SCORE

i've been on a mission this week to find a good barbecue restaurant on the peninsula. i had three failures in a row and then googled for barbecue restaurants in my area. today we went to Mack's and it took the prize, hands down. But not without flaws. Details follow!

Sunday: Windy City Pizza and BBQ. They get lots of bonus points for being walking distance from my house, not that i've ever walked there. the Q is plenty smokey, the sauce is serviceable but not exciting. the meat is overdone and falls sloppily off the bone. the ribs are advertised as st. louis style, but since i have gone to the trouble of edumacating myself on barbecue, i happen to know that Windy City's ribs are not remotely st. louis style. Their greens are flavorful but other sides are nothing special. They get an 8/10, largely because of their proximity and their kickass deep dish pizza.

Monday: Rib Shack. Formerly Jimmy's Rib Shack but Jimmy sold it. I want to like this place. The new owners are super friendly, and very excited about running their restaurant. Unfortunately, their Q is just not that good. The sauces are good, not great. There are three different sauces, and that's good. Their meats, though, are where things fall down -- and if the meat's not great, what kinda BBQ place is it? The meat is clearly not smoked, grilled, or slow cooked. It's tough and listless, dried out and chewey. Now I like that texture sometimes, but it's really not appealing when I'm looking for something on par with what I can make myself. I give them a 5/10. Sides aren't great, meat tastes boiled and oven baked, sauce is okay. As much as I like the owners, I won't be going back -- I've given them too many chances. The meat is presented poorly -- random cuts of various parts haphazardly stacked on a plate. That's fine and that can be part of your panache, but when the plate is supposed to include pork ribs, and all we get are the triangle end of a rack of spareribs, not even cut up, it's pretty lame.

Tuesday: Back-a-Yard. One of the best restaurants in the state, IMHO. Their jerk chicken is some of the best food I've ever had. Corn festivals are amazingly great. The people are good. But I had the ribs, not the jerk. I've been there dozens of times and never had the ribs. They were okay. Well trimmed and attractive, they were not smoked. They had strong grilled flavor, and bore grill marks. The texture was just right, despite a clear lack of slow cooking. The sauce was perfectly serviceable but not great. I enjoyed the ribs very much after the previous two places, and if I were in the mood for ribs but not barbecue, they'd be very good. Back-A-Yard gets an 11/10 as a restaurant, 8/10 for ribs, 7/10 for barbecued ribs. I will definitely be going back but I'll stick to the Jamaican food!

Wednesday: Mack's in San Carlos. I'd not heard of them until my internets search last night. I had high hopes, and though my hopes were not met, I was well satisfied. The ribs were clearly slow smoked. The texture was similar to how I've made ribs -- they tasted like the owners had planned for our arrival and timed the ribs to be done just as we walked in the door. No boiled texture, no chewy, gummy, crusty "cooked last week" feeling. They were cooked today, or they did a great job fooling me. Sadly, if there was smoke flavor, I missed it. There was a smoke ring to be sure, but it wasn't massive , and the flavor wasn't there. The texture said "slow cooked". The sauce was delicious! I prefer my ribs without sauce, and flavor them with rub and smoke, or rub and rub if I'm grilling. But I realize that most places in CA will be saucing their ribs, and so if they must be sauced, I'd hope for interesting sauce. This was interesting sauce, with creamyness, jalapeno flavor, and lots of great color and sweetness. The pulled pork (i ended up with a combo because of the confusing order of my compatriots) was good when doused with this sauce, but I suspect it would not stand up on its own, lacking a good smoke flavor. Still, its texture was good as well. The ribs had a very strong pork flavor, the porkiest of all the ribs, and included the tips, making for

Overall, the best place to get ribs is still my place. But if I'm in the mood for instant gratification, and can get over the lack of smoke, I'll head down to Mack's.

Because of the freshness of the Q at Mack's, I'm going to guess that some days it's smokey and some days it isn't. We'll see.