Ribs And Chicken Combo At RG's BBQ Grill

Ribs & chicken from RG's BBQ Grill

The chicken may cost a few dollars more at RG's BBQ Grill than your supermarket rotisserie display, but you should check the Laurel joint for takeout because you get their sauce as part of the deal.

Takeout can be an important tool when we don't have time to cook, but I try to take out wisely because it can get pricey fast.  My newest find has been been the chicken-and-ribs platter from RG'S BBQ Grill in Laurel because it's easily three or four meals if you extend it out.

RG's looks like a shack on U.S. 1, but its kitchen tastes like it has ambition.  They make their own sauces, their own pickles, some absolutely delicious sides like greens, beans, and corn bread.  I have already raved about a special like the lamb, but the basics shine just as well.

For about $20, I buy a half chicken and half rack of ribs.  They're both moist, flavorful meat coated in RG's zesty sauce.  While I wait, I fill up two or three more small containers of the sauce.  I split between mild and medium.  The medium is zesty enough that I have left the spicy sauce to the true heat seekers.

Either way, the platter delivers.  The first meal is easy because you get two side dishes.  So dine down on greens, corn bread and maybe most of the ribs.  Then cut up the chicken to pack for lunch.  We get two big lunches if I package chicken with some other leftovers -- a little rice or vegetables, maybe just some cut up vegetables.

A little leftover can even be extended into a fourth meal.  Maybe the risotto with rib meat like I made from Gourmet Griller's earlier this winter.  Maybe a barbecued chicken salad sandwich if I reserve a few ounces of the breast meat.

I have options because RG's BBQ Grill does such a good job.  It is worth a stop and few extra dollars because that meat blows away anything you could grab off the heat trays at a supermarket.  The sauce is my favorite around, and you can just taste the complexity and the care that they put into it.  It's so good that I need to quote Todd Kliman so that I don't just plagiarize him:

[T]he sauce is a pitch-perfect balance of tanginess, sweetness and heat. That sauce is so addicting, you probably will end up forgiving the drier patches of an otherwise tasty smoked chicken and want to either pour it over everything else or even, as my friend said, drink it plain.

This is restaurant food that you're just lucky enough to take home in clamshell tray.  You can take home the ribs and chicken and make them your own.

RG"s BBQ Grill has tables so you can eat there.  It's counter service.  Very casual, very friendly.  Any other great takeout that you recommend?  I'm in the market for weeknight help.

Barbecued Lamb & Baked Beans At RG's BBQ Cafe

Lamb shank with mac and baked beans

Go to RG's BBQ Cafe with small expectations and great hope.

I don't want to oversell the small barbecue spot on U.S. 1 in Laurel.  But I went in for takeout, and I came out with two-thirds of a dinner that could sit proudly on any restaurant around town.

Barbecued lamb with sides of baked beans and macaroni and cheese.  I got a long bone with tender, moist meat on one end, surrounded by a pool of the most amazing sauce.  The meat was rich and tender, glazed where the sauce that firmed under the heat.  But it's the sauce that said I was eating from a professional kitchen, even if it was a tiny one.

A smoky tomato sauce that Todd Kliman describes better than I can.  (See below.)  I just know that I stood up half-way through eating the meat to defrost and lightly toast two slices of Wegmans sourdough bread from the freezer.  I used them to just eat sauce.  Then I finished with lamb.

RG's took over the former Bar-B-Que House on the strip of U.S. 1 that runs past thrift shops and low motels on the way into PG County.  But the Bar-B-Que House is 100% Howard County, my friends.

RG is Robert Gadsby, a guy who has been a high-end restaurant chef and who has brought high effort to even counter service and barbecue.  Notice the television on the Food Network, and the Baltimore Sun sections hanging by the door -- orderly and clean, waiting for customers to read while they wait.

The lamb came with a choice of two sides, and they're generous containers that warrant a $14 dinner.  My baked beans were as delicious as the collard greens that I ate on my first visit.  Again, they were tender and full of flavor -- even though they didn't have the nuggets of meat that have always been the key when beans stood out in the past.  These beans were just talent.  Tender, earthy beans cooked with a sauce that I know I couldn't pull off on my own.

Not everything is perfect, but even the drops make me want to go back again.  RG's macaroni and cheese was bland.  Not bad.  Just a chef trying something that didn't work for me.  I pushed half the container away because it just didn't live up to the lamb or beans, but I was already thinking that I'll try the onion rings on my next visit.

If you find crowds when you visit, don't be surprised.  Todd Kliman of the Washingtonian reviewed RG's BBQ Cafe in the current edition.  He praised the food.  He and others have noted inconsistencies -- like Kliman's night when the beans tasted purchased or a night when my friend's table waited 40 minutes for half their orders.  Kliman also has a professional description that captures the sauce that sent me for white bread to sop it up:

The chef produces three variations of his basic formula—mild, spicy, and hot. They elude easy classification. Gadsby has taken the signal characteristics of the various barbecue meccas and blended them into a sauce that tastes all at once of North Carolina (sharp), Texas (smoky), and Memphis/Kansas City (sweet and tomatoey). No one trait dominates. It’s a condiment that could probably make cardboard taste good.

Overall, I recommend people trying out RG's BBQ Cafe.  Gadsby is definitely trying something special, and you can try ribs, pulled pork, pit beef, hot dogs and specials like a bacon-wrapped quail.  There are honest barbecue fights to pick -- does he have a smoker? should ribs really fall off the bone? -- but Gadsby's kitchen makes for something special on U.S. 1.

If Laurel is too far, there is good barbecue around the county.  Kloby's Smokehouse is my local, and the "old and dirty" wings are among my favorite dishes around.  I wish Kloby's sides were as large or unusual as RG's.  At lunch time, you can go even-more-basic than RG's with a roadside barbecue from Dave's near the Savage MARC station.

Link: RG's BBQ Cafe on Wong Eats

The new RG's BBQ Cafe got another write-up on the Wong Eats blog -- with raves for pulled pork, a fried fish po' boy, and more.

Check out the Wong Eats post for more reasons to check of this new barbecue place on U.S. 1 in Laurel.  Speciality dogs where a half-smoke gets topped with lettuce, tomato and collard greens.  Ribs, bacon-wrapped quail.  There are pictures.  You need to check this place out.

The Wong Eats blog hits up spots all around the DC area.  Check out the Wong review of Bonchon in Ellicott City.

Link: The Washingtonian Is Eating In Laurel

Todd Kliman of the Washingtonian ran an online chat today, and he started with his standard opening:  "Where am I eating now?"  The answer: Laurel.

RG's BBQ Cafe, Laurel

Let me get the key criticism out of the way first: The ribs come off too easily from the bone. That's not a small thing if you're one of the barbecue mad, of course, and it nagged at me all night after eating here, because the pork itself has the requisite lusciousness and the sauce is a pitch-perfect balance of tanginess, sweetness and heat. . . .

Click here for the entire chat.   Then check out our local critics -- the 2 Dudes -- writing about Red, Hot & Blue in Laurel as well.

First Thoughts: RG's BBQ Cafe in Laurel

Spare ribs, collards and corn bread

You have a high-end chef trying to lay low in Laurel -- dishing up barbecue that is very worth the drive to U.S. 1.

You'll know them because it'll be the only hole-in-the-wall dining room that shows the Food Network.

You'll also know them for the food.  Smokey, seared spare ribs, light corn bread, and the best collard greens that I remember eating.

That was my first platter, and it only suggests more good things to find on that menu.  RG's BBQ Cafe is a new restaurant in the U.S. 1 building that used to be the Bar-B-Que House.  It's the same casual spot with counter service and a small dining room.  But it's a new operation.

It's an operation run by Robert Gadsby -- former executive chef at the Biltmore Hotel in LA and a 2007 contestant on Iron Chef America.  I had noticed the new signs, but Gadsby seems to be running a low-key operation with a Groupon, but no new Web site.

He's not going low on the food.  My $14 platter centered on spare ribs -- meaty ribs with a firm bite and smokey flavor.  It was a huge half rack, but the side dishes were the real shock.  Generous portions of special food.  Corn bread with full flavor and the lightest texture.  Collard greens cooked to perfect tenderness and an earthy tone.

If you're honest, you'll admit that the best part of many collard greens is the meat.  I'll dig around good greens to find a burnt end or some other pork.  But RG's greens may be vegetarian.  At least, I didn't see any meat.  I just forked up greens.  It takes real talent to make something that simple taste so delicious.  I ate dinner watching Chopped on the television, and I'm sure that my meal beat everything in the show.

I'm excited to eat more at RG's BBQ Cafe.  This is on my way home, so I'll work through the pulled pork, the baby back ribs, maybe the burger.  There are hot dogs, which I would normally skip but might be special if they're done like the collard greens.

Gadsby is the chef who folks have said may be taking over the Venegas Prime Filet in Fulton.  I need a lookout to watch for a new menu at Venegas.  MoCo wrote a comment last week, saying that folks at Venegas said the new menu could be coming in the next week.  Has anyone seen it?  Tasted it?

RG's BBQ Cafe
9990 N. Washington Street (U.S. 1)

Laurel, MD 20723

(301) 604-2333

NEAR:  RG's BBQ Cafe is the old Bar-B-Que House on U.S. 1 in Laurel.  It's north of Main Street where U.S. 1 has split into separate north-bound and south-bound lanes.  RG's BBQ Cafe is on the south-bound side.