Adam & Eats: Rick’s Ribhouse

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for almost nine years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

Lately, if you haven’t noticed, it is bloody hot outside.

All of this heat has got me jonesin’ for barbeque and so I decided to find a joint that I haven’t eaten at before. When I suggested that my lunch date and I head over to Rick’s Ribhouse Bar-B-Q to try and satiate my cravings for a pulled pork sandwich, my date just bowed their shaking head and said (with as much irony and regret as they could muster) “Okay, but don’t get your hopes up.” Just for good measure, whenever anyone says something like that to you, listen to them.

Located on Fayetteville road in Van Buren, in what I think was an old Hardee’s, is Rick’s Ribhouse Bar-B-Q. I am not going to bury the lead here. Do not let the name fool you. Either they serve some of the blandest barbeque in the world or they are not a barbeque restaurant.

I think the problem is a simple one: Indecision. At Rick’s they are trying to be both a BBQ joint and an All-Day breakfast kind of place and they fall short on at least one of the accounts. I think that the pull from different directions is weakening their ability to make a good meal.

Despite the fact that the booths are comfortable and ginormous, the waitstaff and cooks are friendly and super efficient, and the sweet tea is stellar, none of that makes up for the fact that they serve one of the most tasteless, driest pulled pork sandwiches I have ever eaten.

If I had not drowned it in barbeque sauce, it would have had a flavor that reads as a negative number on the flavor scale. Even drowning it in sauce could not save this little pig from the big bad wolf of blandness. If you were wondering about the chicken, we got the smoked chicken salad and it was like someone had piled hickory shavings on a bed of lettuce and drowned it in liquid smoke. Sounds delicious. I know.

Despite what some people say about me, I try to be a nice guy and I can’t beat the crap out of someone’s livelihood without giving them their due respects. When they are actually due respects, that is. I have to say, Rick’s has some of the best onion rings around these parts. Also, even though I normally shy away from breaded and fried dill pickle slices, I think Rick must put heroin in his, because I could not stop eating them while I was there and today it is all I want to eat. Maybe it was the ranch dressing that I dipped them in. Somethin’. Whatever it was, it upsets me. I am not supposed to like something so intrinsically wrong as a deep fried pickle slice.

Normally, I would say that I was just grasping desperately for something to like about the place, but, in this instant, our pickles came out much earlier than the dreaded pork sandwich, so the pickles and onion rings definitely can hold their own.

I didn’t get to eat from their breakfast menu, and from my barbeque experience, I probably never will. For Rick’s sake, I hope he can focus and get his act together. For my sake, I hope this craving for fried pickles goes away, so I can focus on the fact that I still haven’t curbed my craving for a damned pulled pork sandwich.

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When he’s not beating his eggs, Adam makes time to respond to e-mails that get past his hard-ass spam filter. You can try to reach him at [email protected]

Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.