By overwhelming popular demand, the gang demands that we go to D’s Bar-B-Q today. There is no discussion of any other possibility and the phone book never emerges. A menu that was mysteriously faxed to the office yesterday from Dillon’s Bakery and Restaurant is quietly shuffled to the bottom of a pile of papers. Not particularly unusual to receive a fax, but I did think it a bit unusual that the fax appeared from 2 1⁄2 hours in the future. It was as though someone, somewhere was trying to send us a message within a message. I’ll admit that I’m a bit superstitious and had it been me alone, I would have chosen Dillon’s, no questions asked.
Lunch is never just one alone. I mean, if it is, if you’re just going to eat by yourself, you might as well just drive to the parking lot of grocery store and eat a nearly expired generic brand yogurt and read a three day old newspaper in our car. If you think about it, for most folks, lunch is, or at least has the potential to be, the most social meal of the day. Breakfast is best enjoyed alone while one makes the painful transition from dreams to daymares. Brunch, a lunch derivative, is decidedly social. Dinner, social, but most often enjoyed with one’s family, spouse, significant other, domestic partner, pet, or, in increasingly rare cases, friends and acquaintances. So, in our office, lunch is the most emotionally charged time of day. If you ever want to see a catfight, or what comes closest to it, come for a visit around noon.
The Process:
Today there is a general agreement that we’ll visit Bar-B-Q . Sure, I feel a bit railroaded, but I do love D’s, so at least it’s a comfortable train ride. The greatest difficulty we encountered was keeping everyone’s order straight. Beef on the rare side with mild sauce, beef well done with hot sauce and extra potato salad, links without bread, hot sauce, no spork are all the sorts of particularities one has to deal with when making a lunch order. I dutifully write it all down in great detail. Once at D’s however, the order is distilled into its very essence 5 orders of sliced beef, small, one mild, the rest hot, sporks all around!
D’s sits in the middle of a prehistoric strip mall, surrounded on one side by an upholstery outfit and a Mexican restaurant and liquor store on the other. D parks his shiny, late model Mercedes front and center, like a lion at the gates of Hell. D is a friendly, affable fellow who loves what he does and who loves his customers. There’s rarely a line there, though if there were any justice at all in the world, there would be a line surrounding the building, day and night.
The Chow:
On a D day, our party increases in number by several…Doc and Lily White jump in to round out the numbers. Sliced beef was the order of the day, Doc being the outlier who ordered up a plate of links. D offers platters in two sizes, small and large. A small can easily feed two people or one very hungry one. The large is simply to heavy to get back to the office without a forklift. D makes the sauce in house and the hot is delicious, a perfect tang, but not too fiery. Sides include potato salad, cole slaw or baked beans and are, by most accounts, not D’s strong suit. I like the potato salad. Cougar won’t stay in the same county where anything sauced in mayonnaise is served. Lily White didn’t want any sides or the Roman Meal bread that comes with an order. All that could be heard from Hula Girl, Doc and Tuna were the contented slurps of satisfied diners.
The Wrap:
D says it best: D’s BBQ is D best in town.
The Rating: 4.3 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment