“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is
tea, please bring me some coffee.”
--- Abraham Lincoln
RED’S
BARBECUE & GRILLERY
3090
Cochran Street
Simi
Valley, CA 93065
(805)
581-9076
11:00
AM to 9:00 PM Sunday
through Thursday
11:00
AM to 10:00 PM Friday
and Saturday
It’s been a long time since our last post. Well, as they say, “Life happens.” Unfortunately, barbeque doesn’t always
happen. Between personal and business issues
we just haven’t had the time, or the energy to search out good que.
Our six-year-old grandson was having an afternoon
baseball game and, of course we went.
Afterwards, we were trying to decide where we would all have dinner and
his father suggested Red’s Barbecue & Grillery. We agreed immediately since it would give us
a chance to have some que and get material for a new post.
Red’s is located in the approximate center of the Simi
Valley in a shopping center. It’s a bit
larger than most barbeque places. The décor
is high end coffee shop with nice touches such as real cloth napkins, and
barbecue sauce on the tables in large syrup dispensers. We were there at the beginning of the dinner
hour but were seated promptly. The
servers were most attentive and very quick.
A plate of Rolls was put on the table as our drink order was taken.
The dinner menu occupies both sides of a plastic
laminated sheet. The menu has more than
just barbecue, with appetizers, salads, soups, sandwiches, giant baked
potatoes, and three pasta dishes. The
meat available is Baby Back Ribs, Beef Ribs, Half Barbecued Chicken, and Boneless
Barbecued Chicken Breast. They also have
Tri-tip, Rib-eye Steak, Salmon, and Sword Fish.
Interestingly enough, they have a Barbecued Pork Sandwich in their
sandwich menu, but do not offer the pork on the barbecue menu. Two, three, and four meat combinations are
available including soup or a salad and a choice of two sides or a giant baked
potato. Sharon and I decided to get a
sampling by ordering two combos, hers with Baby Back Ribs and Boneless Chicken
Breast, and mine with Tri-tip and Beef Ribs.
Her sides were Mac and Chees and Baked Beans. Mine were Coleslaw and Sweet Potato Fries. She had a Green Salad with blue cheese
dressing and I had the Chicken Tortilla Soup.
Rolls
The first plate of these must have come from the bottom
of the bag since they were decidedly squashed.
The server promptly brought us another plate without being asked. These were not squashed, and were brushed
with garlic butter and dusted with grated Parmesan cheese and parsley. Although slightly doughy and chewy were quite
pleasant. I said that the first ones
came from the bottom of the bag since we believe these to be commercially made
rolls that we have had at other places.
Green
Salad
Everything in the salad was fresh and crisp. It consisted of lettuce, chopped tomatoes,
cucumbers, shaved carrots, and had croutons and grated Parmesan cheese on
it. The dressing was only
suggested. Sharon asked for some more
dressing and it was supplied immediately, however it was a bit watery, not the
thick, creamy blue cheese dressing we are used to and seemed a bit bitter.
Chicken
Tortilla Soup
Now this is an odd thing to order in a barbeque place,
and I normally would not have even mentioned it, but tortilla soup is one of
the ways I judge Mexican restaurants, and I wanted to see how they did it
here. It was certainly edible, if not up
to the standards of a good Mexican restaurant.
It was somewhat thickened and had some small chunks of chicken in it, a
few vegetables, tortilla strips and a sizable chunk of avocado. The puzzling thing was that it seemed to be a
mix of two commercial soups with the vegetables, tortilla strips and avocado
added and not a made from scratch tortilla soup. This is workable, but the kind of thing that
is typically done by coffee shops. It
didn’t bother me at the time since this isn’t a Mexican restaurant.
Baby
Back Ribs
They came with covered with a sauce that did not seem to
be the sauce on the table. Sharon found
it to be a bit too peppery, giving her a little mouth burn. What bothered me was that they had grill
marks on them which indicated a certain style of preparation. They had no visible smoke ring, were not
particularly meaty, seemed a bit dry, and were not all that flavorful.
Beef
Ribs
These had grill marks on them too. Again, they were large, but not especially
meaty and while not dry, and relatively tender for beef ribs, were not that
flavorful and had not a hint of smoke.
Tri-tip
The tri-tip was tender and not sliced too thinly. It had no smoke ring but had grill marks
which definitely told me how it was prepared.
It, like all the other ‘barbeque’ we were served, had been slow cooked,
overnight, in an Alto-Shaam oven and when ordered warmed up again on a mesquite
fired grill. In the case of the tri-tip,
it produced a tender and pleasantly flavorful piece of meat, but it was not
barbeque.
Boneless
Barbecued Chicken Breast
The chicken was the same as the tri-tip. It was tender and quite pleasant, but not
barbecue. Much to Sharon’s relief the
sauce on the chicken was not as peppery as the one on the back ribs.
Coleslaw
This was a conventional two cabbage and carrot coleslaw
with a creamy dressing. Well, it wasn’t
that creamy being a bit on the watery side and it was just a bit bitter. The slaw was not too wet, however my opinion
of it was that it was a somewhat substandard coffee shop coleslaw.
Baked
Beans
The beans were a very conventional preparation, not too
sweet, but better than the usual canned beans.
They were not unpleasant, but not particularly remarkable.
Mac
and Cheese
Sharon called this an abomination. The pasta was not al dente but barely
cooked. There was no suggestion of creaminess
to the sauce and in fact it was so dry that the sauce didn’t even stick the
pasta together. At least there was some
cheese used in its preparation. Probably
the worst mac and cheese we have experienced since starting this blog.
Sweet
Potato Fries
Now here is something exceptional. The sweet potato fries were probably the best
thing on the plate. They were thoroughly
cooked, but still retained their sweetness and were not too oily as is often
the case with sweet potato fries. We
really liked these.
Anyone who approaches commercial barbeque from the restaurant
management tradition rather than the barbeque tradition would call me a
barbeque snob. I’ve had a restaurant
owner tell me that having a smoker for the meat is just a waste of time and
effort because when meat is slow cooked in an Alto-Shaam overnight, then
finished off on a wood fired grill and covered with barbecue sauce people can’t
tell the difference. Want to bet? Done
that way the meat can be very tender and flavorful, like the tri-tip and chicken
here, but without the long, slow wood smoking it just isn’t barbeque. Red’s has been here since 1992, so obviously
people like it as is, but I would say that the Grillery part of the name is far
more accurate than Barbecue. As a high
end coffee shop with a barbeque oriented menu it scores well, but as a barbeque
place we would rate it about a 4.
