American Glory
342 Warren Street
Hudson, NY 12534
(518) 822-1234

Thanks to a recent search on Facebook for other Q joints, I came across a new place in Hudson, NY (about 2 hours from the Hut HQ). Located in the old H. Rogers Hose Company firehouse, American Glory BBQ did an amazing job at a restoration that keeps a firehouse feel while hitting the right Q joint notes. Dark wood, a nice big bar with the coldest beer EVAH – seriously the ice on the taps is wild – & a good mix of rock, blues & country on the sound system.

We settled in at the bar & were pleased to find a nice array of microbrews on tap. Got a pint or two – forgot what we ended up drinking – & looked the menu over. As is usual when we hit a new joint, we went to a sampler platter. On the meat list, they offer pulled pork, beef brisket, St. Louis ribs, spare ribs, turkey drumstick & Texas Hash – a combo of chopped beef & pork simmered in a house sloppy joe sauce. Sides include the usual beans, mac & cheese, collard greens & slaw but add in usual items (at least for a joint in upstate NY) like pickled red cabbage & mushrooms with cherry peppers.

We went with a three meat/two sides sampler for $20. Choose pulled pork, beef brisket & Texas Hash. For sides, we went with mac & cheese & pickled red cabbage. You definitely get enough of each meat & side for two to share. Of the three meat choices – my vote goes to the Texas Hash. A great blend of pork & beef, the shred on both meats made them extremely tender. The house sloppy joe sauce had a nice kick with a touch of smokiness. Unfortunately, we were a little less impressed with the brisket & pork.

The brisket – while tender & moist – lacked a discernible smoke ring or any real smoky flavor. It had a nice roast beef flavor but not much of a “brisket” flavor. The pork also lacked any real smoke & was more sliced into long chunks – & not really chopped – than “pulled”. Again, a good moistness & nice roast pork flavor but not really my style of Q.

The positive side to both the pork & brisket is it came un-sauced. Definitely a thumbs up for that! My biggest pet peeve with Q joints are those who serve me pre-sauced meat. Always makes me wonder what they are hiding. The mac & cheese was nice enough – good creamy texture. The side winner was definitely the pickled red cabbage. Great tangy sweet pickling dressing, the cabbage was tender but still had a bit of crunch. Makes me want to look into something like this for the Hut.

While having our sampler, we noticed the couple next ot us having the smoked turkey drumstick. Think obscene Renaissance Fair turkey leg then take that up a bit & you get the idea. Again – has me thinking about a special some weekend in November/December.

All in all, I’d have to say I dug American Glory BBQ. They are working a bit of a different style of Q than mine – & that’s perfectly fine. I really dug 1/2 of what I ordered & am curious to return for more of their menu. In addition to the Q selection, they also do some fish (catfish, salmon & shrimp) as well as steaks & burgers. As with most Q joints these days – they have a small vegetarian selection. Worth the trip if only for the ice cold beer & the Texas Hash.

Porchetta
110 East 7th St
New York, NY 10009
(212) 777-2161

Thank you David Lebovitz.

On the first morning of Meat Coma 2010 in NYC (our food tour for Cha Cha Hut research), Cherie was reading her feeds & came across a post on David Lebovitz’s blog about Porchetta. The description & photos of the pork roasts looked too good to pass up. We made the decision to start the day with lunch there. It would ultimately set the tone for an “all pork but not pork BBQ” day.

If there is one rule I believe in strongly – especially when it comes to restaurants – it would be:

Do one thing & do it very well.

Lebovitz echoed the sentiment in his article about Porchetta. I have rarely had a decent meal in a place where the cook believes they can do Italian, Indian, Asian & American Bistro & do them all well. Inevitably, everything is either a sort of LCD mish mash completely unforgettable or worse – just dreadful. Focus on one core cuisine & make those dishes over & over. I remember reading a quote from a pitmaster (forgot who) claiming his father always said: “You never really know how to cook something until you’ve done it 100 times.” I certainly believe this is true.

Porchetta does one thing & does it incredibly well! It’s roast pork wrapped in pork fat for a crispy skin & seasoned with fennel, thyme, rosemary, salt & pepper. Slow roasted then displayed in a case in the front of the very tiny store front. A few stools & an small outside bench are the only seats.

The pork is sliced to order for either a sandwich on a crusty roll or for pork plate. Sides include sauteed greens or roast potatoes with pork burnt ends. Drinks are natural sodas from Boylan’s & Fresh Ginger Ale .

We went for two sandwiches, an order of potatoes & a couple of Fresh Ginger Ales. The pork was amazing. So tender & moist with a crispy candy skin. Cherie thought the skin was a bit too crisp – which was fine with me as that meant I got hers. A wonderful ciabatta style roll complimented the pork nicely. No sauce or dressing needed on this. The herbs used for cooking are all the seasoning needed.

I would never think to order roasted potatoes at lunch, but these work SO well with the pork it would have been a shame to miss them. Perfect roast – great seasoning – but it is the burnt pork bits that REALLY kill here. So wonderful! If you’re in NYC you must head to Porchetta for lunch. Get there early as they have the tendency to get busy & run out of pork. As it should be when doing one thing well & keeping it fresh.

So now I’m thinking – can we do a smoked porchetta at the Hut?

City Bakery
3 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011-4610
(212) 366-1414

A bakery on a BBQ tour? What’s up with that?

Well – first it was more of a Food Tour in NYC with an emphasis on BBQ. Second – City Bakery is too incredible not to hit while in NYC. Finally – I got a baked treat with pork!

We were looking for a sugar hit to help counter act the impending meat coma of Hill Country & Hog Pit so we headed over to City Bakery. We figured a baked treat & some ice tea would help us get through the evening & meet friends later at Swift.

We both choose the Sangria – a non-alcoholic fruit infused hibiscus ice tea. Very nice – sweet without being cloy & a touch of sour. Pieces of fruit in the cup were a nice treat after finishing.

For a baked good, I HAD to go with the Maple Bacon Biscuit. More scone than biscuit, it was okay but not the pork delight I had hoped for. Good maple flavor but lacking in any real bacon presence. I sort of wish I had gone for the chocolate chip cookie Cherie had.

The Hog Pit Barbecue
37 W. 26th St.
New York, NY 10010
(212) 213-4871

Stumbling out of Hill Country in a meat coma induced haze & back into the sweltering NYC August heat – I looked across the street to see the banner for Hog Pit Barbecue. This joint was originally in the Meatpacking a couple blocks over from Hogs & Heifers . Three years ago, it replaced by a somewhat over hyped burger place Bill’s Bar & Burger. I had figured – like many places in the old Meatpacking district – I had missed my opportunity to visit the Hog Pit for their Q.

So – though completely packed from a Hill Country feast – I convinced Cherie to drop into Hog Pit for a beer. My reasoning was we had not drank at Hill Country (so we would not be drinking like lushes) & it would give us a chance to digest our feast before walking in the heat. I don;t think she needed much convincing beyond “beer”.

Hog Pit is basically a Southern bar in NYC. Plain decoration in a not quite dive-y but could topple that way in minute style. The menu is a mix of Southern comfort food & BBQ. Beer selection is pretty much the generic mix of Bud Miller Coors (BMC) & a couple “imports” (like Guinness & Labatt Blue). Country & classic rock on the sound system.

I mentioned to the bartender I was glad to see they had not gone out of business, but was surprised to see they opened across from Hill Country. She said she had never been there but a lot of their staff come over to drink after their shifts.

“Is it good?” she asks.
“Best in NY State.” I reply.

She’s surprised & this does not bode well for the Q at Hog Pit. Generally I feel the best Q joints have employees who care & know about Q. Then again – perhaps she knew a encyclopedia worth of where to drink cheap in NYC. I did not ask.

After looking the menu over for a bit & deciding we should eat SOME Q here as that was the point of the trip (to sample as much NYC BBQ as possible), we chose to share the pulled pork slider appetizer. We felt we could manage one slider each & not completely pass out from Meat O.D.

The sliders come two to a serving on traditional slider buns, unsauced & served with a bowl of house sauce. If this pork has ever seen the inside of a smoker, I’ll eat my Backwoods Fatboy. Absolutely no smokiness or bark to be found. The pull – or more accurately shred – was a bit too fine for my taste but at least did not devolve into pork foam. The taste was pretty nice for roasted & shredded pork with a bit of a stocky flavor. I think they might be heating & holding in pork or chicken stock (or a combo of both). The house sauce was a thick rich ketchup sauce with a nice spicy kick. It worked nicely to punch up the pork.

Definitely not bad sliders though I’m not too sure I’d call them “BBQ” or “pulled pork.” Definitely makes me wonder what their “BBQ’s beef brisket” is like – especially considering their proximity to Hill Country. I’d call this more “Bar BBQ” than ” real BBQ” – something vaguely in the Q realm to eat while drinking – & there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

Hill Country Texas Barbecue Market
30 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10010-2062
(212) 255-4544

This is my church
This is where I heal my hurts
For tonight
God is a Pitmaster

(with apologies to my friends in the dance music community & Faithless)

Hill Country is my church.

It is – in my opinion – the single best BBQ joint in all of New York State. No use debating with me. I’m a zealot – a fanatic – one of the truly devoted. I feel guilty if I go to NYC without making the pilgrimage. I aspire to be 1/10 the BBQ cook this place is.

The reason for my zealotry?

Brisket

Not just any brisket – but the BEST brisket anywhere in New York State. What the Hill Country pitmasters do with a whole brisket, kosher salt, Butcher Block Black Pepper, cayenne & slow smoking proves there is something divine in the universe.

(Yes – I know this is all a bit twee & gushy – but damn is this GREAT brisket!)

We chose to make Hill Country our first stop on the 2010 NYC Food Tour (what we would later rename Meat Coma 2010) & that was both a good & bad thing. Good because we did not have to spend hours or days waiting for our chance to pray to the Gods of Brisket. Bad because we realized we might have been starting the tour with no where to go but down. Luckily, we did discover other great meals while on the tour.

Though nothing came close to the brilliance of Hill Country. This is a market style joint. You get a meal ticket at the door & order everything by the pound. We chose to completely skip the sides – Cherie made a pass for research but saw nothing interesting – & stick with a pure meat orgy. Straight to the meat counter for:

1/2 lb moist brisket
(from the deckle or point end of the brisket. This is the yummy fatty part. It’s our preferred cut.)

1/3 lb lean brisket
(from the brisket flat)

a bit of brisket burnt end
(the crispy first cut from each end of a whole brisket Our carver gave us the end from the point. MMMMMMM)

1 regular Kreuz sausage
(shipped in from Texas)

1 beef back rib
(plus the carver gave us one of the end bones to “gnaw on”)

All together I’d say we picked up about 2 pounds of meat. Plus – we were given about 1/2 a loaf of white bread. Made our way to a table & got a lemonade & ice tea & got ready to worship…

OH MAN OH MAN OH MAN…

Truly I started weeping a bit about this brisket. I want MY brisket to be this amazingly tender, moist & full of flavor. Three ingredients in the rub, great beef & perfect smoking come together in way I never thought possible. Cherie sums it up nicely (if not a bit insultingly after 23 years of marriage) with “This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.” I definitely prefer the moist brisket here. Wonderful juicy fatty goodness. Always remember this: FAT IS FLAVOR! The lean was also delicious, but I still wish we had gotten more moist.

The Kreuz sausage is a classic example of smoked sausage. Great smoky beefy flavor with a snappy skin & good spice. The beef rib had a great crust & juicy meat but ultimately suffered the same problem every back & spare rib does for me. It’s a rib. I just do not get the rib obsession. (Now short ribs are something I completely understand!) Cherie pretty much left the rib to me in exchange for more of the moist brisket for her.

One thing to note – eating like this at Hill Country is not cheap. Moist brisket runs $22.25 per pound. Lean is $19.75. A 1/2 pound sausage will set you back $6. It can all add up quite quickly especially as the euphoria of food this good seizes you.

The way I look at it is it is MUCH cheaper than a trip to Texas…