Folks, So there we were earlier tonight up north of Raleigh, and on a whim stopped for dinner at Red Hot and Blue, a restaurant that purports to serve Memphis Style barbecue. Neither Daisy nor I were particularly hungry, so we both ordered a small portion of the "wet" ribs with 2 sides and a cube of onion rings. Short story: The onion rings were good, the collards I got instead of fries were good. Everything else was essentially tasteless. I do a lot of home smoking, and I'd love to know how it's possible to supposedly smoke a rack of pork ribs and impart absolutely no smoke taste whatsoever to the meat. For that matter, I can't fixture out how they got the texture into the meat, either -- a sort of hard, over-boiled pork texture. It's almost as if they boiled the pork, froze it, painted it with pink food coloring, warmed it up on an electric grill to make a crust and then poured a somewhat vinegary barbecue sauce over it. I've had prefrozen rewarmed turkey wings at Renaissance Faires that had much the same texture. Now, I'm not a Memphis barbecue guru, but not a barbecue virgin, either. I've eaten at Neely's and Corky's in Memphis, and what I remember about the barbecue I ate there is dramatically unlike the tasteless fiber I consumed earlier tonight. The overly perky waitress didn't help the situation all that much. I think she finally figured out that Daisy and I would rather talk to each other than to her, but it took half the meal to sink in. Anyway, we won't be going back to Red Hot and Blue. It definitely is not to our taste. On future Friday nights, we'll stick with the Oakwood Cafe. Regards, John Kinney
Raleigh-Durham, NC