Secondhand Smoke

Baby Blues gets its meat right, and not much else.

by Adam Erace

RIBBED FOR YOUR PLEASURE: Baby Blues does Memphis-style ribs well, but the same cannot be said for the 'cue joint's sides and desserts.

Neal Santos

[ review ]

For some people, barbecue is all about the meat. For others, it's all about the sides. Which camp you fall into will determine whether Baby Blues BBQ deserves your business.

In seven months, owner Stephen Fischer transformed this space from twee, trippy Bubble House to rough-and-tumble roadhouse, its choppy puzzle of parlors refurbished with raw wood tables and slate floors. The walls, a quilt of crumbly exposed brick and corrugated tin sheeting, are blanketed in enough border-town bric-a-brac to furnish a Tarantino set. The Bubble House bar is still tucked into a sun-washed salon, only now, instead of lychee and taro teas, it's a fountain of Lagunitas and PBR pounders.

The counter running the perimeter of the open kitchen functions as a second bar. I wish I'd have sat at this strip of marble crafted from the original marble walkways of Independence Hall, beneath a clothesline flapping with order tickets. Then I could have seen just how fast chef Tim Kearney makes the mac 'n' cheese. The bowl sitting in front of me held elbow noodles cloaked in grainy, broken, under-salted four-cheese sauce. Unfortunate.

It turns out I'm a sides guy.

The mac arrived as part of Baby Blues' "Side Car," a platter of four fixins piled with moist cornbread, a nice option for vegetarians and stoned coeds alike. In total, there are 15 sides; I tried about half, and none but the greens (cream-kissed, nutmeg-scented spinach; bangin' collards braised with bacon, caramelized onions and stewed tomatoes) were much better than the macaroni. The chicken smoked rice, the cornmeal-fried okra, the mashed sweet potatoes — none were seasoned properly, lacking the salt-and-pepper basics. The partially mashed pintos, kidneys and blacks in the baked beans were pasty and needed some sweetness to balance out their overwhelming umami.

In all fairness, the pink-ringed meats that emerge from the 1-ton Southern Pride smoker in a cloud of applewood and hickory mist are the real stars of Baby Blues' menu. Though the greasy ropes of pulled pork tasted left over from the weekend, the other cuts on the "Blue Devil" (that's four meats and three sides) satisfied.

Rather than zero in on a single school of barbecue, Fischer's family of smokehouses — his siblings operate sister spots in Hollywood, San Fran and Venice Beach (they're from Newtown Square originally) — take the Lewis & Clark approach, traipsing through regions, collecting greatest hits. So there's smoke-suffused "Marion County" chicken, the aforementioned pulled pork in the Carolina style, salt-and-peppered Texas beef and Louisiana bayou seafood.

My plate came piled with smoked, grilled and sauced Marion chicken, an equally moist breast and leg; fat-laced chopped brisket in a puddle of Guinness braising liquid; and (my favorite) the 17-spice-rubbed Memphis ribs, bones flat as two-by-fours, surrounded by meat crusted in more bark than a redwood tree. That crunchy top layer, developed over six hours in the smoker, is the truth.

Sauces affect a squeeze-bottle skyline on each table: molasses-based sweet, Tabasco-based hot, mustard-based barbecue and the daunting six-chili XXX. Their sugar-and-spice levels were as fine-tuned as a Civil War-era banjo, the only constant being a lingering stagnant flavor. Stick to the pepper vinegar, a condiment as de rigueur as grits on Carolina tables. The potation of apple cider vinegar and sweet chilies sloshed around inside an old liter of Nikolai vodka capped with an easy-pour spout.

I tried a salad. I don't know why. The "BBQ chopped salad ... tossed in ranch dressing" was neither chopped nor tossed. Think romaine, a smattering of corn, roasted peppers, black beans and tomatoes and a swirl of outsourced dressing ladled on top with lunch-lady precision. The ranch drenched the upper greens, but left the underside naked. The bright coleslaw was a better effort, a crunchy foil for blocks of cakey cornbread topped with grilled shrimp and salty cotija in the "Suicide King" starter.

Silky smooth and not too sweet, the banana pudding is made in-house, a genuine article down to the Nilla Wafers, while Baby Blues outsources some other desserts to a New Jersey bakery. The wide wedge of key lime pie was as photogenic as a Food & Winecover, but one bite revealed something askew beneath the pretty surface: The custard was sour. At first, the pie's acidity and sweetness just seemed out of balance, but swiftly, the flavor careened into full-on fermented. Budding foot fetishist? Consider a test run with this pie before you commit.

Just to get the taste out of my mouth, I shoveled the house-made apple cobbler — cold, dull and not at all like a cobbler, really — then turned to drinks, but our glasses had been awaiting a refill for 15 minutes. Service here, while friendly, was as hot a mess as the mac 'n' cheese.

I brought the pie issue up to one of the waiters, a friendly dude who had been taking better care of us than our actual server. "That's so weird," he said, lifting the pie for closer inspection in the amber truck-stop light. "They were just delivered this morning." He sank the side of my fork — my fork — into the green custard, and it got midway to his mouth before he seemed to realize he was still out on the floor, dashing away with the offending dessert.

When I got the check, the pie wasn't on the bill. But it wasn't in the trash, either, and walking by the bar on the way out, I noticed staffers passing it around like a cheap ho. "Don't!" I wanted to shout, knocking the pie from their paws as they ate and debated its freshness. But it was too late. We'd all be paying for it in the morning.

(adam.erace@citypaper.net)

Baby Blues BBQ | 3402 Sansom St., 215-222-4444, babybluesbbq.com. Lunch and dinner served daily, 11:30 a.m.-midnight; bar till 1 a.m. Appetizers and salads, $3.75-$14.25; entrées, $8.75-$32.95; fixins (sides), $3.75; desserts, $4.95-$5.95.