Loading ...A Look At A Couple Of New BBQ Spots
Posted by Foobooz on May 7th, 2009
Unbreaded tells the story of how Bebe’s BBQ in the Italian Market came to be and how the signature Carolina-style pulled pork sandwich stacks up. [Unbreaded]
Mac and Cheese may be a vegetarian but at least she brings quality Southern roots to her look at Q BBQ & Tequila Bar. [Mac & Cheese]
1017 S 9th St, Philadelphia, PA
Related Tags: Bebe's Barbecue, Q BBQ & Tequila Bar
May 7th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
bebe’s is great! mark is a very nice, talkative guy, and they’re making a great start. i’ve been once and had the pulled pork platter. you get a good amount of food, and it’s cheaper than most area BBQ places. i went at about 3pm, and they had almost run out of everything, but the pulled pork was still very moist and flavorful.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
That sandwich loooks gooooooood. Seriously, I can’t keep down this salivating reaction.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I was born and raised in NC and I’m going to let you all in on something – even Mark at Bebe’s – in NC we chop our barbecue. This stringy “pulled” nonsense is miles away from authentic and it actually makes good pork worse. Strings of muscle fiber are tough. No matter what. They are tough. When you take tender meat and make it stringy you’ve ruined it. Chop it into chunks – they can be really fine or sorta big. That’s the way EVERY BBQ place in NC does it. NC Pulled pork is an ignorant yankee myth.
May 7th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Chop if you like, but once you cook it, it should just fall apart on it’s own, as seen on this video.
May 7th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
It should not disintegrate into stings as seen in the photo here. Sometimes it does but usually that’s at the places that chop it finely. Places that do a rougher chop serve distinct bite-sized pieces of meat with a small amount that falls apart. I can’t remember having anything that stringy looking anywhere in the state. It looks like that crap they eat in memphis.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
From Steve Raichlen, author of the Barbecue Bible (http://www.amazon.com/Barbecue-Bible-Over-500-Recipes/dp/1563058669)
Wearing heavy-duty rubber gloves if desired, pull off and discard any skin from the meat, then pull the pork into pieces, discarding any bones or fat. Using your fingertips or a fork, pull each piece of pork into shreds 1 to 2 inches long and 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide. This requires time and patience, but a human touch is needed to achieve the perfect texture. If patience isn’t one of your virtues, you can finely chop the pork with a cleaver (many respected North Carolina barbecue joints serve chopped ‘cue).
May 8th, 2009 at 10:01 am
seriously? all that tells me is steve raichlen is a philistine. I don’t need your books. I’ve participated in the preparation of whole hogs on 5 or 6 occasions. Go to NC, and try to peak into the kitchen of a BBQ place. If they’re preparing their pork there will most likely be someone with those black rubber gloves and two big cleavers hacking away at big chunks of meat that he’s pulled from the joint/carcass. He’s making chopped barbecue – NC style.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:40 am
T–your video didn’t work
JD–if you’ve never had tender enough pulled pork, i don’t know what to say.
i gotta say, the phrase “ignorant yankee myth” got a chuckle out of me.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Ralph’s is the only place in your state that I would ever stop.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Is it just me or do I see more chunk than string in the photo?
Would love to see JD and Mark have a verbal smackdown in the Italian market. It’s been a while since there’s been a good argument (nothing personal, just passionate disagreement on opinions) right there in the street. Last one I saw was around Xmas time in Esposito’s.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
My point is the strings of meat you find in good barbecue are a side-effect of hacking randomly at really tender meat not the result of a concerted effort on the cook’s part to shred the meat. I’ve never seen anyone manually shred pork. You take a chunk and hack away. It’s done that way at back yard pig-pickins and at restaurants. Some “strings” are to be expected but should be short because you’ve chopped the meat. Long strings of muscle fiber are tough no matter what. No one reading this has never eaten a 2″ long tender string of muscle fiber. That’s why cutting briskets/pastrami.corned beef across the grain is essential – to shorten the fibers. That’s why you don’t shred pork – you gotta shorten the fibers.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I will say I haven’t eaten at Bebe’s and I could be seeing more than is actually there. Part of it could be that I’m assuming it will be as horrible as everyone elses’ (for example Tommy Gunn’s pork tastes ok but is ultra stringy). (I’m a little crazy about it. The crap bbq up here will drive you to insanity if you know better) It could be really good and I’ll give it a try. I’m excited about their biscuits – that’s what we really need up here.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
JD–that’s one i can agree on: MORE GOOD BISCUITS!
May 8th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
JD, what do you think of Sweet Lucy’s in the northeast?
I’m hoping to try out Bebe’s next week; but I’m really attracted to the local vendor sourcing and the potential variety that could lead to.
Tommy Gunn’s (at least the short lived one on South St.) IMO was the worst example of BBQ in Philly, not against you choosing them as a bad example, they’re just that bad.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Alright…went to an expert for this one, since I have one in my back pocket, and I was in disbelief that someone would say pulled pork is a myth, and this is an excerpt of what I got back:
“Barbeque is not defined by the style in which it is served but how it is cooked. Barbeque is pulled, chopped, sliced and minced depending on the location and the whim of the cooker.
Pulled is best, by the way, because of the way the fat and sauce adheres to the fibers of the meat. Chopped is second best and is good for meat that is tough as it is minced; that is, chopped so fine that it appears “minced.” Pulled wins most of the contests and chopped is second. Sliced seldom wins a contest with trained judges, in fact, I’ve never seen a sliced barbeque take any of the top 5 places in a contest out of the thousands of entries I’ve seen. Since sliced is never the winner, and pulled is generally the winner then you can see why chopped, which is between a sliced and pulled, is “in between” in the winners circle as it generally is. Of course, “pulled” can be in such huge chunks that is is virtually indistinguishable from a course chop in which case it seldom wins a contest either.”