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We always thought Texas barbecue had to come from towns like
Luling or Cut-And-Shoot. Well, maybe those names were already taken. The El Paso Bar-B-Que
Co. has come to Tucson and is asking us to believe that Far-West
Texas can produce a sweet brand of barbecue to compete with the
South. After eating their fare, we believe it.
El Paso's barbecue isn't going to be everybody's nosh. If
you like the grease dripping, pucker-sauce Kansas City variety,
there are options in town. But if you yearn for syrupy, lean
Southern baby-backs jacked up with a peppery bite from El Paso's
sister city of Juarez, then the born-again Houlihan's on the
southeast corner of Craycroft and Broadway is your filling station.
From the pecan-smoked wings ($5.49) that hit your mouth like
a branding iron to the signature rib combos ($13.99 - $16.99),
this is a spicy spot with sauces on the table to make the Texas-sized
servings even hotter and sweeter.
The abundance of severs seem to be fueled and jump-started
on their own barbecue sauce. They scurry like gerbils to offer
hi-y'all, how-ya-doin' attention at the table.
In contrast, the restaurant interior is made up of somber
paneling and sequestered booths, decor that would fit into a
ranchers' club. And who could conceive of patio dining on the
buzz-saw edge of one of Tucson's busiest intersections? Some
genius of design has managed to give us a patio of innovative
modern art coupled with almost-museum quiet in which to enjoy
it.
The smoked meat roundup allowed us to combine smoked sausage
with beef ribs ($18.99). The pork rib combo ($16.99) pairs baby-backs
with "St. Louis style." |
The beef ribs are advertised as Texas-sized, and are, but
the length contains a lot of bone. Short ribs would have trimmed
the weight without reducing the payload. Both the baby-backs and the so-called St. Louis ribs exhibited
admirable leanness. They derived their flavor from a house seasoning,
which tilted toward the sweet side (accented with a flash of
chile). The lean smoked sausage was a surprise. Unless you doctor
it with barbecue sauce, it is mild.
Smoked prime rib ($16.99) or the smoked salmon with a barbecue
glaze ($14.99) could top an evening. Both proved that this kitchen
can move beyond formula output, which for good or ill pervades
many of the other offerings and side dishes. The prime rib arrived
exactly medium rare with a good texture and a succulence of taste.
Under its glaze of lemon pepper, barbecue spices and rosemary,
the brick-sized salmon came to the table with its top side almost
as dark as the paneling. But it was flaky, moist and white in
the center,
Those who relish quantity will enjoy the Texas cornbread pudding
with Jack Daniels sauce ($5.25) or the apple cobbler with a massive
topping of walnuts to take the place of crust ($8.25).
Service remains snappy if you stay within the program. Delay
in ordering drinks or pondering appetizers seems to skew the
schedule so that tea and water is not replenished and empty dishes
pile up. And if we read the code on our receipt correctly, we
were timed in and timed out. We have no idea what the restaurant
does with this empirical evidence, but you almost feel like lingering
over coffee makes you a part of somebody's margin of error.
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