Dinner Belle: The meat is smokin' - and the hushpuppies rock too

On my first visit to Bib's Downtown, a stout man in a streaked apron leaned out the kitchen door, reaching for a few hickory logs.

On my second visit, I rubber-necked a bit by the open back of a minivan, where wood was stacked like Lincoln logs.

Your nose won't tell you that you're at a barbecue joint when you open Bib's door. Usually, I'd take it as a bad sign that I had to sniff hard to pick up any trace of smoke.

But your mouth will tell you, and so will your eyes.

You can spot owner Mark Little's main tool, a fire-engine red smoker, from Bib's front counter. It's about the size of an oven, and the ventilation in that kitchen must be something else.

Little makes a point of calling his meats "smoked" instead of barbecue. That's to keep us open-minded. "It's not Eastern nor Western," the take-out menu proclaims. "It's Bestern!"

But there's undeniably some influence here from all types and varieties, from across this United States of Barbecue, in Slow Cooked Meat We Trust.

After all, beef brisket's roots are in Texas. And Bib's pulled pork tastes more like some barbecue I've had in Memphis than anything I've had in North Carolina -- though it's still short on sauce, like the best Tarheel 'cue. Restraint lets the flavor of the meat shine through.

To confuse things, Bib's ribs are like nothing I've had in a restaurant anywhere in a long time. They're exceptional -- succulent and rich, coated ever so lightly with a spicy-sweet sauce, with bits of tender salty fat and sweet pork easing off the bone with every bite.

Even the mustard barbecue sauce that tastes like a mix of honey mustard (though zapped with spice) shows shades of Columbia, S.C., Maurice's BBQ, and his famous golden-yellow chopped pork.

Self-taught pit-master Little opened Bib's with two partners -- his son-in-law, Ricky Seamon, and a friend, Robert Moreau -- in December. Little has a meat pedigree -- he says that his grandfather and father owned a meat market downtown in the 1920s and '30s.

Little's first career was in commercial art, but he says he always had a catering business on the side. He can recall the first hog he cooked, a wild boar on a Sarasota, Fla., beach in 1979.

He started going around to area festivals with his cooker in 2004, and that business has grown into Bib's, where he says he does all the cooking.

It's not easy to win Southerners over with barbecue. We've seen a lot of meat, and we have a lot of opinions. It takes something special. And we're probably a little jaded about hushpuppies, too. So allow me to continue.

Bib's smoked sausage has the garlicky, smoky quality of good kielbasa, but it's juicier, with crackled skin.

Smoke also pervades slices of pork tenderloin (probably the least flavorful of the meats), chicken, turkey and the brisket.

Ah, the brisket. It's really good -- slowly-cooked sliced beef that falls apart with a nudge of your plastic fork, bits of brown charred crust clinging to the meat's edges and a thin puddle of juicy sauce underneath. I don't want to take sides in the barbecue wars. Pigs can be tasty creatures. But what did Texans do to deserve this?

All of this makes it hard to decide which meat is best. It's good that Bib's has plates where you can select more than one. Now, how to choose? Smoked sausage and brisket was a good combination; then again, that neglects the pulled pork. The truly carnivorous could get a plate with all three. Maybe you should share it. Maybe not.

I don't feel as greedy about the sides. Cole slaws, which come in white and red varieties, are too sweet and chopped too small for my taste, but any barbecue lover who loves standard-issue Lexington-style slaw will probably think Bib's is just fine. Me? I like more crunch and tang, even if it's not traditional.

There's more thought put into the mayonnaise-based potato salad. The potatoes are baked, Little says, then cut with the peels on, and they taste correspondingly sturdier than grocery-store deli-counter variety. The macaroni and cheese, well, it's OK. And that goes for green beans and French fries coated in a spice mixture that reminds me of Bojangles' rather than anything new.

Skip dessert -- banana pudding and cherry cobbler are cloying. The latter tastes like a wet sponge plopped on top of canned pie filling.

The truth is, though, they all fall short compared to the hushpuppies -- gumball-sized, crunchy on the outside, moist within, a thick cornmeal-specked crust giving way to a peppery interior. If you're going to put something fried in your mouth, this is what it should taste like. I know I was going on about the meat, but it's still January, a month of renewal and resolutions. Resolve to eat some of these.

Atmosphere and service? Let me wipe my mouth.

With orange and yellow paint, and tall windows, the former auto-service building has a second life as a sunny, open-room dining room. A window seat runs around one edge. Transparent, beehive-shaped lamps follow the zigzagged pattern of the ceiling, echoing the modern-yet-mid-century-yet-industrial vibe of the building's exterior. And there are flat-screened TVs -- can we ever escape them? -- a contrast to the generic barbecue joint-esque chairs and tables, each capped with a roll of paper towels.

Bib's sprawling menu invites questions, and even if you're an amateur barbecue sociologist, you're going to have them when you spot the big blackboard list above the open kitchen.

I asked the woman taking orders if the mustard sauce (one of three available on the side) was similar to South Carolina's. I asked her if the red slaw was anything like Lexington's -- you know, that barbecue-smoke-shrouded city that's a mere 30 minutes away?

"It's homemade," she insisted, over and over. We get it. But people who like barbecue like to talk about it, chew the fat and contrast and compare, not get put off for asking questions. Barbecue inevitably equals controversy. It shouldn't spill into customer service.

It's the little things that ruffle me, that take away from the wonder of the meat. I don't care that the service isn't at the table -- you order at the counter and a server delivers your food.

But the silverware is plastic, and the plates are disposable. The beer selection is ... terrible. Domestic macro-brews? Bib's makes a point of serving just North Carolina wines. We make fine beer in this state. Let's see it represented.