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| - Lattuca, lattuca BBQ... After 4 months of anticipation, I finally got to sample the BBQ.
The meats they offer are beef brisket, beef short rib, pork ribs, and pulled pork.
If you choose 1 meat out of the 4, it's 17$, 2 costs 19$, and the trinity (3) costs 23$. Which led me to ask, why is there a 2$ difference between 1-2 choices, but a 4$ difference between 2-3 choices?
Being a big fan of southern BBQ, I ordered the trinity (beef brisket, short rib, and pork rib) with mac n cheese and kansas style beans as sides.
The Jack Daniel's World champion brisket is made texas style. No surprise, if Texas had a holy BBQ animal, it'd be beef. Looking at the crust, I'm thinking they used a dry rub consisting of pepper, salt, paprika in equal parts. I saw a good pink/purple smoke ring surrounding the extremities of the brisket. The flat was a little dry and lacked in seasoning however. I didn't get the chance to sample the burnt ends and point, but those were good apparently.
The beef short rib has a nice smoke ring, and had the same flavour profile as the brisket, but it was a bit undercooked (parts close to the bone was still bloody). As the meat was still rigidly attached on the bone, I used a knife to scrape it off (cutting motion alone wouldnt do the job).
The pork rib (yes, one single rib) was made kansas-style, I suspect. In terms of taste, it was ketchupy sweet and very flavourful (onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cayenne, etc). Probably the best single rib I had at a restaurant in Montreal, but who the f**k orders 1 rib at a time?? If I had a half rack or more, I'd be able to judge it more thoroughly (the ribs on the sides are often burnt and dried out).
Mac N Cheese: pretty good mac n cheese, comparable to the one at Smoke Signals Q down in Lake Placid. I liked the idea of sprinkling a little bit of pork dry rub for enhanced taste.
Kansas-style Beans: very tasty but not very smoky. It had chunks of scrap meat and a hint of celery (that was very nice).
What was good about Lattuca's BBQ is that it doesn't come bathed in a heavy complementary sauce and it doesn't need one. The meats are obviously fresh so the taste of the meat alone was enough.
The downside was... I was secretly hoping to taste contest level meat -- kinda disappointed because I can reproduce this pretty easily in my backyard (it was 6 celsius yesterday) at a third of the price I was charged.
Overall, Lattuca serves hands down the most legit BBQ in Montreal, so if you haven't had southern american BBQ, you gotta check it out.
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