“Ask
not what you can do for your country.
Ask what’s for lunch.”
---
Orson Wells
PECOS
BILL’S BARBEQUE
1551
Victory Boulevard
Glendale,
CA 91201
818-241-2750
11:00
AM to 3:00 PM or until the meat runs out Wednesday through Sunday
I’ve
said that I have been to some hole-in-the-wall barbecue places, but no place
fits that description more literally than Pecos Bill’s. Right on the sidewalk, you walk up to a
window, not a counter, but a window, in the kitchen wall to order. Except for a few patio tables with umbrellas
that they put out on the sidewalk during business hours, that’s it. It’s been like this since 1946 when the
original Pecos Bill and his son built the stand in 1946. The current owner, the grandson of the
original Pecos Bill, is still using the original barbecues built in 1946 and
some of the original, irreplaceable, custom built pans. (He knows a good welder.)
The
menu is very limited. This is one of
those places that serve up what you could call an old fashioned working man’s
lunch. (O.K. they don’t have beer.) They have quarter pound sandwiches, Shredded
Beef, Shredded Pork, Sliced Ham, Sliced Turkey, and on Saturday and Sunday
only, Pork Spare Ribs by the pound. The
other meats are also available by the pound… literally all meats are only sold
in one pound packages. The available
side orders are Coleslaw and Baked Beans.
The only beverage is fresh squeezed Lemonade, but if you ask, you can
get a cup of water.
We
showed up at two in the afternoon on a Saturday and luckily they hadn’t run out
of anything. To get a good sampling of
the que we ordered one of each sandwich, a pound of ribs, a half pint of
coleslaw, and a half pint of beans. We
ordered the sandwiches dry with sauce on the side, but the ribs were already
sauced. There is no complaint about the
speed of the service since you are standing right there at the window while
they make your order. Foregoing the
lemonade, we took the que home to eat.
Shredded
Pork
No
one would complain if they called this pulled pork. It’s moist and flavorful and not fatty. The smoked flavor is subtle, so much so that
we couldn’t identify the wood. Without
the sauce it was very satisfying. With
the sauce, well more on that later.
Shredded
Beef
The
flavor is definitely beef, but the smokiness is subtle like the pork. I found it quite satisfying, without the
sauce. See a pattern here?
Sliced
Ham
Ham on
the menu is a sure sign of an old fashioned barbecue place. This is a decent ham sandwich it’s just
difficult to decide if they got the ham and smoked it or just heated up a
smoked ham.
Turkey
This
seems to be a rolled turkey breast that they heated in the oven. Not that that was a bad thing since it was
moist, tasty turkey, but it just didn’t seem to be barbecue. The sauce seems to work better on the turkey
than on anything else.
This
brings us to the subject of the sauce. Supposedly
this is a Tennessee style hickory sauce.
It’s not like any sauce I actually encountered in Tennessee. I don’t know if this is a definitive style
barbecue sauce from the Oklahoma/Arkansas area of the country, or it’s just an
old fashioned sauce recipe, but this sauce tastes and feels on the tongue, like
a gravy with a bit of cayenne in it rather than a barbecue sauce. That’s why it works better on the
turkey.
Coleslaw
This
is what I call competent coleslaw. It
has two cabbages and carrots with a creamy type dressing. It isn’t my favorite type, but worked very
well when I put it on part of the shredded pork sandwich that I had perked up
with a Carolina style barbecue sauce to make a proper pulled pork
sandwich.
Baked
Beans
There
is nothing exciting here just OK beans.
Pecos
Bill’s is another one of those barbecue places that is a local tradition. Here is where Sharon and I disagree. Many of these places survive on their
nostalgia value but are not what I would call good barbecue today. I think that Pecos Bill’s is surviving
because the beef, pork and ribs while done in an old fashioned style it’s one
of the better old fashioned styles. If I
were in the neighborhood at lunch time I would have no hesitation in dropping
by for a beef or pork sandwich as long as I ordered it dry and brought my own
sauce. One of their Shredded Pork
sandwiches, with a half pint of coleslaw, and a proper Carolina style barbecue
sauce would make one of the better pulled pork sandwiches you could get. Sharon was turned off by the ham, turkey and
the sauce. She feels, not without a
certain justification, that buying good que should not be a do it yourself
project. Sharon felt her experience
would give them a rating of five. I
would give the beef and pork a seven.
