So, have you been there yet? It’s not a great food neighborhood, at least when compared to the surrounding ones, but there’s been good stuff there on and off over the years. I grew up only blocks away in Midwood but hardly ever had occasion to be there for anything. Except, of course, to visit one of my grandmothers in Washington Cemetery.
1 Like
We’re starting to plan our next trip south and always make a bbq stop going and coming, which six eastern nc bbq joints did you visit and what did u like?
Last trip home, after a ten year absence, we stopped at honey monk’s, the coarse chop with outside brown was as good as I remembered, the hush puppies better than I remembered but I was taken aback by the size of the lunchtime crowd. I had a client in clt and I’d alternate btw prices chicken coop and lex bbq, never saw a crowd like that.
Fried chicken and bbq on the client’s $, those were the days!
No. Probably never will, to be honest.
I only went to FDR high school there, worked for Dominoes on ave I and Mcdonald for years through school, spent tons of time in that neighborhood including the cemetery. And only discovered its called Mapleton last year when I tried to figure out where Chveni Cafe belonged
1 Like
offtopic for this post but im wondering, did you write here on HO or elsewhere your eating in the RGV? I had some very good food out there, staying in Harlingen and Alamo (and some not so super) but am wondering what BBQ places you liked.
1 Like
Steve - Mapleton isn’t even on my personal listing of NYC neighborhoods. I’m still in the (long) process of incorporating the NYT detailed map of NYC neighborhoods, which I’m sure will pick it up.
I have a note that suggests that at least part of the neighborhood is also considered part of Borough Park, which I have been to.
Chito Grvito: A friend and I had dinner at a Georgian restaurant on 3rd Ave and 16th St. that has been open for three years without me noticing. The food is quite good, but very small and pricey (I showed a Ukrainian friend the menu and she was scandalized). We split the beetroot tartare, the aubergine roll-ups, and a khachapuri, which should have been a filling meal and was not. I loved my orange wine, though.
4 Likes
I remember those days. One of my proudest legal accomplishments as a young associate at a big DC firm was that on a three-day client trip to the Muscle Shoals/Florence area of Alabama, I managed to convince him to eat barbecue for every meal except breakfast.
We’re planning a trip to North Carolina within the next 2-3 weeks, so I’ll have some updated recommendations after that. Daniel Vaughn of the Texas Monthly just put out a long piece on the invasion of Texas-style brisket places into North Carolina and Toni and I want to give some of those a try.
On our most recent trip to North Carolina, our two favorites were B’s in Greenville and Sid’s Catering in Beulavile (Saturdays only). Beulaville is way off I-95, so that’s probably out. B’s is only about 45 minutes off I-95, a much more reasonable detour. Wilbur’s in Goldsboro and Grady’s (“in” Dudley, which is so small that there’s really no there there).
If you want more detailed information on the reviews of major barbecue critics (plus me) on nationwide barbecue places, go here for my obsessive barbecue spreadsheet, which is continually being updated.
If you or anyone else has trouble accessing it with this link, I’d appreciate a heads up so I can figure out what the problem is. You will probably need access to Google Sheets (which is free, I think) to be able to view it.
2 Likes
thanks, yes, unfortunately, Beulavile is too far off I95, I’ve been to B’s and wilbur’s many times though not to wilburs since it was shut down and re-opened with a new owner and a pared-down menu.
the only place that’s left on my nc bucket list is the skylight inn but I’m always on the hunt for new places, thanks for the link to your spreadsheet, I’ll take a look, I’m sure I’ll find some interesting, new places.
As for brisket joints in nc, I dunno, I feel like it’s sorta like going to rome and eating spanish food, I’m sure there’s very good brisket to be had in nc but I’d rather eat brisket in texas and bbq in nc.
best,
Oh, shoot, I don’t know how I forgot Skylight Inn. We did visit there on our latest trip and it was wonderful, probably a touch behind B’s and Sid’s and a touch ahead of the reborn Wilbur’s. The experience makes the trip even more worthwhile. Highly recommended.
Jen -
I did some writing on my Facebook page about the Rio Grande Valley trip. Most of my Facebook posts aren’t public but sometimes I’ll make the restaurant posts public. In any event, if you’re on Facebook I’m happy to make you (and others here) friends. I’m under my real name Doug Herbert.
John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog picked up my review of the culinary high point of the trip, Vera’s Barbecue in Brownsville. Vera’s serves traditional barbacoa (smoked cow’s head) cooked the traditional way by burying it along with coals. It’s the only place left in Texas that cooks this way, as it’s been grandfathered in by the health authorities. There are still plenty of home-cooked places that sell it illegally on Sunday mornings, however.
Here’s the like to the review in John’s blog:
This is the place we were all supposed to go to when we switched at the last second to Hakka —how did you miss it 
Food was good? I still haven’t made it there.
wow, that is a masterwork bbq list! Are you thinking you’re going to make it to all those places? or even half?
@johntannerbbq and I have exchanged bon mots on shulers vs mccabes, I prefer mccabes, john shulers but his recent posts left me wondering if he may have moved toward mccabes. we’ll stop once on this trip to get a sense if anything has changed since the owner passed.
best,
I was replying to “theGforceNY” with my Mapleton comment, but I cant think of any non-NY’er other than you who would do that exploration. When you return, let’s take a look.
2 Likes
Oh! I have a memory like a sieve - I thought we were going to Chama Mama that time? Maybe not.
Anyway, the food - the three things we had, anyway - was fine. Not as good as Oda House, where I think I had almost the same meal. Very nice staff, and a comfortable homey place. But that khachapuri was a single serving, and I have not encountered such a thing before.
Maybe I’ll skip it and try Ubani. Or Chama Mama which is probably the closest of my options.
That sounds good, I’m always up for a new neighborhood.
No, there’s no way I’ll make it to even a quarter of the places on that list. But I like to have a reference handy when I’m traveling somewhere to know what the options are.
We’ve never made it to South Carolina for barbecue other than the mass produced stuff at the famous Beacon Drive-In in Spartanburg, which isn’t bad at all. It’s high on our to-do list.
If you want to see my ranking of my personal favorites, go to the tab at the bottom labeled “Doug Herbert Rankings.” Right now there are a dozen places that get my top grade of “Outstanding-Plus”:
- B. Cooper - Austin TX
- Bridges Barbecue Lodge - Shelby NC
- City Market - Luling TX
- Frankliln - Austin TX
- Helen’s - Brownsville TN
- Hometown - Brooklyn (Red Hook) NY
- Joe’s - Kansas City KS
- Lexington Barbecue (Honey Monk’s) - Lexington NC
- Little Miss, Phoenix AZ
- The Ridgewood - Bluff City TN
- Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue - Tomball TX
- ZZQ - Richmond VA
If you haven’t eaten at ZZQ, it’s well worth a stop on your next trip southward. It would violate your rule of eating Texas-style barbecue only in Texas though.
Unless there’s something on the menu you think you can’t get elsewhere, it’s pretty skippable.
I think we were talking about going to the Manhattan Ubani - I still havent been but the Chama Mama on 14th Street was quite good when i took a group in the fall. Think I reported here, the filled breads (meat and bean) among other things were particurly good. The app combo that included phkali, interesting cheeses, etc was super too but the portions on it were miniscule and hardly approprite for sharing with a group.
PS Disappointed about Chito Givrito, it seemed to have more of a menu than some of the others which focus mainly on bready things and apps, I think the reference to beet “tartare” tho was ridiculous.
