The Bear Pit

“Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they'd sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.”
--- Walter Moers

 

THE BEAR PIT

10825 Sepulveda Boulevard

Mission Hills, CA 91345

818-365-2509

11:30 AM to 9:00 PM   Sunday through Thursday

11:30 AM to 10:00 PM  Friday and Saturday

http://bearpitbbq.com/

 

This is one of those barbecue places that has been around long enough to qualify for historical landmark status.  I’ll leave it to you to read the history at their web site, but it has been at the current location for 58 years.  I remember eating here as a pre-teen with my parents.  Although it has had a succession of owners since then it hasn’t changed much.

It’s so close to the 118 Freeway that you wonder how it survived the freeway’s construction.  It did in close to its original form.  The feeling is 1950’s country woodsy…just what you would expect from a 1950’s barbecue restaurant.  There is sawdust on the floor and the booths have wooden slat benches.  The back room is for larger parties and has tables with sturdy wooden chairs.  A sign on the back wall of the front dining room says that tables are for parties of five or more. Below the sign is a lighted Hamm’s Beer sign.  Oddly, the sign is not one that shows, Sascha, the Hamm’s Beer Bear.  The room was also decorated with Christmas decorations.  We were shown to a booth where the park bench style wooden slats seemed hard at first sitting but were actually quite comfortable after a while.

Our server gave us their somewhat coffee shop like menu that is profusely illustrated with bear cartoons and photos that, unlike some fast food commercials, accurately show the appearance of the food.  She also placed a rather nice, crisp relish plate of sliced dill pickles, carrots and celery.  Being an older, Missouri style barbecue place their menu does not include pulled pork but does include ham.  I ordered a Hot Links Combination   with Baby Back Ribs, Cole Slaw, and Deep Fried Taters.  Sharon ordered a Barbecued Pork, Spare Ribs and Chicken Combination along with a Beef Rib, a salad and Bar-B-Q Beans.  This all comes with Garlic Toast.

Garlic Toast

We have to start with the Garlic Toast.  Everyone who has been here talks about the Garlic Toast.  They all say it is impressive, and it is…physically that is.  They have the bread baked especially for them.  The slice for each serving is about a half square foot in size.  It is brushed with garlic butter and toasted.  The problem is that it’s just coffee shop garlic toast…which is not particularly a bad thing, but I have had much better tasting garlic toast.  What you can say is that when you see it, it is impressive.

Salad

The relish plate was crisp, the salad was not.  It did not seem to be fresh, some of the lettuce was turning brown and the blue cheese dressing tasted more like “blue cheese” dressing.  As a basic house dinner salad it was unacceptable.

Cole Slaw

This was worse, it was really soggy, probably not to the point of violating the health code, but it had definitely been out too long.  I enjoy cole slaw and if I take a bite from one side and one from the other and just leave it you know it’s not worth it.  This time it only took one bite.

Bar-B-Q Beans

As we have experienced at other places barbeque beans can be an exciting treat.  Here?  Well, they were beans…just plain beans with a too sweet sauce that seemed to be made with their barbecue sauce.  They were not hot, a bit tepid when served, and were just bland beans. 

Deep Fried Taters

Now, these are actually interesting.  They are exactly what it says they are, little potatoes, peeled and deep fried.  My only complaint is that there should have been more of them on the plate.

Chicken

The chicken was quite good, if you want fried chicken.  They smoke the chicken and then crisp it in the fryer.  It seemed that that night it was not enough smoke and too much frying.  As I said, for fried chicken, it was rather good, cooked through and not dry.

Baby Back Ribs

Baby back ribs should not disappoint.  In the sense that these were the best meat on the plate, they didn’t.  They were tender, quite meaty and not too fatty.  The smoke flavor was barely detectable.  I would say that this is one of the few times that the basic flavor of the meat was improved by putting the sauce on it.

Spare Ribs

These were not as meaty as the back ribs and a little tough.  They actually seemed to be a bit stringy, something you seldom find in pork.  Again, the smoke flavor was extremely light and the sauce improved them.

Beef Rib

There’s nothing good to say about this one.  It was sparse, tough, stringy, over sauced.  They seemed to have double glazed it, but it was so hard that it was hard to tell how the meat actually tasted.  When hot it was like trying to chew on beef candy and as a leftover it was discardable.

Barbecued Pork

One expects good barbecued pork to be done through but moist and flavorful.  This was a bit too done and again, the sauce saved it.

I really hate to have to write a post like this, so much so that I actually put it off for a week.  The people here are nice enough and they are trying to maintain a tradition.  But, when we chose to blog we decided to simply relate our experiences with the restaurant and the food.  They have a claim to consistency even through four owners, maintaining the same recipes, techniques and quality of service, but something seems to have gone wrong.  It’s almost as though we experienced an institution going senile.  We give it a four.

Wood Ranch BBQ and Grill - Northridge

"Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food."
--- Michael Pollan

"Grandma would recognize good barbecue."

--- Howard

WOOD RANCH BBQ and GRILL© – NORTHRIDGE

Northridge Fashion Center

9301 Tampa Avenue

Northridge, CA 91324

818-886-6464

11:00 AM to 10:00 PM Sunday through Thursday

11:00 AM to 11:00 PM Friday and Saturday

woodranch.com


OK. Let’s try this again. The last time we tried to get in here it was raining and there were still people waiting outside. This time we arrived a few hours earlier at five PM. Again, it was raining, and again, there were people waiting, but this time we could wait inside. Without reservations we only had to wait fifteen minutes for a table probably because several couples gave up waiting for a table for two and were sitting at the bar to order food. Even early in the day reservations are a good idea. Did I mention that this place is popular?

Considering its popularity the waiting area is a bit small on weekends. The designer even though of having a separate entrance for the take out counter to keep the waiting area clear and it is still crowded at most hours we have been there. As for the design it is in the up market shopping mall restaurant style. There is a lot of flagstone and wood with a slate floor giving the general impression of an attempt to reproduce a very sophisticated outdoor room indoors. The bar area is a freestanding "U" shape that stands off to one side shielding the kitchen from the front door. There are no less than three big screen TV’s in the bar area, all tuned to the never ending sports channels. Dining area extends back alongside the kitchen and expands in the area behind it. There is patio dining that was definitely not being used this cold and rainy night. The designers took advantage of the freedom of layout available in a large open retail space. The ambience is upmarket comfortable and has no hint of the cowboy or Southwestern kitsch that many barbecue places effect. The only downside is that somehow, despite the baffling effect of the wood in the ceiling and walls it manages to be noisy.

The hostess seated us at a booth near the very busy bar and gave us our menus and our setups, real metal knife, fork and spoon wrapped in a cloth napkin. The food menu occupies one side of a plastic laminated page with the drink menu on the other side. A smaller plastic laminated card listed the special of the day, a beef spare rib and a prime rib dinner. We didn’t actually see one of these Texas style beef ribs, but if it is anything like the Texas style spare ribs at other places it is a massive meal in itself.

Our server, Elizabeth, arrived seconds after the hostess seated us to take our drink order. The menu is simple enough that in those few seconds we had decided on our orders and were ready with our dinner order. We each ordered a three meat combo plate: Sharon’s with tri-tip, baby back ribs, and beef ribs, mine with chicken breast, pulled pork, and beef brisket. They do not have any links on the menu or I would have ordered one. Our side order selections were coleslaw, sweet potatoes, baked beans, and mac and cheese. The menu does include a selection of appetizers, salads and since they do say they are a bbq and grill steaks, burgers and fish along with the barbeque. She brought us some garlic bread to eat while we waited for our food. We didn’t finish the garlic bread before the hot food arrived. That really doesn’t surprise me, even considering how busy they were, since I could see into the kitchen from where I sat and I could see the choreography of a fast, efficient kitchen.

Garlic Bread

Remember those wonderful restaurant dinner rolls, I have described before, that are made by a bakery in Van Nuys? Well, the "garlic bread" was simply a serving of three of these that had been brushed with garlic butter and herbs. They were tasty, but they were not garlic bread.

Coleslaw

A Carolina style vinaigrette slaw with peanuts should be my idea of coleslaw perfection. Normally it would be but this one just misses. Salt and pepper improves it, but something is missing. That’s not to say that it’s bad just a bit bland. It does go well on a pulled pork sandwich (in this case made with leftovers a couple days later). Interestingly enough the coleslaw is a required side order with a pulled pork dinner. I don’t disagree with that.

Sweet Potatoes

Nice texture, and good sized serving, but again I have to say bland. Somehow, this simply lacks intense sweet potato flavor. The light texture is interesting and seems to have been whipped to get a lot of air into it or maybe some milk added as the texture was quite creamy. I really enjoyed the lightness, but light does not have to mean flavorless. It definitely could have used some cinnamon, nutmeg and a touch of brown sugar.

Beans

The beans were mushy and the sauce seems to have been their regular barbecue sauce which is very tomatoey and very brown sugary. Considering that this is supposed to be a premium casual dining establishment these beans were unacceptable. The only good thing about them is that they were hot.

Mac and Cheese

Something went very wrong here. What started with a seemingly interesting cheese blend ended up rather cloying and chewy. Salt and pepper didn’t help the fact that they were served lukewarm nor did it improve the bland flavor. We suspect that our serving came from the bottom of a pan that should have been replaced by a fresh one several minutes before.

Tri-Tip

We did come for the barbecue and this is barbecue. There many barbecue places that could take lessons from Wood Ranch© on tri-tip. Wood Ranch© uses a unique cooking method for all its meats. The meat is first slow roasted then grilled over mesquite wood. This is not the traditional slow smoking one would expect, but it really works. The meat is tender and has a really good mesquite smoked flavor. If you like your meat with a mesquite smoked flavor this is as good as tri-tip gets.

Pulled Pork

This cooking method works for pulled pork also. The particular piece of meat was a little fatty but other than that (and I have had much worse with pulled pork) it was great. Again, the pork was apparently mesquite grilled before it was shredded and mixed with what seems to be a Carolina-style sauce that has a bit of a bite to it. It stands well by itself, but when I made a pulled pork sandwich with the leftovers the slight bite was just offset by the blandness of the coleslaw making a perfectly balanced flavor. I’m going to make sure to stop in at lunch to have a pulled pork sandwich to see if it works as well when they put it together.

Chicken Breast

Well, their cooking method doesn’t quite work with everything. Don’t get me wrong, this chicken is moist, tasty, done through, and tender. The thing is that it is one of the best roast chicken breasts I have had. My wife enjoyed it in a sandwich a couple of days later and agreed that it was great roast chicken. Unfortunately, the mesquite grilling

seems to have done nothing but put grill marks on the chicken. It did not give it barbecue flavor.

Beef Brisket

It works here. The brisket is tender, moist and flavorful. The only caveat is that you have to like mesquite flavor. Other than that you will look hard to find a better tasting brisket.

Baby Back Ribs

The ribs are glazed with the barbecue sauce. You tell the server which sauce you prefer. Apparently, our order got mixed up because Sharon asked for the regular barbecue sauce, but they came with the chipotle-cherry glaze. With her pepper allergy Sharon’s mouth lasted exactly one rib. Aside from them being too spicy for Sharon they were basically acceptable, not the meatiest but they were tender and not the least bit stringy. If these were typical their cooking method does not do that well with baby back ribs. As I said they were acceptable but not great.

Beef Ribs

Very good beef ribs. They were lightly glazed, meaty, not stringy and with excellent mesquite smoke flavor. If you like beef it’s worth ordering a beef rib platter.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

We decided to try one of their seasonal cheesecakes. The pumpkin cheesecake came in what was supposed to be an individual serving. It was a six inch diameter round on a bed of caramel sauce and topped with glazed pecans and a dollop of whipped cream. It was rich enough for four servings. We ate half of it and took the rest home.

They have their own unique way of doing it, but is it barbecue? Judging by the crowds and the fact that they have expanded to fourteen locations since 1992 I would think that great many people say yes. I have to agree that while it doesn’t work for all meats is does for most and it tastes like barbecue. The sides left something to be desired that night, but I have had far worse and we have been there before and the sides were better. Is this a chain restaurant with a formula? Yes, but they have found a formula for a carnivore’s delight. We give it eight and a half