I'm getting my Bob on with a Barbecue review, but #1 Son suggested it, and it was our favorite BBQ joint when we lived in Maryland. Since we're rolling through on a road trip, we hit it for dinner. The first thing you'll notice is that this violates the First Law of good BBQ: it's not served to you in a building that's already been condemned. Red Hot & Blue is in a nice brick building on Main street in Laurel.
Inside is quite nice, with an enormous amount of Blues paraphernalia taking up pretty much each square inch of wall space. Some of the posters offer up some tasty nostalgia:
But de gustibus, right? I had the pulled pork sandwich, with cole slaw and hush puppies. The sandwich was decent enough, although a bit dry. The squeeze bottle of BBQ sauce was not your run of the mill sauce, and had enough of a spicy bite to stand out from the crowd. The hush puppies seemed entirely uniform, so they were probably not hand made. Oniony and deep fried got the thumbs up from #1 Son, though.
We had a good waitress, attentive but not hovering over us, keeping our iced tea/lemonade drinks topped off. The staff really bustles there, and the food comes quickly.
All in all, a decent dinner, although a bit pricy when compared to BBQ joints outside the Metro area. Using Bob's scale, I'd rate it 3 out of 5:
average; reasonably good food, moderate effort by staff/management. We'll eat there again if we happen to be in the area and craving BBQ, but have no reason to make a special trip for it.Interestingly, this was our favorite BBQ joint back in the mid-90's. In our wanderings since then, we've run across better BBQ. But if you're in Laurel MD and have the hankering for some Q, this will fill the bill nicely.
5 comments:
Good review, thanks for the tribute. We didn't go on a BBQ run today, it's just too miserably hot, it's actually supposed to hit triple digits in temperature, with typically high Southern humidity. Sara's brother actually passed out here at the condo swimming pool from heat exhaustion.
I don't remember hearing of the place when I was in that area for a period in the mid-'80's.
The favorite place for my group of friends was the Olney Ale House, east of Olney on 108, across from the summer theater. Did you ever make it over there?
The thermometer read "100" as we drove past Charlotte, Bob. I was wondering how you were holding up.
Hat Trick, it didn't open until the late '80s - 1988, IIRC. And Olney Ale House is awesome (well, it was back then). That's where I had my bachelor party.
Our fave BBQ joint in college served hushed puppies, instead of pre-dinner rolls.
With little dishes of butter for dipping.
BUTTER. FRIED DOUGH. DIPPING.
Yeah :)
Heh. Ran into John Lee a few times at bars and clubs around here - he lived in Redwood City off the Alameda de las Pulgas since the early 80's, and would sometimes just show up someplace and sit-in and play.
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