I met a business associate at Q in Port Chester last night. If one were to place any faith in the opinions of the semi-pro axe-grinders on Chowhound (full disclosure: I stopped reading Chowhound for a couple of years after indulging in an unnecessarily splenetic debate with Alfa-Hund Jim Leff regarding the proper procedure for making a chocolate eggcream. Poor deluded man.) Q makes the best bbq in Westchester.
Someone once wrote that making vermouth is an art, but a very minor art. Probably one step above making lampshades from seashells. Well, bbq occupies a similar position in the realm of culinary achievements. I suppose that, in its indigenous situation, a ramshackle structure made of 55-gallon oil cans and old cypress logs, there's a certain apposite charm to it. Kind of like eating smoked mullet and drinking iced mugs of PBR in the Mullet Shack in Clearwater. One might almost talk about it in terms of terroir. One might, if one had indulged very heavily in boilermakers for a few hours prior to saying something so ludicrous.
But in Westchester, one of the richest counties in this country, even in one of its less affluent towns, like Port Chester, there's an inevitable infra dig quality about eating this stuff. Legions of completely-assimilated folks from Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, only a couple of generations from Lomsk and Minsk, scarfing down pulled pork and collards, and washing it down with artisanal pure cane sodas.
Back to Q. The food's good. There's a nice bar, if you don't mind sitting on a raised platform in front of a big window. Personally, I prefer the old joints with the mock-Tudor windows that accrue layer after layer of spray-on Christmas snow, until you could be holding tryouts for a road-company Caligula and no one would know. But both times that I've been there the service at the bar was quite good (even though my friend insisted on ordering a Sidecar, which stopped the barman in his very young tracks. Naughty, naughty, A.)
Portions are big, verging on ludicrous. I have a healthy appetite, and foodstuffs on which one has poured hot sauce usually present no problem until after the first pound or so. But there's SO MUCH of the same thing, which, presumably, is one of my problems with BBQ. After a while, even the spritely cole slaw didn't do much to relieve the one-trick-pony of the food world.
The food itself: pulled pork is as good as it gets up here in these parts, although it's suspiciously moist, as though it's pulled and then moistened. The flavor gets attenuated. But at least it's not the sicky-sweety stuff that passes for pulled pork in the North. The Texas brisket sandwich was not a success. A mountain of - okay, sicky sweet - deeply over-caramelized brisket shards. Tough. Sugary. Two adjectives that should never be applied to meat.
Mme. Sidecar had some kind of combo plate with sausages. The sausages were good, but just good. Far and away the best thing I've had at Q was the mac-n-cheese, an idiosyncratic version based on medium shells rather than elbows. It comes with a shower of toasted breadcrumbs on top, and if I had it around all the time I'd be One Fat Guy. The hotsauce, one of the excellent Cholula family, sets off the breadcrumbs wonderfully.
I don't drink Margaritas with my meals, not since a disastrous experience a dozen or so years ago at the huge El Rio Grande on Third Avenue, where I unwisely ignored the warnings of my buddy Handsome Mike, who was managing the place, about the proportions of tequila to mix in their slush machines. Two frozen Margs, and the bartender could have repaired my ACL without a squeak from me. So all I can tell you is that the beer was good and cold and inexpensive.
Dessert at a BBQ joint is too much of a muchness for me. All I really want is a slice of perfect watermelon, on which I might sprinkle some salt and pepper, the way my mother told me was de rigeur in the roadside shacks outside of Alexandria, LA, where my father was stationed (Ft. Polk) at the beginning of The Big One. Stuff like banana/Nilla wafer puddings and pecan pie (a non-starter in the dessert race almost all the time) and peach cobbler is totally unnecessary, unless you enjoy the crash from a sugar high at 1AM.
Cool idea: Q has a large stainless sink in the middle of the dining room. Much more satisfactory than the little wetnaps that come in foil packets which are very hard to open with hands dripping with pork fat and bbq sauce.
Q also seems to vend its wares in bulk, by the pound, so you can take it home and eat it without caring about your shirtfront. This might work very well for a party. As you know, I'll do almost anything to avoid dealing with caterers.
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Someone once wrote that making vermouth is an art, but a very minor art. Probably one step above making lampshades from seashells. Well, bbq occupies a similar position in the realm of culinary achievements. I suppose that, in its indigenous situation, a ramshackle structure made of 55-gallon oil cans and old cypress logs, there's a certain apposite charm to it. Kind of like eating smoked mullet and drinking iced mugs of PBR in the Mullet Shack in Clearwater. One might almost talk about it in terms of terroir. One might, if one had indulged very heavily in boilermakers for a few hours prior to saying something so ludicrous.
But in Westchester, one of the richest counties in this country, even in one of its less affluent towns, like Port Chester, there's an inevitable infra dig quality about eating this stuff. Legions of completely-assimilated folks from Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, only a couple of generations from Lomsk and Minsk, scarfing down pulled pork and collards, and washing it down with artisanal pure cane sodas.
Back to Q. The food's good. There's a nice bar, if you don't mind sitting on a raised platform in front of a big window. Personally, I prefer the old joints with the mock-Tudor windows that accrue layer after layer of spray-on Christmas snow, until you could be holding tryouts for a road-company Caligula and no one would know. But both times that I've been there the service at the bar was quite good (even though my friend insisted on ordering a Sidecar, which stopped the barman in his very young tracks. Naughty, naughty, A.)
Portions are big, verging on ludicrous. I have a healthy appetite, and foodstuffs on which one has poured hot sauce usually present no problem until after the first pound or so. But there's SO MUCH of the same thing, which, presumably, is one of my problems with BBQ. After a while, even the spritely cole slaw didn't do much to relieve the one-trick-pony of the food world.
The food itself: pulled pork is as good as it gets up here in these parts, although it's suspiciously moist, as though it's pulled and then moistened. The flavor gets attenuated. But at least it's not the sicky-sweety stuff that passes for pulled pork in the North. The Texas brisket sandwich was not a success. A mountain of - okay, sicky sweet - deeply over-caramelized brisket shards. Tough. Sugary. Two adjectives that should never be applied to meat.
Mme. Sidecar had some kind of combo plate with sausages. The sausages were good, but just good. Far and away the best thing I've had at Q was the mac-n-cheese, an idiosyncratic version based on medium shells rather than elbows. It comes with a shower of toasted breadcrumbs on top, and if I had it around all the time I'd be One Fat Guy. The hotsauce, one of the excellent Cholula family, sets off the breadcrumbs wonderfully.
I don't drink Margaritas with my meals, not since a disastrous experience a dozen or so years ago at the huge El Rio Grande on Third Avenue, where I unwisely ignored the warnings of my buddy Handsome Mike, who was managing the place, about the proportions of tequila to mix in their slush machines. Two frozen Margs, and the bartender could have repaired my ACL without a squeak from me. So all I can tell you is that the beer was good and cold and inexpensive.
Dessert at a BBQ joint is too much of a muchness for me. All I really want is a slice of perfect watermelon, on which I might sprinkle some salt and pepper, the way my mother told me was de rigeur in the roadside shacks outside of Alexandria, LA, where my father was stationed (Ft. Polk) at the beginning of The Big One. Stuff like banana/Nilla wafer puddings and pecan pie (a non-starter in the dessert race almost all the time) and peach cobbler is totally unnecessary, unless you enjoy the crash from a sugar high at 1AM.
Cool idea: Q has a large stainless sink in the middle of the dining room. Much more satisfactory than the little wetnaps that come in foil packets which are very hard to open with hands dripping with pork fat and bbq sauce.
Q also seems to vend its wares in bulk, by the pound, so you can take it home and eat it without caring about your shirtfront. This might work very well for a party. As you know, I'll do almost anything to avoid dealing with caterers.
