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microREVIEW: Mrs. Renfro's Ghost Pepper Salsa

This is the best, super-hot salsa on the market. It is fruity, spicy, and roasty. Many salsa and sauce manufacturers are willing to sacrifice flavor in the quest to make something as hot as possible. The products end up tasting like fiery-hot butt. This tastes like good salsa, just hotter than 95% of the population can handle. It is hot enough to trigger spontaneous nausea. A truly great product for the adventurous.

Mrs. Renfro's Ghost Pepper Salsa: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

QUICKVIEW: Ralph's Bull & Claw - +++

Ralp's Bull & Claw is your standard sort of local haunt with a massive menu. It's very Rhode Island, very local, and very good.

The location isn't the best place, but it's not bad, either. Ralph's is situated along Charles Street in North Providence, right along the Pawtucket line. It's north enough to not be in the increasingly bad areas farther south, but not north enough to be part of the more expensive locations into Lincoln. The atmosphere and clientele is precisely what one would expect from the location: a sitcom cliche. I was sat next to a group of people that seemed like family members from the movie Moonstruck.

The interior is nice enough. Standard family restaurant designs. The building is much larger than the small frontage indicates. There's lots of natural light. Essentially, nothing about which I could complain.

Service was a bit slow since they were busy for reasons that I will explain. Our waiter was friendly, attentive, and at ease in her job.

The food was very good. Frequently, local haunts have a tendency to serve bland food. I think that it's just a side effect of running a business that isn't interested in delivering gourmet experimentation, and is instead focused on delivering good food to people that simply want good food.

And that's the important thing. Everything was good. The dinner bread is one of the best presentations that I've ever seen: two, big boules of Italian bread, freshly baked. No pretensiousness. No nothing. Just good bread with butter on the side. They say, and by they I mean Janeane Garofalo's character from the film Ratatouille, that you can tell good bread by its sound. Well this bread sounded great. Many gourmet restaurants would do well to take a page from this no-nonsense approach. Don't give me weird breads filled with nuts and currants. Or some strange, house-made sourdough. Just give me bread, baked, with butter.

The soup was loaded with vegetables and pasta, and had good punch to it. Not in the slightest bit bland. The baked stuffed sole was super-sweet and a table favorite, but it was a bit overwhelmed by its butter sauce. I would have liked a much lighter drizzle. The seafood casserole was well-balanced, without being swamped in stuffing, cheese, or sauce as many places do. And the gorgonzola sauce on top of a steak was mellow and not too pungent.

There were a few things to pick on. The steak wasn't the best cut, but it was still good, flavorful, and well-prepared. The vegetable wasn't much of one, simply being some steamed kale and olives next to mashed potatoes. But these things, insofar as being negative, aren't much worthy of note. Especially when you consider their ace in the hole: half-price Sundays.

Every second and last Sunday of the month, everything on the menu, and I mean everything, is half priced. A $30 steak drops to $15. My baked stuffed sole was only $9. Gorgonzola steak: $11. When you think about the mark-up generally required to keep a restaurant churning, they're probably reducing their price down to around, or maybe even below, the break-even point, so it's a good attention-getter for them, while costing only a little.

Now you understand why service was a bit slow. The dining room wasn't swamped, but I'm sure that they handle waves of people coming in throughout the day, which does much to diminish pre-prepared supplies.

This promotion makes Ralph's perhaps the single best deal in all of Rhode Island. I don't consider that an exaggeration. I can't think of any other restaurants with prices like this for a menu like this. Good for great prices is, in my mind, better than great food for good prices.

With a menu for everyone, the best deal in Rhode Island, a friendly personality, and good service, Ralph's is the kind of place that I would default to when I don't know what else to get. There are few restaurants that I would describe as an excellent place to bring the family, but Ralph's is one of them. Now all I have to do is find a family.

Ralph's Bull & Claw: +++

1027 Charles Street
North Providence, RI 02904
401-722-2624


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QUICKVIEW: LJ'S Barbeque- +++/$$

Barbeque: the only truly American form of cooking.

I'm not joking. Barbeque is the only form of cooking unique to the New World. It's believed to have originated in the Carribean islands and then migrated out onto the mainland, and eventually into the culture of European explorers and, ultimately, people in Rhode Island.

And speaking of Rhode Island, we have a surprisingly robust selection of BBQ considering our distance from the food's genesis. Along with the subject of this article, we have Wes's Rib House, Smokey Bones, Rick's Roadhouse, Ribs & Company, and the various bbq-ish options at the various chains restaurants.

I had previously been completely satisfied going to Smokey Bones whenever the urge for ribs and pulled pork struck me, but after its recent purchase and transformation into a "fire grille," the mind-numbingly overt sexism has soured me to the place. Women are used exclusively as decoration and they all but declare that men are beer-swilling, sports and sex-obsessed, humanoid buffalo. Oh yes. I love being made to feel like a cro-magnon when eating my ribs.

Smokey Bones' homepage currently features a "hot babe" serving beer. If you click on their "About Us" section, you have another hot babe serving beer. Look!

The Smokey Bones Home Page. Yes. Please. Take a look around at all of our beer and breasts.

The About Us page that says everything about them that matters.

Let's break down and analyze their About Us page.

At Smokey Bones, we specialize in three things: good food, good drinks and good times.

That's it? As a restaurant, you should specialize in a few more things than just that. Like organization and operation, cleaning, refrigeration, and other such important things for running a place that serves food. And also, what is this? Cheers?

We are a bar and fire grill, but not necessarily in that order.

Oh good! I was worried for a moment. This "fire grille" garbage has been positively shoe-horned into everything they make, as though the marketing guys think that by taking a stupid idea and simply making it omnipresent somehow negates its stupidity.

We are grill masters who respect the power of the open flame. We like simple, yet flavorful recipes and believe marinating is not to be taken lightly. We know medium-rare isn’t the only way to cook a steak, but believe it should be.

This is completely acceptable marketing speak.

We believe pork should be slow smoked and pulled often.

I think this may be a masturbation reference.

Slow, as in 11 hours over hickory logs every night, and often, as in every day at every restaurant.

This is an excellent sentence. It makes me want to visit the restaurant.

We know it’s our bartenders that make our drinks great, not the liquor. Although the liquor doesn’t hurt. We think beer should be ice cold and consumed regularly.

Because obviously, the more attractive the woman, the better the beer from the tap. And doesn't Smokey Bones think that encouraging alcoholism is a bad idea?

We know our servers bring much more than food to the table.

Indeed. They also bring boobs. I'm not kidding. I cannot think of a single restaurant where a greater percentage of the servers are female aside from Hooters.

We are big fans of sports, loud music and surprises.

Why in the bloody blue fuck would I want surprises at a restaurant? I want food as expected. If I order a burger, and get a bowl of fruit, I'll damn well be surprised. I'll also be angry.

And we believe in laughing often, especially at ourselves.

This is good, because you are laughable.

You can understand why the atmosphere has become intolerable over time.

So it was with great relief that I found LJ's to have the air of a local joint, populated by locals from the surrounding neighborhoods, without any insultingly stupid marketing statement defining the restaurant's character. Do you know what's on LJ's website? Pictures of food. How novel.

The interior is simple. The place settings are utilitarian, with whole rolls of rough paper towels at every table. They provide squeeze bottles with house-made BBQ sauce, and a wider variety of hot sauces than is likely necessary. The closest thing that I can think of as a competitor is The Oak Hill Tavern in South County.

The wait staff was friendly and decently fast. The menu is very large and priced well. They offer a prix fixe option for $20 that includes an appetizer, two sides, corn bread, dessert, and a beer. Platters are usually in the $10-$20 range and offer an enormous amount of food for little money. Even if the food was merely adequate, LJ's would be a good deal.

And the food is much more than adequate. This is the real deal. This is not the crap "BBQ" that you get at places like Chile's. Their babyback ribs were just fatty enough and just firm enough to provide some satisfaction in biting while still falling off the bone. Their spice rub is muted and austere, perhaps a bit too, but when combined with a light drizzle of their sweet house cause becomes an excellent representation of the meal. Their pulled pork is on the fatty side, but is soft and flavorful as a result. And holy crap, do they give you a lot of pulled pork. Two mounds of it took up over half of the plate. You will consume a significant percentage of a pig with this meal. And again, all of these choices come with two sides and cornbread for the price.

Their platters represent a small portion of the menu, though. They have sandwiches, burgers, grilled pizza, and soups/salads. Their burgers were a good representation of the difference between this place and other restaurants and the subtle value that is available. At Smokey Bones, they have long since ditched providing a side with their burgers. They still aren't a bad deal, mind you, but this is what I mean when I talk about the fundamental difference between a local restaurant and a chain. At Smokey Bones, with dozens of locations, not including a side dish with their burgers could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra annual revenue. At LJ's, it may equal a couple hundred. There is little motivation to skimp, and thus they don't. For the same price, at LJ's, you get a side. To me, that matters.

And about those sides, their french fries were surprisingly good. Crispy and light and tasting like they were made from fresh potatoes, which I'm assuming they were. Their house beans were a little thin — I like my baked beans thick with bacon, beans, and fillings — but sweet and good. Their candied yams were candied and yammy. Basically, all good on the Western front.

Everything we had was good. The atmosphere was good. The service was good. The food was everything I could have hoped for, and even a bit more. And that is what LJ's is about: the food. It's not about sports, or idiotic slogans, or puns, or packaging. It's about food, made with skill, and served up for a fair price. I will be returning to LJ's soon, with slow-cooked pig on my mind.

LJ's Barbeque: +++

727 East Avenue
Pawtucket, RI 02860
401-305-5255
Delivery: 401-353-4121


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