june dinner: blue smoke
21 June 2007
Last night, Nicole and I had our monthly dinner at Blue Smoke. This was my pick.
I had been to Blue Smoke once before a few years back, when an ex-girlfriend, with whom I had a torrid affair after we broke up (and she started dating someone else) that was about fifteen times hotter than our old relationship and possibly even twice as hot as the sun, took me there for my birthday. That meal blew my fucking doors off and I had been dreaming about Blue Smoke since. This time, however, possibly because the prospect of birthday/monkey sex was not imminent (no offense to Nicole, of course), I was not as impressed. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good, but it was certainly not as terrific as I remember.
(Likely the same sentiment applies to the post-break up affair between the ex and I; Uncle Jason is a little hard up for a steamy affair right now and may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Also, he has an erection as he’s typing this. It’s been a slow summer. Sorry.)
Blue Smoke is a barbeque place – a classy barbeque place to be sure, but a barbeque place nonetheless. I feel like barbeque places lend themselves to getting several different kinds of food and making a pig out of diners. And boy, did Nicole and I get lots of different food, and I ate so much that I thought I blew out a knee when I stood up after the meal.
Nicole and I started with the creamy blue cheese and bacon dip, which came with homemade barbeque chips. The dip was terrific, almost too much (blue cheese? bacon? barbeque chips? if the waitress had flashed her breasts after delivering the dip or I was allowed to do a j in the restaurant, all of my main vices would have been covered). I went with the devilled eggs appetizers. This is a curious choice, I know, but I had not had devilled eggs since my grandmother, God rest her soul, passed away last year. And, unfortunately, the devilled eggs at Blue Smoke had nothing on my grandmom’s. They were good, but nothing spectacular; if you order devilled eggs at a restaurant, you expect something spectacular, or at least special. These were not. They were plain ol’ devilled eggs. Good, but just devilled eggs. Nicole’s appetizer was the barbecued mussels with tomatoes, chilies and smoked pork. These were pretty good, but I feel like you can only do so much with mussels and again, these were nothing spectacular. Also, as someone who is admittedly a 100% pussy when it comes to spice, they had a little too much kick for me. So the appetizers…eh.
The main course is where Blue Smoke – and Nicole and I – kicked it up a notch. Nicole ordered the pulled pork platter, which both of us had on previous visits to the restaurant. We agreed that it was easily the best pulled pork either of us had ever had. Tender, juicy, with the perfect combination of sweet and spicy, it is fucking incredible. It scores high marks across the board – taste, texture, temperature, smell, appearance – all of which inspire both a sense of awe and also ravenous lust. It doesn’t hurt that the portion of pulled pork they pile on your plate (alliteration alert!) is roughly the size of a volleyball.
I got the pulled pork as well, but as part of a larger plate. My entrée was something called "Rhapsody In ’cue" which (hang on to your seats, folks) had St. Louis spareribs, the pulled pork, smoked chicken and (why not?) a sausage link. Yes, there was a gauntlet. I was wearing it. I removed it. I threw it, with extreme prejudice, down to the ground. Last night, the barbeque and I, we danced.
And just like what happens when I dance in real life, by the time it was over I was left sweating, sore, tired, and wanting to go home to sit in air conditioning. And I haven’t even mentioned the sides we got, which were completely ridiculous: creamed spinach, mac and cheese, sweet potato fries with a maple dip, and hush puppies (which are like cornbread fritters) with a jalapeno marmalade. I mean, this…this was just too much.
And I think this is what made the meal less than spectacular for me. I was completely overwhelmed and outclassed. After each bite, I had too many choices – do I go with the pork, ribs, chicken, sausage, mac and cheese, creamed spinach, sweet potato fries, hush puppies, or back to the blue cheese and bacon dip? That’s nine different options, son. Total system overload for a fat guy like me. By the time we got out of there, I actually had a headache from having to think so much.
Since there were so many options, let’s break them down one by one:
- Pork: I covered this – incredible and a must-have if you go here.
- Ribs: I have a love/hate relationship with ribs. On the one hand, I think they’re delicious. On the other, I have a bit of weight problem as well as a beard. Meaning, I’m a little self-conscious about eating a bone with my hands and gnarling it down until I’ve ripped all the meat off of it. The platter came with four ribs, but I only had two; I could sense I was making Nicole uncomfortable with all my rib-eating and snorting. I will eat the remaining two ribs tonight in the privacy of my bathroom with both the shower running and the TV on to drown out my grunting sounds.
- Chicken: Surprisingly delicious. I try not to order chicken whenever I go out because, well, it’s chicken. But this is the one example where I was truly impressed with Blue Smoke; the chicken was very juicy, tender, and flavorful. Again, serious grunting involved here.
- Sausage: Very flavorful with a quite a lil’ wallop of spice that sneaks up on you. Not bad, but again, me = spice pussy.
- Creamed spinach: A little watery, but solid. Nothing to write home about.
- Mac and cheese: Very, very impressive. Very, very rich. This mac and cheese could do some serious, serious good for the world. I think if I put this on my penis before I went to bed, I’d wake up and would have a bigger bird. This is the only side that Nicole and I ate all of. No survivors here, but goddamn did they fight valiantly.
- Sweet potato fries: After trying a fry dipped in the maple dip, I said to Nicole, "You need to try this – it will make you a woman." I think this is a pretty accurate description.
- Hush puppies: I probably would have preferred plain ol’ cornbread. I never thought I’d write this, but frying food is not always a good idea and can be a little much. Cornbread is delicious because it’s soft and a little sweet and lovely – do we really need to drop it in a fryer? I feel like the people who liked fried cornbread are the same people who strangle themselves while masturbating or during sex to have more powerful orgasms. Sometimes it’s ok to leave "really great" alone, you know?
For dessert, Nicole and I got the banana cream pie. I had not had banana cream pie since I used to get it as a kid at Termini’s in South Philly. While good, like the devilled eggs, this banana cream pie did not compare with the banana cream pie of yore. Also, compared with the size of their other serving, the slice of banana cream pie was rather small for the hefty $7.25 price tag. I can complain about this because, even though I was stuffed, I have a separate stomach for desserts.
One last thing to note is that while our service wasn’t bad, our waitress was in our face for most of the meal – and not in a helpful way, either. When we got there, the bar was packed with people waiting for a table, and it was almost equally crowded by the time we left two hours later. It was obvious that the waitress was trying to move us along as quickly as possible, whereas Nicole and I (especially me) needed some serious time to rest, recuperate, and calculate how how much we raised our respective percentages of arteries clogged (I went from 47% to 51% – hello majority!).
Even though I left feeling a bit disappointed, I would still recommend Blue Smoke, but with the advice that one should definitely try the pulled pork and the mac and cheese, and maybe get the chicken, sweet potato fries, and ribs (in that order).
And maybe, just maybe, I learned something from the meal. Maybe I learned that nostalgia is a powerful deceiver, that life cannot be lived properly when constantly comparing the past to the present. Or maybe I learned that there is no limit to the sentimentality I can attach to a memory involving either food or sex.
Yeah, probably that last one.
I had been to Blue Smoke once before a few years back, when an ex-girlfriend, with whom I had a torrid affair after we broke up (and she started dating someone else) that was about fifteen times hotter than our old relationship and possibly even twice as hot as the sun, took me there for my birthday. That meal blew my fucking doors off and I had been dreaming about Blue Smoke since. This time, however, possibly because the prospect of birthday/monkey sex was not imminent (no offense to Nicole, of course), I was not as impressed. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good, but it was certainly not as terrific as I remember.
(Likely the same sentiment applies to the post-break up affair between the ex and I; Uncle Jason is a little hard up for a steamy affair right now and may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Also, he has an erection as he’s typing this. It’s been a slow summer. Sorry.)
Blue Smoke is a barbeque place – a classy barbeque place to be sure, but a barbeque place nonetheless. I feel like barbeque places lend themselves to getting several different kinds of food and making a pig out of diners. And boy, did Nicole and I get lots of different food, and I ate so much that I thought I blew out a knee when I stood up after the meal.
Nicole and I started with the creamy blue cheese and bacon dip, which came with homemade barbeque chips. The dip was terrific, almost too much (blue cheese? bacon? barbeque chips? if the waitress had flashed her breasts after delivering the dip or I was allowed to do a j in the restaurant, all of my main vices would have been covered). I went with the devilled eggs appetizers. This is a curious choice, I know, but I had not had devilled eggs since my grandmother, God rest her soul, passed away last year. And, unfortunately, the devilled eggs at Blue Smoke had nothing on my grandmom’s. They were good, but nothing spectacular; if you order devilled eggs at a restaurant, you expect something spectacular, or at least special. These were not. They were plain ol’ devilled eggs. Good, but just devilled eggs. Nicole’s appetizer was the barbecued mussels with tomatoes, chilies and smoked pork. These were pretty good, but I feel like you can only do so much with mussels and again, these were nothing spectacular. Also, as someone who is admittedly a 100% pussy when it comes to spice, they had a little too much kick for me. So the appetizers…eh.
The main course is where Blue Smoke – and Nicole and I – kicked it up a notch. Nicole ordered the pulled pork platter, which both of us had on previous visits to the restaurant. We agreed that it was easily the best pulled pork either of us had ever had. Tender, juicy, with the perfect combination of sweet and spicy, it is fucking incredible. It scores high marks across the board – taste, texture, temperature, smell, appearance – all of which inspire both a sense of awe and also ravenous lust. It doesn’t hurt that the portion of pulled pork they pile on your plate (alliteration alert!) is roughly the size of a volleyball.
I got the pulled pork as well, but as part of a larger plate. My entrée was something called "Rhapsody In ’cue" which (hang on to your seats, folks) had St. Louis spareribs, the pulled pork, smoked chicken and (why not?) a sausage link. Yes, there was a gauntlet. I was wearing it. I removed it. I threw it, with extreme prejudice, down to the ground. Last night, the barbeque and I, we danced.
And just like what happens when I dance in real life, by the time it was over I was left sweating, sore, tired, and wanting to go home to sit in air conditioning. And I haven’t even mentioned the sides we got, which were completely ridiculous: creamed spinach, mac and cheese, sweet potato fries with a maple dip, and hush puppies (which are like cornbread fritters) with a jalapeno marmalade. I mean, this…this was just too much.
And I think this is what made the meal less than spectacular for me. I was completely overwhelmed and outclassed. After each bite, I had too many choices – do I go with the pork, ribs, chicken, sausage, mac and cheese, creamed spinach, sweet potato fries, hush puppies, or back to the blue cheese and bacon dip? That’s nine different options, son. Total system overload for a fat guy like me. By the time we got out of there, I actually had a headache from having to think so much.
Since there were so many options, let’s break them down one by one:
- Pork: I covered this – incredible and a must-have if you go here.
- Ribs: I have a love/hate relationship with ribs. On the one hand, I think they’re delicious. On the other, I have a bit of weight problem as well as a beard. Meaning, I’m a little self-conscious about eating a bone with my hands and gnarling it down until I’ve ripped all the meat off of it. The platter came with four ribs, but I only had two; I could sense I was making Nicole uncomfortable with all my rib-eating and snorting. I will eat the remaining two ribs tonight in the privacy of my bathroom with both the shower running and the TV on to drown out my grunting sounds.
- Chicken: Surprisingly delicious. I try not to order chicken whenever I go out because, well, it’s chicken. But this is the one example where I was truly impressed with Blue Smoke; the chicken was very juicy, tender, and flavorful. Again, serious grunting involved here.
- Sausage: Very flavorful with a quite a lil’ wallop of spice that sneaks up on you. Not bad, but again, me = spice pussy.
- Creamed spinach: A little watery, but solid. Nothing to write home about.
- Mac and cheese: Very, very impressive. Very, very rich. This mac and cheese could do some serious, serious good for the world. I think if I put this on my penis before I went to bed, I’d wake up and would have a bigger bird. This is the only side that Nicole and I ate all of. No survivors here, but goddamn did they fight valiantly.
- Sweet potato fries: After trying a fry dipped in the maple dip, I said to Nicole, "You need to try this – it will make you a woman." I think this is a pretty accurate description.
- Hush puppies: I probably would have preferred plain ol’ cornbread. I never thought I’d write this, but frying food is not always a good idea and can be a little much. Cornbread is delicious because it’s soft and a little sweet and lovely – do we really need to drop it in a fryer? I feel like the people who liked fried cornbread are the same people who strangle themselves while masturbating or during sex to have more powerful orgasms. Sometimes it’s ok to leave "really great" alone, you know?
For dessert, Nicole and I got the banana cream pie. I had not had banana cream pie since I used to get it as a kid at Termini’s in South Philly. While good, like the devilled eggs, this banana cream pie did not compare with the banana cream pie of yore. Also, compared with the size of their other serving, the slice of banana cream pie was rather small for the hefty $7.25 price tag. I can complain about this because, even though I was stuffed, I have a separate stomach for desserts.
One last thing to note is that while our service wasn’t bad, our waitress was in our face for most of the meal – and not in a helpful way, either. When we got there, the bar was packed with people waiting for a table, and it was almost equally crowded by the time we left two hours later. It was obvious that the waitress was trying to move us along as quickly as possible, whereas Nicole and I (especially me) needed some serious time to rest, recuperate, and calculate how how much we raised our respective percentages of arteries clogged (I went from 47% to 51% – hello majority!).
Even though I left feeling a bit disappointed, I would still recommend Blue Smoke, but with the advice that one should definitely try the pulled pork and the mac and cheese, and maybe get the chicken, sweet potato fries, and ribs (in that order).
And maybe, just maybe, I learned something from the meal. Maybe I learned that nostalgia is a powerful deceiver, that life cannot be lived properly when constantly comparing the past to the present. Or maybe I learned that there is no limit to the sentimentality I can attach to a memory involving either food or sex.
Yeah, probably that last one.
