Mothballs and wood smoke are a strange combination of aromas. That's what I smell when I sit down at Reid's Barbecue restaurant down in Sunnyside. I think the mothball smell is coming from the floor-length red curtains on the window a few feet from my table. The long curtains are pulled tight so the place stays dark and cool.
Daniel Kramer
Ribs, links and the occasional smile: Eddie Reid of
Reid's Barbecue.
Details
Order of ribs: $7.50
Pound of ribs: $12.50
Sliced beef sandwich: $3.75
Link sandwich: $3.50
Onion and pickles: 50 cents
4101 Clover, 713-734-9326. Hours:
9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays,
Tuesdays and Thursdays through
Saturdays.
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The mothball smell reminds me of the cedar chest where my mother kept her cheerleader sweater, my dad's military uniforms and old photos and letters. The conjured memory seems oddly appropriate to this place. Reid's Barbecue feels like it's been tucked away in mothballs for about a third of a century.
The wood parquet pattern on the linoleum floors is wearing off. The menu hanging on the wall has been slow-smoked to a light brown. Inside the old wall clock above the bar, the Budweiser Clydesdales have been frozen midstride since Reid's opened for business in 1968. In the middle of the bar sits a plastic plant in the kind of squat ceramic planter I remember from my childhood.
My lunch date is running late, so I'm sitting by myself at the table. There's another handwritten copy of the menu, photocopied and displayed in two sheets inside a Coors Light Plexiglas table display. But the illustrated Coors bottle obscures half of the writing. So I slide the two sheets of paper out and lay them on the table where I can read them.
When the swinging door to the kitchen opens, Eddie Reid appears in a plume of meat-scented wood smoke. She's an older, small black woman with metal-framed glasses. Reid grew up in the Third Ward. She opened the place with her husband, James Reid, who passed away nine years ago. Eddie runs the place now, along with her son James, who learned to smoke meat from his father and has worked at the restaurant since the beginning.
The only other customers in the place are nearly through eating. Eddie Reid walks over to where I'm sitting, looks at the sheets of menu on the table and frowns.
"Did you take those out of there?" she asks.
"Yes...just to read them," I reply. Then I add meekly, "I'll put them back."
"I wish you would," she says.
Although my friend isn't here yet, I would rather go ahead and order for her than risk the wrath of the lady now standing poised with pen over order pad, waiting for me to make up my mind.
"An order of ribs, a sliced beef sandwich, a pint of potato salad, a pint of beans, pickles and onions, two Cokes and pie if you have any," I say as I restore the menu to its proper place in the Coors Light display.
"I didn't bake any pies today," Eddie says, writing it all down and shuffling off. A few other customers come in and stand at the bar to order food to go.
Our barbecue arrives shortly after my lunchmate sits down. But the food doesn't come on plates -- it's all tightly wrapped in brown paper.
"Do you think she's trying to tell us something?" my friend whispers. We unwrap the food and spread it out on the table, and Eddie returns with some napkins.
"You're going to eat it here?" she says with surprise.
"Yes, ma'am," I answer.
"You should have told me; I would have served it to you," she says, seeming genuinely sorry.
The brisket and ribs are smoked in the classic East Texas African-American style, so that the meats are very moist and tender with a powerful smoky aroma. And in keeping with the style, everything is drenched in a barbecue sauce that's a tad sweet for Anglo palates such as ours.
The mashed potato salad is homemade and seasoned with a little pickle juice. The pinto beans are plain. The "sandwich" is actually a generous pile of falling-apart brisket and a couple of slices of white bread. Pickles and onions are 50 cents extra. You assemble your own sandwiches. That way they don't get all soggy.
"Is that red oak you have stacked up out back?" I ask Eddie Reid. She shoots me a dismissive glance.
"There's no red oak back there. We cook with white oak and hickory," she says.
The brisket is delicious, though it's not served in neat slices. Barbecue cook-off judges look for deep smoke rings and uniform slices in brisket cooking contests. And that's the culinary aesthetic taught in barbecue seminars and cook-off judging classes -- which is one reason so few blacks participate in barbecue cook-offs.
"That's the difference between white and black barbecue," says Houston artist and Fifth Ward barbecue fan Bert Long. "Blacks cook everything to death." At Goode Co., every piece of meat is served in a perfect slice, he says. At black barbecue joints, they don't mind serving you a messy pile of tender meat.
My lunchmate has devoured four ribs with uncharacteristic abandon. I reach over and grab a couple "tender bones" before she eats them all.
"Sorry if I got carried away," she says. "These are really good."
