, but the heat overpowered the meat, and it was a bit too fruity.
My friend had baked beans on the side. Bleh - way too sweet and too spicy. Had a weird flavor that I think I figured out: sweet potatoes. These tasted like someone mixed beans into a decent sweet potato pie. (Which wasn't bad until you hit a chunk of hot dog. Salty meat and sweet potato pie don't mix well.)
The high point was the collards - perfectly done. Most Southern places overcook the hell out of them, and most Yankees leave them leathery. These were perfect.
Sweet tea was about half as strong as it should be. (A nice mahogany color is close to ideal - this stuff is lighter than cream soda.) Sweetness was about right for me, but not as sweet as authentic, syrupy sweet tea. ...And it would be nice to keep a pitcher of unsweetened - every place down South keeps both. (My friend wanted unsweetened - no dice for her.)
The communal seating is just weird. I only know one barbecue place that does that, and they only do it in one of their several dining rooms. It's annoying to be dropping $20 on a casual meal and still feel rushed to clear out.
For $50 for two, just have some pulled pork FedExed to your door. (There are a few places in the Carolinas that will happily do that.)
*No form of meat stew? Really? I mean, if I was a chef, I'd think that would be the area where I could really have some fun. Giant swathes of Barbecueland have a "barbecue stew": hash in SC, Brunswick stew in Ga., burgoo in KY. Kinda disappointed that UP&C missed that opportunity - kinda hard to miss if you actually spent any time in barbecue country.
**Cornbread was the worst I've ever had, and my partner agreed. I thought the worst you could do was Jiffy (which isn't bad - the good folks at Jiffy set the floor pretty high). If you can't get the real stuff right, you pick up a bunch of boxes of Jiffy, at, like $1/box, and follow the recipe - can't go wrong. Unfortunately, UP&C thinks they know better - tastes like they mixed a bag of cornmeal with some vanilla brownie mix. I've eaten plenty of cake that wasn't as sweet, but this stuff had a messed-up texture. The top inch was as dense as a hush puppy, and the bottom inch had the texture of a slab of beef jerky. The chef should spank his own bare behind for serving this to paying customers. ...And do it again for charging $3 per clod as a side.
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