Dixie's BBQ in Bellevue, WA

In article , [email removed] (Robert
Harmon) wrote:

> Well let's start another flame war. I ate at Dixie's BBQ in Bellevue twice
> this last week. These are just my most recent visits made to Dixie's, just to
> firm up my opinion of what's become something of an Eastside culinary icon.
>
> Dixie's is located in a section of an automotive repair shop.

The restaurant now consumes the entire garage.  He has not worked on a vehicle there in over 2y years.

>     The walls are
> covered with endorsements of people who've dealt with the "MAN" and survived
> to talk about it (Hint: If asked to meet the MAN take a pass - it's the
> hottest stuff in the world.) Other than the endorsements there's not much to
> recommend here for the serious BBQ buff. The generously portioned beef & pork
> sandwiches are remarkable only for their lack of flavor, just what one would
> expect of anything soaked in a bland, too tomatoey, sauce. The ribs - beef &
> pork - are greasy beyond belief (And for those who think ribs & grease are
> synonymous, you don't know squat about cooking ribs - when cooked slowly over
> low moist heat, the grease literally melts away, leaving just tender & sweet
> meat.)

You sure tried a lotta food in two visits. I will just state that all of Gene's meats are slow cooked.  I think the briskets and pork take 23 hours. That is his style of cookin'.  I have never found the ribs to be greasy, especially when compared to some place like the Armadillo, where they do not slow cook, and the grease is not just plentiful, but seared.

Oh, those endorsements on the wall also include most of the Seahawks, not that they are all good judges of BBQ...

> About the location - I guess the owner of Dixie's is pretty smart in not
> giving up his day job!

What a wierd thing to say. He did give up his "day job". He no longer repairs cars.  And he is making a killing.  He does a phenmomenal lunch-time business. He wasn't making enough at automotive stuff to justify keeping part of the building for it. Plus he needed more space for parking, and had nowhere to keep customers cars. He finally had to defer all serious catering requests to the Tacoma Dixies, operated by his son or nephew, I forget which, because he could not keep up out of the one store.

And then there is that phenomenal lemon cake.

   Johnjay wrote:
>So can you recommend any rib places on the
>eastside, in Bellevue, Kirkland, Bothell,
>Redmond, Woodinville or Issaquah?
>
>
>

No, there is no better place than Dixie's in the Seattle metro area. And that's not contradictory to my original post.

For this area Dixie's BBQ, Texas Smokehouse, Armidillo BBQ, Mac's Smokehouse, etc., are about as good as BBQ gets. It's just that I frequently find myself in Memphis, St. Louis, and lots of cities & towns in Texas, and their standards for BBQ are so high our BBQ places wouldn't stay in business long if they were there instead of in the PNW.

So if you just have to have a BBQ sandwich, then by all means stop by Dixie's or one of the others. They won't do you any harm, and as long as you remember their limitations they won't dissapoint you - too much.

Robert Harmon

Robert H. wrote:
>From: [email removed] (Robert Harmon)
>Subject: Re: Dixie's BBQ in Bellevue, WA
>Date: Mon, 09 Sep 96 02:11:17 GMT

>   Johnjay wrote:
>>So can you recommend any rib places on the
>>eastside, in Bellevue, Kirkland, Bothell,
>>Redmond, Woodinville or Issaquah?
>>
>>
>>

>No, there is no better place than Dixie's in the Seattle metro area. And
>that's not contradictory to my original post.

>For this area Dixie's BBQ, Texas Smokehouse, Armidillo BBQ, Mac's Smokehouse,
>etc., are about as good as BBQ gets. It's just that I frequently find myself
>in Memphis, St. Louis, and lots of cities & towns in Texas, and their
>standards for BBQ are so high our BBQ places wouldn't stay in business long
>if they were there instead of in the PNW.

>So if you just have to have a BBQ sandwich, then by all means stop by Dixie's
>or one of the others. They won't do you any harm, and as long as you remember
>their limitations they won't dissapoint you - too much.

>Robert Harmon

Istill think PECOS PIT has the best BBQ sandwich around only open during weekdays from 11 to 3 (or something like that) across from the big SODO building. It looks like an old gas station. Beans are great but you might have to wait in line for 20 to 35 minutes.But if you have the time its worth it \ spg

From [email removed] Wed Sep 25 10:31 EDT 1996
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John's description of traveling around visiting BBQ joints got me to thinking. If you were hungry for BBQ and came up on two places side by side. Let's say one had a big gas-fired contraption but with lots of smoke coming out of it and the other had a grizzled old guy loading hot embers into a pit with a shovel. Which one would you pick to eat at? Now I own a gas smoker and I wouldn't think twice. However, even though your gut instinct would be to go for the place cooking the traditional way does this guarantee you would get the better meal there? Not necessarily.

What if there was only one BBQ joint, and they cooked with gas? Would you turn it down? Just because it was cooked with gas would you get a bad meal? Not necessarily.

In Smokestack Lightning they visit a lot of places and find a lot of variation in the quality of the BBQ. Some is not so good, some is OK, and some is orgasmic.

They write about Smoky Joe's in Spartanburg, SC. Since in SC BBQ is considered meat cooked in a pot with some sauce, they call ahead and ask them if by "barbecue" they mean meat smoked over wood or charcoal or merely baked or broiled in an electric or gas oven. They call Smokey Joe's and he answers "Sir, I don't know any other way to cook barbecue" so they get directions.

This place isn't on one of the big streets like the Beacon and the Spartanburg location of Maurice's Piggy Park. A tourist won't happen upon it. But the food is good. The sauce is tomatoey-sweet and a nice accompaniment to the tender St. Louis-cut ribs and the sizzling hush puppies.

He had been a district sales manager with General Motors, a job he had promised himself he wouldn't keep for more than ten years. He'd been there nine years, eleven months, and fifteen days when he was fired. He opened up Smokey Joe's Bar-B-Q ("Delightfully Different") because of how bad he found the barbecue in his adopted state. "I will eventually become a Spartanburg tradition. People will forget that I'm from out of town. My feeling is, once these people taste REAL BARBECUE, this is going to be my town."

In the end we find he has tricked us. There is no conventional pit, only an electric cooker with a strip of pecan wood, the electricity for heat, the wood for flavor. Somehow he has made it work.

----------------

Now this shows that not knowing in advance that the meat was cooked in an electric cooker their minds were open and they found the food good, and by this time they had eaten a lot of BBQ. Plus, the owner refers to this as REAL BARBECUE.

In another excerpt from the book, they talk about McCabe's Bar-B-Q in Manning, SC. They talk with the owner.

"Time, wood, temperature, and seasoning," he tells us as if this were itself the recipe. The conversation ends on a chilling note. "I think you're seeing the last of the Mohicans," he says. "We're doing it the hard way and there are probably more easy ways to do it. In the long haul I think you're eventually going to see everybody going to gas or electric. If I'm around by then, we might even be forced to do that here."

-------------------

I, for one, find that very sad.

Garry Howard, Cambridge, MA
[email removed]
Garry's Home Cookin' Website
http://members.aol.com/garhow/cooking.htm

Eat first, ask questions later!

From [email removed] Wed Sep 25 13:17 EDT 1996
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Now *THIS* is what this list is all about!!!

Bill

>When my son and I became interested in barbeque we combined business
>trips with research into the more noted barbeque joints. Many
>establishments were mentioned in a number of books and periodicals and
>we mapped out those located within a reasonable distance of our business
>routes. As we made our way to our destination we would try to eat at as
>many barbeque joints as possable to "learn about real Q".
>     Most joints we visited were very friendly and freely discussed their
>cooking methods and were quick to give a guided tour of their pits.
>Don't ask for a recipie, cause I doubt you'd get one and the request
>itself could shorten the tour! There is much to learn by watching and
>listening to those recognized as the leaders in the industry. It is also
>very educational to see the various types of pits and cooking
>methodology used to produce excellent Q. Each pit master has developed a
>technique of his own that distinguishes him from the others. All were
>worthy of their reputations even though there was a good deal of
>variation on a common theme. All the joints used all wood cooking. Kind
>of like a lot of competitions that require all wood. I don't make the
>rules, It's just the way I learned.
>     One of the trips we made was to Atlanta. While there, we naturally
>tried to eat barbeque as often as possable. We don't get the opprutunity
>to eat barbeque out too often back home. We're from Maine! We ate at
>Harold's and found the barbeque to be up to their reputation. The next
>day, however we tried a joint called Melear's in nearby Fayettville.
>GOD, it was to die for! Both the pork sandwich and the Brunswick Stew
>was the best we had ever had.
>     The sandwich was made on slices of soft white bread ( something I'm not
>partial to) piled with teriffic smoked pork, then toasted. The result
>was a crunchy outer skin of bread, with a chewey soft inside topped by
>the finest barbequed pork I have ever had. Orgasmic would be an
>understatement.
>     The Brunswick stew was cooked in a giagantic cast iorn cauldron over an
>open fire and had the touch of smoke from being cooked that way. It was
>hard to decide which you wanted more, another pork sandwich or another
>bowl of stew. We made it easy and had both.
>     If ever you find yourself in the Atlanta area, do make the effort to
>visit Fayettville and enjoy some Q at Melears. You won't regret it!
>     Do any of you have any experiences you could share with the rest of us
>regarding barbeque? Some favorite place you've stumbled onto that we may
>try to find someday. I'd love to hear about it and put it on my barbeque
>map.
>                                         Smoky
>
>--
>It's not the hobbies in your life... It's the life in your hobbies...
>Living steam models: Smoky Hollow Products, 207 799-0570.
>http://www.cris.com/~Cfmitch

Save the Skeets!!

From [email removed] Thu Sep 26 10:28 EDT 1996
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John M. wrote:
>
> When my son and I became interested in barbeque we combined business
> trips with research into the more noted barbeque joints. Many
> establishments were mentioned in a number of books and periodicals and
> we mapped out those located within a reasonable distance of our business
> routes. As we made our way to our destination we would try to eat at as
> many barbeque joints as possable to "learn about real Q".
        Do any of you have any experiences you could share with the rest
of us
> regarding barbeque? Some favorite place you've stumbled onto that we may
> try to find someday. I'd love to hear about it and put it on my barbeque
> map.
>                                                         Smoky
>
> --
> It's not the hobbies in your life... It's the life in your hobbies...
> Living steam models: Smoky Hollow Products, 207 799-0570.
> http://www.cris.com/~Cfmitch

Hi Smoky;

If you like pork & you can stand the heat I can suggest a place that just might send you to heaven.

When in the Columbus Georgia area skip across the river to Phenix City Alabama (virtually the same town divided by the state line) Look for a place called "Chicken Comer's" I used to drive 500 miles from North Carolina just for a plate of this Q.  It is unlike any other Q I have ever experienced  ( and like you I was a contractor for 13 years and ate Q at every BBQ place I saw nationwide)  The Q is all pork butt cooked over wood but the kicker is their sauce.  It has a mustard/vinegar base and is hot as blazes. they serve it cut into chunks on a paper plate and drowned in the sauce. along with it you will get several slices of the white loaf bread you don't care for.  You use the bread to sop up the sauce... MMMMMMM Last time I was there I damn near ate the plate. The place started out as a small hole in the wall run by an elderly black gentleman who was called yuo guessed it "Chicken Comer" I don't know why,  never served anything but pork butts in my 30 years of eating it.

If I could, I would drive from here in Oregon tommorrow for a 1 lb. plate...

Anyway, if any of you are in the area, try it and let me know what you think.

As always

Ray the N.C. Q Nut  (& chicken comers 8-, )
Enjoy

From [email removed] Sat Sep 28 23:07 EDT 1996
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At 04:56 PM 9/28/96 -0700, Brad B. and Sherry B. wrote:
>We used som e wild cherry and grape last week (for the chiefs game) and
>they came out great!  Great ribs, great team...

  A KC resident, huh?  I lived there in the mid to late '60s.  Made many
trips to Arthur's.  In fact, on the way to the restaurant for the first time, I was hungry and said boldly that I wanted *two* sandwiches. Of course, after seeing the massive sandiwches that he served, I changed my mind.  For years to come, whenever my late dad wanted to rib me about something he would say 'I want two, I want two.'

  My parents moved back in 1980.  My visits always included a trip to
Arthur's.  On one visit, my mother, father, ex-wife and I ordered one sandwich each, got extra slices of white bread for second sandwiches made by taking some of the huge pile of meat from the first sandwich, and went home with over 1 lb of left-over meat from the whole thing. One thing you can't say about Arthur's is that they're stingy.

  One thing I regret is never having eaten at Gate's (I think that's
the name).  My father thought, for some reason, that they were second-rate.

  I sure would love a real bottle of Arthur's sauce (not the stuff
at the supermarket).  When we went there in the '60s, he sold it in recycled Ripple bottles that he gave the neighborhood winos a few pennies for.  By the time I got back years later, I guess the health dept had caught on.

Rick

+-------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Richard Thead           | Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate    |
| S/W Eng. Specialist     | things                      -- Dan Quayle   |
+-------------------------+---------------------------------------------+

I never understood what was so great about Dixie's either; try 3 Pigs if you're in Bellevue.

 In Issaquah I can highly recommend Sherm's on the Issaquah plateau. Easy
 directions...
 I-90 to East Lake Sammamish, No on East Lake Sammamish, go right  at the
 first light after the boat launch. This turns into 228th. Sherm's is set
 back from the street just after QFC, behind the Golden Wok  restaurant. He
 has three styles of sauce, mild, normal and hot. His wife makes home made
 pies. I highly recommend the chocolate pecan and sweet potato pies.

 johnjay wrote in article
 ...
 > So can you recommend any rib places on the
 > eastside, in Bellevue, Kirkland, Bothell,
 > Redmond, Woodinville or Issaquah?
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >