Barbecue: Texas, Tennessee and Pure California
Talk of the Town is the sight of the block. You can’t miss a blazing yellow building, as bright as a newly painted double line, on this stretch of Western Avenue just north of Exposition Boulevard.
The menu is said to be a mixture of Texas and Tennessee. The Texas part is easy to see: beef ribs, sliced brisket, banana pudding made with Nilla wafers. The Tennessee element is more subtle, but Talk of the Town does make barbecue spaghetti--spaghetti in a mixture of pasta sauce and barbecue sauce. It’s pretty good and it’s available both as an entree and as a side dish (it definitely beats the coleslaw and the Boston-type beans, even the potato salad, which is the kind flavored with a dash of pickle juice).
The barbecue sauce has an attractive homemade vinegar and tomato sauce tang. Needless to say, it comes with everything. Another thing all the meats have in common is that reddish layer that comes of many hours of smoking.
Despite Texas’ famous taste for beef barbecue, pork has the edge here. The pork rib special, half a rack, is tender and classically smoky. The beef ribs, rib tips and sliced beef are a bit on the chewy side, though everything goes down well with that snappy barbecue sauce.
There’s barbecued chicken too, of course, but Talk of the Town’s particular specialties are sausages and turkey. The pork sausage (chicken sausage is also available) has a great gamy edge and a definite jolt of hot pepper. You can also get a Louisiana specialty known as boudin, which is not what most people think of as sausage; it’s really a meaty sort of rice dish that happens to be smoked in a sausage casing. This one has a nice moist, dense texture.
The turkey wings are really a revelation, juicy, meaty and satisfying. You get three large wings to an order, awash in tangy hot sauce. The Texas partner in this enterprise, known to all merely as Hightower, clearly knows how good these wings are; they’re the basis of a lunch special called Hightower’s Favorite.
BE THERE
Talk of the Town, 3682 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 732-1214. Open noon-7 p.m. Monday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, noon-6 p.m. Sunday. No alcoholic beverages. Street parking. No credit cards. Lunch for two, food only, $8-$28.
What to Get: pork rib special, turkey wings, smoked boudin, barbecue spaghetti.
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Talk of the Town, with its Texas and Tennessee roots, draws on a rich barbecue tradition. The Outdoor Grill seems to be working outside tradition--which is, of course, the California tradition.
For one thing, the quaint architecture. Yes, the barbecue grill is outside the door, sheltered under the second story of this tiny building. You can eat inside on the ground floor or take an outside staircase up to that second floor and dine there exposed to the elements at stone-topped counters or tables. Think carefully before you ascend, because it can get breezy here, about 2 1/2 miles from the beach. (You get an entertaining view of cars emerging from the Handy J Car Wash.)
Here the barbecue sauce is well on the sweet side of sweet-sour, the tomato element tasting rather fresh and giving it the effect of a certain style of what we Americans call French dressing. You may want to add some to the chicken sandwich or the brisket sandwich (both served on something like a French roll), which are a little dry otherwise.
There’s a chain of barbecue places in L.A. that boasts that you don’t need teeth to chew their beef. The Outdoor Grill has a different philosophy; you do need teeth, but it’s not really work to chew the tri-tip either. It’s chewy in the way steak off the grill is chewy, or like the meat in a carne asada taco (the tri-tip and chicken can also be ordered in taco form).
If you aren’t totally wedded to the Southern view of barbecue, you can enjoy quite a few things there. Particularly the ribs, though they’d seem bizarre in the South. Both the beef and the pork ribs are wonderfully aromatic, crusted with sweet spices that give them a flavor almost like a Mexican mole poblano.
Tri-tip, chicken and ribs are the basic story here, but there is a turkey chili, in the style of a lot of California chilies--ground meat stewed with tomatoes, a little tart, a little hot and decidedly dosed with cumin.
The best of the sides is the coleslaw, which is of the poppy seed-flavored school. Add some of that sweet and sour barbecue sauce and you have a guilty pleasure to enjoy up on that breezy second floor.
BE THERE
The Outdoor Grill, 12630 1/2 Washington Place, Los Angeles, (310) 636-4745; fax 636-4747. Open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. No alcoholic beverages. Parking in designated places in Handy J Car Wash. Cash only. Lunch for two, food only, $5-$28.
What to Get: beef ribs, baby back ribs, tri-tip sandwich, coleslaw.
