Cheap Eats - Holy trinity

Barbecue Kitchen’s meat/veggie combos outshine its ‘cue

“Cop cars mean good food,” my friend says as we pull into Barbecue Kitchen’s lot. It’s a Saturday evening, and there are six police cruisers stationed outside the College Park favorite. His theory follows that the cooking in an establishment favored by the men in blue features an unabashed use of ham hocks and butter in true down-home style. In addition to the legion of officers supping at Barbecue Kitchen are several elderly couples who look like dyed-in-the-wool Southerners who enjoy their biscuits shortened with lard and always say yes to an extra wedge of pie.

With its pitched roof and wide awning, Barbecue Kitchen may look like a chain pancake house on the outside, but inside it’s bare-bones country. All the seating takes the form of roomy wooden booths that are as laid-back and no-frills as the cream plates and cups whose rims are dotted with the occasional chip.

Barbecue bitchin’: The restaurant’s name makes sampling the barbecue platter ($8) all but mandatory. Chopped pork is piled high on a plate and soaked with a thin, vinegary sauce. It’s on the dry side, although a few shreds here and there are moist and rich with rendered fat. Most of the pork, however, is cottony and bland. A tingle of smokiness is desperately needed, and the sauce itself lacks a punch. Tellingly, I notice halfway through the barbecue that I’m just about the only person in the restaurant not partaking in the meat-and-three plates.

Chicken dance: My friend’s chicken and dumplings ($6.21) is the sort of saucy eating that, while certainly weighing down your belly, you never want to end. Morsels of white chicken meat alternate with fluffy dumplings that almost seem to melt into the gravy, which is just creamy enough. The words “fried chicken breasts” usually mean dry, greasy meat to me. But I’m shocked when juice actually streams out of the breast on the fried breast platter ($8). The batter is a bit heavy, but as crispy as the summer is long.

Meatloaf ($8) is comforting in its beefy goodness and sticky-sweet ketchupy top. It’s meatloaf as it was meant to be; the sort of food you turn to as a source of consolation when times are rough.

It has to be good: Plates come with a choice of two vegetables plus strawberry cobbler, or three sides. The collards are outstanding — braised tender and chock-full o’ country ham tangled among the leaves. I could eat my way out of a swimming pool filled with these greens. Creamed white corn is fresh, as the signed posted out front asserts, but it also needs a bit more salt and a pat of butter. The macaroni and cheese takes on an unfortunate grayish color from a hefty grinding of black pepper. Cornbread muffins are small, hard and too sweet, and biscuits are flaky, fluffy and buttery, but also slightly stale. A dish of strawberry cobbler keeps my friend up half the night, wired on sugar. The dessert looks and tastes a lot like a jar of Smucker’s strawberry jam scooped into a cup and topped with tiny biscuits.

As awful as that may sound, it’s surprisingly appealing, like something your grandma might make you. Top with a spoonful of Cool-Whip and you’ve got yourself a real Saturday night special.

cynthia.wong@creativeloafing.com