It’s never too early for barbecue.
Breakfast at a barbecue joint? Yes, please. There couldn’t be a more perfect place than RJ’s Bob-Be-Cue Shack for Kelly and I to meet up with Jeff and Jill, in town from Manhattan for the weekend. Phil and Arika joined us, too, with Phil wearing a t-shirt made of equal parts awesome and nightmares.
The people at RJ’s are way friendly, and the restaurant is pretty welcoming. When you walk in, you’re greeted by a pig in a chef’s hat who appears to be a little slaphappy and quite possibly drunk. But hey, if I was a pig working in a barbecue joint, I’d be drinking too.Although there’s lots of tasty sounding stuff on the breakfast menu, I figured it was necessary to order based on whatever comes with the largest amount of smoked meat. That meant skipping over the Country Fried Steak & Eggs and the South of the Border Breakfast Burrito, which would have been contenders anywhere else.
Thus, I went with the Farm Hands Breakfast Platter ($7.95), as did Jeff, Phil and Kelly. It’s your choice of two out of pit ham, link sausages and smoked bacon, alongside two eggs, country taters, and biscuits and gravy. Considering that both the meat and gravy groups are represented, everything on the platter plus a diner-worthy cup black coffee adds up to a perfectly balanced breakfast, at least as far as I’m concerned. Eat your fruit garnish and you may even get some vitamins.Meanwhile, Arika ordered pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream. Hmmm. (To be fair, I think she was planning to gank some of Phil’s bacon.)
What happened next was the best -- our server brought over two plates of surprise cinnamon rolls. I am now firmly of the belief that every meal should start with surprise cinnamon rolls. I suppose after a while the cinnamon rolls would cease to be a surprise, but so long as they kept coming, I think we could all agree to fake it.
About a cup of coffee later, our breakfasts arrived. For my two meats, I got pit ham and smoked bacon -- and I can’t emphasize how ridiculously delicious the bacon is. It’s super-thick cut, comes out a deep rosy-caramel color, and every bite is full of super-smoky flavor.Only later did I realize the correct order would have been to get neither ham nor sausage -- but rather, double bacon. Seriously, I’ve been thinking about stopping back in just to get a side of bacon to go.
Using my ham to try both kinds of RJ’s sauce, I thought the original had a nice sweet taste, but preferred the peppery kick of the spicy variety. And while the biscuits and gravy weren’t the world’s greatest, with everything else on the Farm Hands Breakfast Platter, they were good enough as a side. Especially when paired with the bacon high I was on.
If there is one downside to hitting a barbecue joint before 10 a.m., it’s that you will reek of barbecue for the rest of the day. Actually, that’s not really a downside at all.
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5835 Lamar Avenue | Mission, KS 66202
I too dream of that tasty bacon. Like your first beer, it's hard to forget. I had no idea you could make bacon taste any more, well, bacon-y. But RJ's has found a way. Though my grandmother is pretty good at it too, as she fries her bacon in leftover bacon grease that she saves in a coffee can under the stove.
ReplyDelete-Jeff
I'm a big fan of RJ's breakfast. I was there saturday morning and finally decided on the breakfast burrito (after contemplating for a long time the first time I was there). It was huge ( http://twitpic.com/cdvvj ), and the sausage stuffed in there was smokey and delicious. The tortilla was really dry though. I'm afraid I'm going to become a regular there on Saturday mornings. If for no other reason than the awesome old time country music and their crispy breakfast 'taters.
ReplyDeleteTheir Bloody Mary's are pretty tasty too.
ReplyDeletehttp://twitpic.com/6qv2p