Real Southern Barbecue

So after our failed attempts to get bbq twice from this so-called "bbq festival" in Myrtle Beach, we had a hankering for bbq but didn't know where to go. Thankfully I had just installed two free foodie apps on my iphone...Yelp and UrbanSpoon...that could help us out.

Based solely on the many glowing reviews we read, we set out on a journey to find this place simply called the Bar-B-Q House. They claimed to be the best bar-b-q on the beach. Hmm, that remains to be seen.  This place could be a total dump for all we know! But thats the risk you take on a food adventure.  So off we went!

Its certainly nothing fancy on the outside.  It looked just like any other run-of-the-mill fast food type joint.  And the inside wasn't much to speak of either but it was clean and comfortable. We took our seat and a friendly young Southern girl (complete with a cute little Southern accent), comes to greet us and take our drink orders.  Being in the south I have to order sweet tea which I love. Superking orders an UN-sweet tea at which everyone in the closest vicinity gives us strange and dirty looks because everyone knows there is only sweet tea in the south and anything less than that is blasphemy.  The drinks come in very unassuming styrofoam cups.

We order our entrees.  I go for the bbq smoked chicken plate.  Its a 1/4 chicken, smoked and covered with a sweet smoky bbq sauce.  It comes with hush puppies served with cinnamon butter and two sides...I chose baked beans and sweet potato fries.  I love the sweet bbq sauce and the chicken was just melt-in-your-mouth right off the bone.  The hush puppies were crisp on the outside and soft and warm on the inside. And cinnamon butter...oh, it doesn't get much better than that! I even dipped a few of my sweet potato fries in it. Yumm!

mmm, cinnamon butter!

Superking ordered the Big Daddy plate.  I love the name. Hilarious.  You get a choice of two meats.  Superking went with ribs and fried chicken. They specify that we will have to wait about 25 minutes for the fried chicken because they fry it up fresh as you order it! Superking wants to wait. And the wait was worth it! Perfectly crispy fried with juicy tender meat inside! There were also hush puppies, fried okra, and onion rings.  Even the fried okra was really delicious!

They even had available on the table four different house-made sauces to try.  Eastern...a blend of vinegar, red peppers, and spices.  South Carolina Mustard Sauce...traditional and tangy.  Lexington...a tomato-based sauce with vinegar and spices.  Their special House sauce...a traditional bbq sauce thats thick and sweet with a hint of spice.  We tried them all. They were all yummy on everything. Perfect to suit anyone's tastes.

I don't think there was one thing on our plates that wasn't fried! Except my baked beans I guess.  But by the end, everything was gone! Very simple atmosphere, very simple presentation (paper plates, plastic forks), but great great food! I have to say I think they really lived up to their claim of best bbq on the beach! I know I'd like to go back!

Failed BBQ and a Nacho Hippo

Superking and I just came back from a week's vacation in our beloved Myrtle Beach. We've been to that area so many times its like a second home to us. But one thing about Myrtle Beach that I must find fault in is that its virtually a foodie wasteland.  It reeks of boring chain restaurants and cheap buffets all of which produce mediocre food at best.  However there are a few gems in the area to be had if you're willing to search for them and take a little risk to try something new.  These next several blog posts will take you through our journey to locate some of these rare Myrtle Beach restaurant gems. A few of them I've blogged about before but they were written in retrospect as I hadn't started my food blog yet when we visited them last. Now you'll get to see a few of those in their full glory.

The Nacho Hippo...he is very hungry hungry.

We begin with our arrival to Myrtle Beach Saturday September 3rd. We got settled into our hotel room shortly after 3:00pm and headed straight out to the Market Common, a newer shopping area there reminiscent of our own Reston Town Center or the Village at Leesburg. We heard rumors that the weekend we were arriving there was to be a big BBQ festival there with over 60 BBQ vendors and you could purchase a wristband ticket for only $10 to sample any or all of these 60 vendors.  However when we arrived at the festival we quickly learned that it was not very organized as we had to walk all the way to the back of the event area before we reached the ticket table.  There were no signs with directions at all.  When we finally reached the ticket table we were told they had sold out of the tickets and the sample BBQ just about 2:45pm.

We were beyond disappointed and irritated at the poor planning of this event to run out of BBQ only three hours into a nine hour BBQ event. And even though the festival continued to the next day, the sampling was only for Saturday and on Sunday there were only about 4 of the said 60 vendors that were supposed to be there.  It was the BBQ festival that was not.

lots of people...

and lots of cars...no bbq.

However our disappointment quickly turned to hope as we looked for other dinner options for our first night in Myrtle Beach. Also located at the Market Common was a new restaurant we were already looking forward to trying called Nacho Hippo.

all the chairs were different and painted many bright colors

Nacho Hippo is a Mexican bar/restaurant with an open air eclectic them.  While they do serve burritos and tacos and quesadillas, nachos are their claim to fame.  So of course we both had different kinds of nachos. There are eight varieties of nacho plates (some with titles rated PG) plus the option to create your own.

very clever menu

I chose the Day After nachos.A huge pile of chips layered with chili, seasoned taco beef, black beans, jalapenos (though I opted to skip those), melted cheese, crema (which is a fresh cream similar to creme fraiche), queso fresco (similar to a white farmers cheese), lettuce, and pico de gallo. It was super tasty and super filling!

Superking chose the Fire in the Hole nachos. Crispy chips covered with chili, pepperjack cheese, jalapenos, mango habanero salsa, lettuce and pico de gallo. Talk about spicy! Though we all know by now how much Superking likes the hot stuff so it didn't even phase him.  Both of these nachos plates could've easily been shared they were so huge!

Uncle Julios Frog Legs

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  We had just left church, all our family had made other plans without us, and we were hungry.  What to do? We drove to Reston Town Center to have lunch at Uncle Julios.  I had a craving for nachos. Or at least some good melty nacho cheese.

Of course yummy crisp tortilla chips were served with some spicy salsa and a side of queso! Yumm! As we peruse through the menu, Superking noticed they have frog legs listed. Of course he had to get them!

They were pretty delicious! As they say, they did taste a lot like chicken but there were some differences too. They had a smokey grilled flavor and were smaller than chicken legs but very juicy. They were served with rice and beans, salsa fresca, and warm tortillas.

I , on the other hand went for something a little more pedestrian but just as yummy.  Camarones Brochette. Thats grilled shrimp wrapped in bacon and stuffed with melted Monterey Jack cheese and jalapenos. They were also very juicy and smokey.  A little spicy; though I picked most of the jalapenos out there was still a little jalapeno juice in there. The rice and beans were really good too. The beans are called frijoles a la charra.  They were a little spicy and more soupy than regular refried beans.

It was a unique and delicious lunch!

Salsa Steak Tacos

Of course everyone knows that one of the great things about summer is all the wonderful produce you can get and all the lovely fresh dishes you can make with that produce.  Last week, Superking and I combined such great fresh veggies with one of our new favorites pastimes...grilling.

We had picked up a couple nice steaks from the Organic Butcher and were trying to decide what to do with them when I remembered I had picked up some ingredients to make fresh salsa.  Bingo! Salsa Steak Tacos!

Though technically I think what I make is more like pico de gallo or salsa fresca because its more chunky fresh veggies rather than a tomatoey sauce used as a dip. Pico de gallo usually consists of tomatoes, onion, and a mixture of chilis or peppers. 

I usually like to use Roma tomatoes or tomatoes-on-the-vine because they have a nice fresh tomato flavor though you can use just about any kind of tomato as long as its fresh and still firm. Slice and dice each tomato into small chunks. Depending on how much you want to make, 3 or 4 small tomatoes makes plenty for  2 people to share over a couple meals. 

Superking and I love red onion. I feel like we use it in almost every recipe.  It adds a little spicy flavor when its diced up fresh which is a nice addition to a salsa, especially if you don't want a lot of heat but you do want a lot of flavor. 

Chilis or peppers...you can use whatever kind you want.  I personally can't handle a lot of heat so I stick to the Anaheim peppers, sometimes a little green bell pepper, or poblanos.  All these peppers add a good peppery flavor without a lot of heat.  The Anaheim are probably my favorite.  And its the closest thing to a hot pepper that I can actually enjoy (but they're not hot at all).  Sometimes I'll get a few hot ones for Superking to add to his own portion of salsa since he likes the heat...jalapenos and fresnos are good if want a little heat but still want to enjoy the other flavors. If you're just really into the hotness and don't care about flavor but want to burn all your tastebuds off, go for habaneros, scotch bonnets, or (God forbid) the ghost peppers.  Any way you slice it, whatever kind of peppers you use is up to your personal tastes and heat-tolerance.  Use one or two or six.

Once my three main ingredients are chopped and diced, I chop a few big clumps of cilantro. I love cilantro! Its aroma is just intoxicating and invigorating.  Another important ingredient for this recipe is lime juice. I usually get a couple limes, and squeeze a half of one (or sometimes a whole one) into the salsa and save the rest to squeeze over my finished dish just before I take a bite. Then I add a sprinkling of salt and pepper and cumin over the veggies and stir it all up.  Heres where you get to do a taste test to see if its seasoned properly and has the right ratio of tomato to onion to pepper to lime etc. And then take a big whiff...the spices, the herbs, the cumin, the peppers...it should smell amazing like you just want to dive right in the bowl!

We pulled our steaks off the grill and sliced them thinly before putting the meat onto a soft warm flour tortilla.  We topped the steak with a couple spoonfuls of our freshly made pico de gallo salsa and some finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese, maybe another squeeze of lime and a cilantro leaf to make it look pretty. Voila! Simple spicy salsa steak tacos!

Wild Boar and Antelope

Nope. This isn't about a trip to the zoo nor are we going on a safari. This is about dinner.

Whenever we get the chance we take a drive over to the Organic Butcher of McLean. They have so many unique things to offer that you can't find anywhere else. We even bought a big lamb roast for our Easter dinner earlier this year from there.

Recently we visited there and purchased Wild Boar and Bacon Sausages. Brought them home and cooked them up in the frying pan and served them as sausage and pepper subs.  Chopped and lightly sauteed some green peppers and red onion and even sliced a couple jalepenos for Superking (I can't handle the hot stuff).  Melted some spicy salsa jack cheese on a toasted sub roll and sliced the cooked sausage into lovely little medallions.  Delish! Super savory, slightly gamey with a sweet smokiness of the bacon mixed in. Yumm!

On another visit we wanted to pick up some ground meat to make burgers.  "Whaddya got?" we asked the butcher. "Elk,buffalo, ostrich?"  "No," he replied. "But we do have antelope."  Wide-eyed Superking and I looked at each other.  "We'll take that!"

So he brings out a couple packages of antelope burger and we promptly take it home and fashion some nice burger pattys out of it and cook it up. Antelope is a very lean meat similar to venison. The flavor is kind of a cross between venison and beef.  It was very flavorful, also slightly gamey, yet I think we might mix it with another meat next time to give it a little more fat.  Nevertheless, I would eat it again exactly as we had it as well.

We topped our antelope burgers with some melted sharp cheddar cheese, crisp arugula, and some freshly home-made pico de gallo salsa (for another blog post). What a beautiful colorful burger it made!!

Summer Grillin'!

Superking and I recently bought ourselves a little charcoal grill. Up til now, if we wanted to grill something, we would hop down the street to my in-laws' house with our food and bogart their grill, then run back home before the food got too cold.  Superking finally broke down and got us our own. Its a Weber and its small, not too expensive, but its perfect for us.  And we've been grillin' up a storm every chance we get!!

The first night we fired it up, we got a nice tender filet and some raw shrimp.  We've never cooked raw shrimp ourselves before.  But we marinated them...half in a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce and half in this creamy Greek marinade with lots of spices...and put them on skewers.  The filet, prepared with nothing but salt and pepper. We also tossed a few poblano peppers on the grill too.

The steak was perfectly tender and juicy and the shrimp plump and pink with a slight smokiness. The peppers had a lovely char on the skin. Everything was great and so easy!

 And every time we fire up the grill, we leave it burning for a while after dinner so we can roast marshmallows to make smores!! Superking asked me after about the second or third time of doing this, if the smores were going to continue to be an after-dinner-grilling-tradition.  I'm like, uh heck yeah!! What kind of question is that??