Take It In The Ribs -- Good Barbecue Puts On An Assertive Sauce

Best ribs: R & L Home of Good

Barbecue, 1816 E. Yesler Way,

Seattle. 322-0271.

My assigned urge food was ribs. If a Snickers can get me up after midnight, chewing blissfully in a parking lot under a driving rain, barbecued ribs can chase me halfway around the country. I am not alone in this.

Calvin Trillin, the syndicated columnist who began his writing career as a whimsical food writer with the New Yorker Magazine, in one of his books wrote:

``Not all of the best restaurants

Above - In Seattle, finding good ribs is hit or miss.

in the country were in Kansas City, just the top two or three.''

First on his list was Arthur Bryant's, a run-down, beat-up barbecue joint in the old Kansas City jazz district. I directed that my motorcycle be crated up and promptly flew to Kansas City, bike and all.

Ostensibly, I was supposed to write a story about the Oregon Trail (and I eventually did). But my first stop on the Oregon Trail was at Arthur Bryant's.

``It's only a half-mile from the trail,'' I informed my editor in feeble justification.

What I found at Arthur Bryant's was not the best food in America, but an institution that was at the center of a genuine food cult.

When I got there, around noon, a line of patient, waiting would-be diners stood in 104-degree heat, slowly shuffling forward. They were almost exclusively white.

Inside, the staff was exclusively black. So was the exterior of the meats that emerged from the huge black fire pit. Indeed, as the slabs of ribs and brisket came from the pit, the burnt crisp outside crusts were sliced off - but not thrown away.

The crusts instead were placed in bowls and set out on the counter for complimentary snacks. They were grabbed up by the handful.

The beer was so cold it was half frozen, frosted mugs of beer Slurpees that made the back of the mouth ache with relief.

Arthur Bryant's ribs were memorable; his barbecue sauce - a very unusual sauce with bitter overtones of celery seed - is legendary. Two-gallon jugs of it were scattered around the joint. Folks were downing it like dessert.

That brief hour-long visit made me a ribs aficionado. I packed a jar of it on the back of the Honda 450 and headed 2,000 miles up the Oregon Trail with peace in my heart and fire in my belly.

Barbecue in Seattle has been a shifting scene. Good places come and go. Mediocre places start up and hang on for a while. But the really good ones endure.

In 1981 I discovered Jimmy Beal's Wild Boar Barbecue a couple of blocks from Garfield High School. It was another revelation. Beal had built his own brick pit with alder and maple smoke slowly wafting indirectly over ribs that slowly cooked for hours.

When they were done, the meat was tender, juicy and almost slipping from the bone when bitten, but the fat was rendered out. His sauces, a choice of hot or mild (and the mild was pretty hot), qualified as beverages.

Beal was a semi-retired sea cook then. And that was part of the problem. Periodically, he heard a siren song (or needed to add to his retirement) and he'd ship out to the Far East. Various assistants would allow his pit to slide into the abyss of the ordinary.

He's back now, completely home from the sea, in control, and operating out of a metal smoker down on Martin Luther King Jr.

Way South and South Hudson Street. His sauces are as great as ever. His ribs as tender as they were. But I think the old brick pit worked better; made for slightly leaner slabs.

I picked Beal's Wild Boar as the second-best ribs spot in Seattle - and expect him to build a new pit somewhere in or around the Sound (maybe in Bremerton) in the near future if he can get backing.

Tied with Beal for sauce quality was Ribbons Barbeque in Ballard. It's a truly wonderful dip 'n' slather. But the last ribs I tried there were slightly tough.

First place: The R & L Home of Good Barbecue. Mary Collins Davis has set the standard for Seattle barbecue for many years. The ribs are magnificent, tender but not falling apart, cooked long and slow, but still moist and juicy.

Their beef brisket is so tender that if you gave it a cross glance it would fall apart. The sauce, a critical adjunct to any barbecue, comes in two strengths; mild and hot. The mild is not baby food; the hot is assertive but not overwhelming. I usually order the sauce mixed half and half.

Beer is served in pint jugs fashioned after Mason jars. It isn't frozen into a Slurpee, but it's cold enough to put up a good fight with the sauce.

Runners-up:

Jim Beal's Wild Boar Barbecue, 3206 S. Hudson St. 723-0440. Splendid ribs, hot links and sauce. Beef brisket OK. I look forward to seeing Beal build a new brick pit somewhere. But he is near retirement and may not want to take on a major project. Beal, a Texan, has the gift. One has to hope he takes on an apprentice.

Ribbons Barbeque, 6701 15th Ave. N.W., 782-8309. Ribs on a recent visit were good, some excellent. But a few bordered on dry. The sauce however, is outstanding. If it were in a soup bowl, you'd finish it with a spoon.

Ribs. An obsession of mankind . . . ever since Adam.

JOHN HINTERBERGER'S FOOD COLUMNS AND RESTAURANT REVIEWS APPEAR SUNDAYS IN PACIFIC AND FRIDAYS IN TEMPO. HE ALSO WRITES A WEDNESDAY COLUMN FOR THE SCENE SECTION OF THE TIMES.