Rub BBQ

Rub BBQ
1843 Light St.
Federal Hill, Baltimore
barbecue
410-244-5667
www.rubbbq.com
Cost: $$
Reservations: varies
Date of meal: September 3, 2007 (6pm)
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: On It

I sat at the bar at Rub for dinner on Labor Day. Rub is a bar and restaurant, where the restaurant tables surround the bar. When I was there it was fairly empty, but you could imagine the bar fills up on weekend nights. The decor is Texas barbecue meets sports bar (I counted three flat-screen TVs in a pretty small space), though its cleaner and more put together than this might suggest. To give an example, "napkins" are paper towels available on rolls at the tables, but the stands that hold these towels were chosen carefully with a horseshoe pattern that evokes the Texas cowboy thing. At the same time, there is the sleek and slightly industrial feel of a factory or warehouse conversion, which I suspect it was. There is an outdoor patio in the front, though this is not particularly scenic. It is worth noting that the location is a half-dozen blocks south of the Federal Hill action. To my eye, being on a non-commercial street gives makes it a bit less of a scene than other bars to the North. You wouldn't stumble into Rub from the bar next door (because there isn't one) but you would plan to meet a group of friends there.

Rub has roughly a dozen beers on tap (including two with the Rub brand) as well as margaritas and the usual full bar. I ordered their ribs ($13 for a half rack, $22 for a full rack, both with choice of two sides). Ribs were tender and fell right off the bones. They weren't dried out, and all of me (except my arteries, which are still angry with me) enjoyed the fatty goodness. Given the name of the place, I was surprised to find the ribs flavor not as intense as it could have been. It really needed barbecue sauce, which I wasn't necessarily expecting given, again, the name.

This brings me to my main beef (pork?) with the place, which I suspect will not happen to you. No one asked me what kind of barbecue sauce I wanted and didn't bring me any. I wasn't confident enough that there should be any (again, given the name) to ask; I didn't want to feel like an idiot for asking for sauce and being told "we have our special rub which is meant to take the place of barbecue sauce." (Everyone was very nice and not snooty, so this concern was probably unfounded.) I didn't realize I should have asked for (or better yet, been offered) barbecue sauce until I got home and found it on the menu. Please note that the ribs are a bit bland without barbecue sauce; the rub is too subtle to take the place of barbecue sauce.

Sauce mishap aside, service was great. The bartender was friendly and helpful. She recommended the cream spinach, which was solid but a bit of a disappointment given how much she talked it up. The mac-and-cheese was OK but also bland and not interesting. I regret not getting the sweet-potato fries, which the bartender recommended along with the cream spinach.

I liked the food at Rub quite a bit; I didn't absolutely fall in love with it. While I suspect I'll find a hole-in-the-wall joint with slightly better ribs, it will be tough to beat the combination of quality ribs with a fun, up-beat bar environment. This would be a great place to go with a group of 20-something friends for ribs and beer.

Update (9/6):
The whole sauce situation was helpfully cleared up for me by Xani at Black Coffee and a Donut. She sent me this picture from her recent visit (thanks Xani!):
The barbecue sauce was in front of me the whole time. This useful carriage was at the bar and on the tables; it was just turned away from me so I didn't know the back side (shown front here) had sauces. Arghh. Clearly I've been in the ivory tower too long because:

1. I don't get the real world well enough to spot basic necessities when they are right in front of me; and,
2. I know this enough to be afraid to ask for fear of tipping others off to my cluelessness.