R.U.B. a Dub Dub

Stupid deadlines at work preventing me from updating my precious food blog! Luckily, all the stress made my body finally give out, and now I'm home sick, bored out of my mind. I'm too sick to even cook anything, although I'm thinking I may have the strength to bake some pumpkin bread later. Mmmmm. Pumpkin bread.

Anyhoo, I'll take this snot-filled opportunity to catch up on my recent culinary adventures. Two weekends ago (I know, I know. I said I've been crazy-busy at work), I had to run up to Chelsea to run a few work-related errands. Now, before you scream that I do too much for work, this was actually to do something nice for a coworker, so it wasn't TECHNICALLY work. Just work-related. Q and I picked up the Best Of issue of New York Magazine in hopes of finding a tasty morsel for lunch. Q is a good ol' midwestern boy, and I just plain like to eat, so barbeque was a lovely compromise. The magazine mentioned that R.U.B. was a decent place, and it happened to be right by my errand. Oh, how the stars align!



R.U.B. BBQ (standing for Righteous Urban Barbeque) had a really chill vibe inside. It was pretty empty, so we had pretty much the whole back section to ourselves. They had a mix of the Beatles and the White Stripes (dated enough not to be pretentious and hipstery) blaring. We weren't prepared to tackle the massive "Down Home Pig Pick'n," the $90 feast, so we just stuck with sammiches. What a sammich it was.



I had the pulled pork sandwich. The picture is a bit deceptive as it tends to focus on the Wonderbread-type bun, but the innards were soooo good. The pork wasn't drowning in sauce like most pulled meat sandwiches, but it was incredibly flavorful and tender. Mmmm. Just thinking about it almost makes me feel better. Nope. Still sick.



We got a side of Hushpuppies, because I'm a sucker for anything called a puppy. My prior experience with hushpuppies are the flavorless ones that you get from Long John Silver. These were far better. They sorta tasted like the cornmeal exterior of a tamale. Yum. I don't know why they came with packets of butter though. I mean, I'm not a hushpuppy connoisseur in the least, but they seem more apropos with ketchup. Maybe you eat them with butter like cornbread? Does anyone out there have hushpuppy experience? I'm in the dark with this one.

So that was my R.U.B. experience. It was relatively inexpensive. I'd say pricewise it's comparable to the ubiquitous BBQ chain of restaurants in NYC (one is actually right across the street), and it's lightyears better. The only thing that was lacking was the beer selection, but they had Blue Point, so that's not too bad. Plus, when you're giving yourself a coronary with yummy bbq, water is a nice way to wash it down.