Paul’s BBQ Wins on Taste
Local spot serves delicious food and leaves you alone
by Nick Hardt
The best barbeque places I’ve been to aren’t big chain restaurants with bright signs on the walls and interchangeable servers wearing uniforms and identical smiles. They’re always locally owned restaurants, low key, nothing flashy, and maybe a TV to watch while you eat. Instead, these restaurants save all their flash for the food you put in your mouth. This is exactly the ethos Paul’s BBQ, at 4724 Pioneers Boulevard, subscribes to.
Walking into the restaurant the first thing you see is an open space surrounded by windows, black tables and black chairs, a small TV perched on the wall, and an attentive employee standing behind the counter waiting to take your order. But that’s not the point of this place. The employees are welcoming, courteous, and simple; not there to impress you with their pieces of flare (I hope you’ve seen Office Space) or witty banter. They’re there to take your order and bring out the main event.
I got the four rib combo with baked beans, bread and a medium drink. My companion, and sexy wife, Jessie got the beef brisket sandwich combo with cornbread and a medium drink. The total came out to $17.63. Pretty fair. Pretty reasonable.
When the food came out the ribs were brushed with seasoning and sauce and the beans were an almost dark-ale shade of brown, glistening with a mouth stimulating bean to sauce ratio. The rest of the plate was occupied with two portion cups with spicy and mild sauces.
On Jessie’s plate, the brisket sandwich was big. For lack of a better comparison, it was about the size of a DVD, a delicious DVD, in circumference and probably three and a half inches from top to bottom. There was a nice large chunk of cornbread on the plate as well as two portion cups with spicy and mild sauces.
The food was satisfying. Above satisfying. It was everything one could expect from a Kansas City smokehouse or a prized vendor at Lincoln’s annual Ribfest, only we were eating it in a low key no frills easy-going barbeque spot in south Lincoln! It was messy and taunting. The food seemed to dare us to eat it slow, laughing in an evil tenor as we tried but couldn’t. The limited verbal exchange between husband and wife was merely to offer food for food.
Eating at Paul’s BBQ was whole-heartedly what I expected, plus a few extras I wasn’t expecting. The food was top shelf quality. Something you might pay $12 to $15 a plate for at a sit down, impress-me-with-how-much-you-like-me type facility. Paul’s saves on the surroundings and puts all that money and care-for-customer in the food. It’s a place for people who don’t need to be hugged while they talk and eat. If you do need to be hugged, the barbeque will do all the hugging required. Final grade: A.
If you want to check out more about Paul’s BBQ visit their website: PaulsBBQ.net.
