![]() ![]() I’m partial to KC sauce and Sugarfire’s is a good contender. Sugarfire covers all geographic regions with its sauce styles, each made in-house, excluding ketchup and mustard. Maybe some smoky barbecue sauce would help. Not when eating in the restaurant, not at home with takeout. Sugarfire uses hickory and cherry logs in its smokers – you can smell the smoke, you leave smelling like it – but I tasted none of it. So, no, it wasn’t the meat I found disappointing. Is that onion powder? Paprika? Some cayenne? Brown sugar? The kitchen won’t tell, but you can buy a jar to take home. It’s enough to eat them as is, dry-rubbed with a sweet, salty, pepper mixture. And the baby-back pork ribs had a beautiful mahogany hue on the outside, a vivid pink tint inside and that toothsome chew that makes gnawing ribs such a primal delight. It was tender, with a meaty texture and deep, beefy flavor. The brisket was dry-rubbed, smoked all night and cut thicker than normal by hand. On subsequent visits, when both were plentiful, I was still disappointed. ![]() Looking forward to brisket and ribs on my first visit – the two items by which every barbecue place is judged – I found none. Like other small, local ’cue joints, Sugarfire makes only so much, and when it’s gone, it’s gone for the day. Everything but the sides is served on butcher-paper-lined jellyroll pans.Īnother lesson: Be prepared for disappointment. At the cash register, there is beer – craft and otherwise – wine and boozy milkshakes. Here, the focus is on pork, grass-fed beef and sausage. While there are several smoked turkey offerings, there is no chicken (except as a special sometimes). Once in the queue, there are sandwiches, plates, sides and meat by the ounce and pound to choose from. The door on the right lands you smack in the middle of the dining room, looking foolish as you “excuse me, pardon me” your way to the back of the cafeteria-style line. Lesson learned: Enter through the left door, the one that leads down the hallway toward the ordering area and the soda fountain (which dispenses only Excel-brand, real sugar sodas made in Breese, Ill.). Housed in a modern strip mall on Olive Boulevard, just west of I-170, Sugarfire shoots for the rustic roadhouse look: dark-stained walls with inlaid squares of pressed tin, heavy plank tables and chairs, multicolored retro metal lawn chairs, and galvanized steel pendants.īut first, you have to get inside. Louis has witnessed a surge in barbecue eateries.Īt least 10 barbecue restaurants have opened in just the past 18 months, including Sugarfire Smoke House, the latest venture by restaurateur Mike Johnson (Cyrano’s, Boogaloo, Roxane, Fu Manchu and a few more) and his partners, Charlie and Carolyn Downs of Cyrano’s fame. Just as we’ve recently seen an explosion of local breweries, St. And in the past five years, Pappy’s (with its Super Smokers lineage) and later Bogart’s (a Pappy’s spinoff) have set a new standard. Roughly 15 years ago, Super Smokers, Bandana’s, and 17th Street Bar and Grill changed all that. And what the hell was a pork steak? Kansas City was World Series barbecue St. ![]() Most distressing were the ribs, which were more often than not stewed so long in oceans of sauce as to render the bones soft and the meat sagging like a bad facelift. Louis’ was thinner, more like tangy, watery ketchup. ![]() Where was the deep hickory smoke flavor? Where were the crispy, charred nuggets of well-marbled brisket we in Kansas City called burnt ends? While Kansas City sauce was a brass band of sweet, spicy, smoky, tomato-y flavors thickened with molasses and painted on meat in layers, St. For years when people asked me who had the best ribs, the most piquant sauce or the tender-est brisket in town, their questions were met with a raised eyebrow and a smug “I grew up in Kansas City.” And for years, that was all that needed to be said on the matter. ![]()
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