No sooner do you place your order at the counter at LJ's BBQ than you realize how serious these folks are about helping visitors to enjoy their home-cooked food. There's a roll of rough paper towels on each table for use as napkins and a help-yourself bucket of extra sauce for those slow-cooked ribs and chicken. Customers will probably need both, because the sauce is so tasty you want some in every bite, and the barbecue is so good, you just have to get down and dirty with it.

The intro at LJ's consists of a winding monologue performed by Stephanie, the self-proclaimed "counter wench," as she explains the difference between sides and extras, half and full racks for ribs, and quarters and halfs for chicken. The half-rack has approximately seven ribs ($10.95 with two sides), the full, twice as many ($17.95). The chicken can be ordered as a quarter dark ($5.25), a quarter white ($6.25) or a half ($8.95), each with two sides.

The choices for sides consist of potato salad, macaroni salad, BBQ baked beans, or coleslaw. Dinner platters also come with homemade pickles and cornbread. The extras are candied yams, macaroni and cheese, red beans and rice ($1.50 each), or collards in small, medium, and large sizes ($1.50-$6.50). There's also pulled pork ($4.95) or BBQ beef brisket ($5.95) sandwiches, and pork-and-beef chili, light on the beans ($2.50-$3.75). A seemingly simple menu becomes fraught with choices about how to try everything at this cash-only, BYOB establishment.

Bill opts for the full rack with coleslaw and baked beans; I went for the half chicken with collards and macaroni and cheese. Bill exclaims over the amount of ribs, and vows to only eat half of them -- a promise he quickly breaks. He's amazed at the meatiness of the St. Louis-style ribs, which, as co-owner Linda Jane "LJ" Watson explains, come from a lower part on the hog's ribcage. She also details the cooking process, from spices and herbs dry-rubbed onto the meat, which is then smoked for two to 12 hours over apple and hickory wood, to the "wet mop" of sauce applied before the meat is finished on the grill. Our smeared hands testify to the tender, delicious results.

The necessity of the paper towels is even more evident if you want to intersperse your carnivorous frenzy with tastes of the sides, for which your greasy fingers need to be able to grasp a plastic fork. The macaroni and cheese is baked with buttered breadcrumbs, sending waves of comfort food nostalgia up and down the spine. The coleslaw and baked beans produce similar sensations, with the sweet mayo creaminess of the slaw and an earthy, tomatoey complement to the barbeque in the beans. The collards are long-simmered with bits of pork to enhance their natural smokiness. The candied yams, in a take-home version, were also quite wonderful.

The bread-and-butter style pickles, crisp and spicy, are produced during a 24-hour process that LJ regularly repeats to offer a fresher taste than bottled pickles. The cornbread, lighter than any of the Southern versions that I've had, is good in its own right, although unable to sop up the pot liquor of the collards.

Linda makes the cornbread and pies, but her husband, Bernie, (who once cooked at Castle Hill) does the rest. Though he grew up in South Providence, his family hails from Arkansas and Virginia, as do the barbecue and veggie recipes. Linda tries many pie, cake, and cobbler variations, and the treats during our visit were apple-crumb, sweet potato, and pecan pies. The latter two came home with us, and despite the lack of homemade crusts, were terrific.

The walls at LJ's are painted in two shades of mustard with barbeque-red trim. Bernie and Linda's collection of old 45s is well represented by three dozen framed covers of stars from the '50s and '60s, such as Elvis and Aretha, as well as such fleeting performers as the Cadets and the Contours.

Conversation with the staff at LJ's is as friendly as the food. Stephanie tells us she's known Bernie since their freshman days at URI, and after several years in the corporate world, she loves waitressing, because where else could she "get a hug every time I come in and a thank you when I leave?" Where else, indeed? Being a paying customer at LJ's can make you feel just as appreciated.

Two final tips: don't miss the popular pulled-pork, among the best ever, in Bill's opinion, and ask the staff to warm the pie, to bring out its flavor. Then, as the sign says at LJ's, "Eat it 'n Beat It!"

Issue Date: December 7 -13, 2001