Cruising for ‘Cue

Barbecue is less a food than an obsession, and certain people who think 20 minutes is too far to drive for really great Thai food think nothing of hitting half a dozen far-flung barbecue stands in a single afternoon. With Carl’s Bar-B-Q gone, the pioneering Mr. Jim (though not his namesake restaurants) in a better world now, and a certain Southside rib stand suddenly better known for an alleged sex-slave scandal than for its excellent hot links, it seemed a good time a couple of Saturdays ago to find my friend Carl (no relation) and make the rounds.

Big Daddy’s “Q” House is a sleepy new take-out on the edge of a Baldwin Hills strip mall, a couple of guys playing dominoes out front and a gleaming AQMD-approved smoker in back, one small table, the kind of place that does a lot of delivery orders. The walls are covered with photographs of friends and neighbors lining up for ribs. Friends tell me that there is no actual Big Daddy, though the restaurant’s logo seems to picture one; the place is really owned by a woman. Maybe Big Mama’s “Q” House didn’t have the same cachet.

The main currency at Big Daddy’s is the Chicago rib, though in fact there may be nothing like it in Chicago: barbecued pork ribs--good barbecued pork ribs; chewy, crusty, blackened with smoke, the kind where the meat peels off the bone in long strips nearly the consistency of jerky--heaped over a boxful of crinkle-cut French fries, and topped in turn with a great sluice of barbecue sauce, thick and vinegary. The sauce soaks into the potatoes, leaving some of the edges crisp, others soft, and the fries support the sauce’s intensity in a way the traditional slices of Wonder Bread do not.

Both the fries and the ribs are too hot to eat at first without burning your fingers--hot enough, in fact, to melt the tines of a plastic fork, and spicy enough to sear the roof of your mouth . . . in the languages of barbecue, this is a fine thing. In other words, Chicago rib is a barbecue variation on the venerable Angeleno tradition of chili fries, but with ribs on top.

Carl and I are generally against the idea of innovation in barbecue--though we both seem to remember a spectacular coleslaw-based sandwich at Warren’s in Ladera Heights that was called something like “Cleveland-style barbecue”--but we are in agreement on Chicago rib. As Robert Schumann said the first time he heard a piece by Brahms, “Hats off, gentlemen--a genius.”

Mere mention of Warren’s prompts a swing down to the Ladera Heights restaurant, where we forget to try the Cleveland sandwich, but with our ribs (a little flabby), and chicken boudin (a trifle under-spiced), we have the best lemonade and potato salad we’ve ever had at a barbecue place.

We cut over to the Vermont Avenue branch of Mr. Jim’s to see if the beef ribs are still up to snuff--they are--and on the way have superbly smoky small-end ribs at a new place, Hardin’s, on Slauson, and some indifferent barbecued chicken from a great-smelling barrel barbecue set up outside the nursery school of an AME church.

We consider heading down to Jay Bee’s on the outskirts of Compton or Mr. Joe’s in Long Beach, but make the Crenshaw run instead--Leo’s and Woody’s and Phillips--and end up tearing open our booty at a picnic table in Leimert Park. We are not particularly hungry at this point, but we find things to admire in all the barbecue, especially Woody’s coarse hot links and the lean, burnished snap of Phillips’ pork ribs. Our fingernails are crusted with sauce; our lips are stained a semi-permanent orange; even the dogs in the park are looking at us funny. We smell like wild boars who have been grazing on garlic and cumin seed. And we are happy.

* Big Daddy’s “Q” House 3623 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 292-2283. Open Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to midnight; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Cash only. Take-out and delivery only. Dinner for two, food only, $12-$18.