BLUE SMOKE
HALF A STAR
16 E. 27TH ST. (212) 447-7479
DARING us to try leathery, dry and flavorless sliced beef brisket at Danny Meyer’s new Blue Smoke, my friend jokes: “It’s shoe leather, but is it heels or soles?”
This extravagantly hyped, long-awaited barbecue palace raises a more serious question:
Was it wise to spend a fortune on giant indoor smokers, only to turn them over to chefs with no barbecue expertise?
As everyone knows, Meyer struggled for three years to bring authentic barbecue to Manhattan, eventually triumphing over environmental red tape.
Now just three weeks old, Blue Smoke is mobbed with true believers. Count on them to stuff the Zagat ballot box and add it to the “most popular” category, along with Meyer’s four other restaurants.
Its staff is cheerful, its jukebox grand, its drinks spectacular. But its ribs would embarrass any backyard amateur with a Weber and squirt bottle. It is the Alain Ducasse of barbecue openings, inflicting itself on the masses without first mastering menu and equipment.
Blue Smoke occupies the former premises of 27 Standard, on top of the Jazz Standard club downstairs. The noisy front room with a tall, atmospheric bar, ceiling fans and big booths previews the larger rear – a cozy barn of brick, wood and windows facing a rustic fence.
Impressive ceiling pipes conduct exhaust fumes from the two custom-built smokers to the 15-story chimneys famously constructed to meet fire codes.
Our five-alarm warning kicks in with the waiter, who clearly missed the training for which Meyer is famous. Asked about the jar of “Magic Dust” on the table, he offers, “It has 18 spices. I don’t know which ones, but it makes everything better except ice cream.”
Smelling like curry powder, it worsens all it touches, starting with bland house white bread. (What, no corn bread?)
“Keep it clean” might be the motto for a joint that purges barbecue of its messy pleasures. I got through two meals without piggying hands or shirt. Thank meat so lacking in moisture, it might have been freeze-dried.
Barbecue has myriad regional variations: Texas “dry,” eastern “wet” and a million methods in between, depending on marinade and basting. The waiters say the ribs are “Memphis-style” – dry-rubbed before smoking, and wet-basted during. I’ve had it on Beale Street and in one-mule towns like Eads, Tenn. – and this ain’t it.
Good barbecue is time- and labor-intensive. Is chef Kenny Callaghan cutting corners on the prep? Is the cooking time too short, or the temperature too high?
Even cheap chains marinate pulled pork in vinegar-based sauce before cooking and shredding it to near-liquid tenderness. Blue Smoke’s ($13.75) rigid clumps aren’t “pulled” at all: “We use a chopping machine,” a tipster divulged.
You could roam from the East River to the Rio Grande and not find brisket ($14.95) as arid. Baby-back ribs ($14.95 for a half-rack, $22.95 for a full) were barren and tough, beyond rescue by meek house sauce.
Marginally meatier St. Louis ribs ($12.95 for a half-rack, $19.95 for a full) arrived dry and fatty twice, with a smear of ketchupy goop that might have been slapped on at the last minute. Sliced kielbasa-like garlic sausage with armadillo-tough skin masquerades as “links” ($8.95).
Starters and sides lend no relief. Smoked cold foie gras ($12.95) could moonlight as a paperweight. Yummy fry bread ($4.95) appetizer – jelly doughnuts without the jelly – makes a better dessert than sweet potato cake ($5.95) oddly wedded to a graham cracker crust.
Callaghan told the Times that his two weeks of training with a barbecue chef made him “the most experienced one here.”
Case closed.