Every summer you can find most side streets in Harlem lined with blazing grills as music pumps out of open windows and spills out onto the lively street below. This year, the sidewalk grillers may have a bit of competition. Can the two co-exist? Let the war of the grills begin!
As for the eating, there’s no question that the pork spareribs at Dinosaur are significantly better than everything else (and certainly good enough to warrant a visit). Order them by the rack and skip the menu’s other distractions.
For those who live a bit farther uptown:
If you want your rib fix in less dandified settings — and sometimes that’s just the case — the city isn’t short on places to get it. For pork ribs cut in the St. Louis style, dusted with spice rub and grill-crisped with a touch of sweet, dark sauce, there’s Mo Gridder’s BBQ in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, where the dining room doubles as the office for an auto body shop that looks like the place cars go to die. The pit is outdoors, tacked to the back end of a competition-ready barbecue trailer.
The owner, Fred Donnelly, an avid amateur pit master before he opened Mo Gridder’s, drew up plans for a modest 10-foot-long trailer, but somewhere along the way it stretched out another 25 feet, big enough to house a fully equipped kitchen and a massive smoker. Though a rig of that size is wild overkill for the light foot traffic it attracts in Hunts Point, Mr. Donnelly said it handled its maiden voyage — catering a party for “800 hungry Teamsters” — without a hitch.
In spite of the Times endorsement, there is nothing like meat that has been lovingly turned and sauced by someones uncle or daddy on one of those sidewalk grills as the sun sets on a hot, steamy day in Harlem. Viva sidewalk grill kings! Viva!
Bnew
March 21, 2007
If MLK and Malcom X came back to earth today and heard all this talk about Harlem BBQ and Dino & Rack, owned by White folks, they would say “what happened”?
It is Harlem ya’ll. What if the best Sweet Potato Pie or Cobbler in Harlem were from white folks?
Food is culture, BBQ is as synonymous with African American Culture as Gospel and Jazz.
The ribs at Dino is the KennyG of BBQ (if you’ve ever been down South). Rack & Soul is Micheal Eberstein’s latest attempt to take Black Culture Cuisine and make a buck (he formerly owned the now closed Bayou).
Get we get real about it? It’s a damn shame when Harlem does not have a dozen Black owned BBQ joints that are taking you back down South.
Keisha
March 21, 2007
I totally agree. Dinosaur ribs are great but skip everything else. The sides are disappointing. Do you have a review for Rack and Soul on 112th and broadway? I’ve been meaning to go.