Ok, I hate to admit I liked it, but I did. Dallas BBQ here in NYC (it has nothing to do with Dallas actually) was pretty good. I’m no BBQ expert so I’m easy to please, but Dallas has a KILLER Early Bird Special. Some friends and I found ourselves near Times Square, which we try to avoid, on Sunday afternoon. The special is TWO plates for $9.99!! If you want the honey or BBQ sauce, it’s a dollar more per dish. It comes with rice or fries, cornbread, soup, and half a chicken. I was skeptical when I got pulled into the tacky massive tourist trap. But we ate a lot, including a Texas sized margarita, and didn’t break the bank even in Times Square. Early bird hours - Monday-Thursday 11:30am-6pm and Friday, Sat, Sun - 11:30am - 5pm, and they have a few locations around the city, others much cooler than Times Square.

This was Next Food Network Star Rory Schepisi’s winning ribs recipe that appeared on the cover of Bon Appétit last July. I’ve never watched the show, and haven’t followed it, but is Rory still around? Well, his ribs and BBQ sauce were brilliant, and nothing is better than herbed butter. I did find the link to the recipe on the Food Network site, which is great, b/c it’s a page long recipe I didn’t feel like typing out. There are a lot of steps to this one, so pay close attention. There’s also a lot you can do ahead, like the herbed butter can be made up to a week ahead as well as the BBQ sauce. I’m actually using an herbed butter for the chicken dish on Wednesday so instead of making and using 4 sticks of butter I can interchange them- they’re very similar. I’ve also put the leftover BBQ sauce in a jam jar, we only had one rack of ribs and the recipe serves 8! I have some chicken breasts in the freezer I’ll make a great BBQ sandwich for lunch this week. Summer doesn’t get any better than BBQ - well I guess you really eat it year round, and we use our stove top grill for lack of outdoor charcoal grill space. We also didn’t make the herb salad that you’ll see in the recipe. The thought of just eating parsley with dressing is not appealing to me - a bit dainty I think. Definitely make this dish, and use the Jersey corn before it’s gone!