Review - Dickey's BBQ Pit

(The Plains) - Not gonna say which Dickey's this was (it rhymes with Mormon Smokelahoma). Doesn't matter. All that matters is that first impressions of a decade ago were spot on. We love our dog too much to feed him what we didn't eat -- which was pretty much all of it.

Dickey's has it's roots in Dallas. This should be Red Flag Number One on account of good barbecue doesn't come from Dallas. We know the Sonny Bryan's faithful will dispute that -- and we have found Sonny's to be passable on good days as long as its from the original over there off the Harry Hines Hooker Highway -- but it is a fact. As a general rule the people of Dallas hold themselves in too high regard to do the dirty work involved in producing good smoked meat. Don't blame us -- blame Dallas.

Anyhow, sometime in the '90s this company decided to franchise and since then it has spread, inexplicably, like a cancer outward from Dallas and now apparently has locations in 41 of the Lower 48. Wow. They built a kingdom on horrible barbecue.

It wasn't until around aught-one that we first had the misfortune to darken the door of a Dickey's right there in their hometown of Dallas. Okay actually it was 30 miles away in Arlington but for the purposes of our brutal review here we'll make it Dallas. We earned that creative license by avoiding enough Dickey's locations in Dallas through the years. The meat didn't have any smoke to it. The sauce was a runny, bitter tomato sauce with some sodium nitrate added to its dirty dishwater wang. And they didn't serve pulled pork (not many Texas places did at the time -- holla Sonny!). But eventually they started serving pork -- but it was not good.

Now, here we are ten year's later at a franchise location far away and, lo and behold, they are able to perfectly re-create the recipes held so dear for so long by the Dallas Dickeys. Condolences.

--Rufus

P.S. On the upside they proudly stick people with these ugly yellow plastic refill cups to buy their loyalty. I'm grateful for this because when I see somebody with one of them I know not to bother talking barbecue with that person.