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During restaurant roulette a couple weeks ago, we were spinning through the dining decision process. I flipped through the archives and came across Baby Blues BBQ which Jeff wrote up a while back. We generally don’t eat too much pork, but have been on a bit of a meat marathon lately. Oddly enough, I nixed Korean BBQ from the list because I “didn’t feel like all-you-can-eat-meat”, but was more than happy to hit up what turned out to be more-than-I-should-have-eaten-meat.

Baby Blues is a small corner storefront on Lincoln a couple of blocks south of Rose in Venice. For us, parking was easy, right in front on the street. There seemed to be plenty of parking options either on Lincoln or the side streets next to the restaurant. Seating, however, was another story. Baby Blues is a popular place and there isn’t a ton of seating. We got there around 7:30 and I think that most of the crowd there arrived not too long before us, so we were in for a bit of a wait.

I’m actually not sure the length of our exact length of our wait, but I would put it somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. Once we were seated at the no frills cafeteria style table, we were treated to what was to be a string of friendly and helpful service. We told the waitress that we hadn’t been there before and were a bit overwhelmed with the menu choices. We fired off a series of questions.

Are the sides served a la carte the same size as the ones with the dinners? Yes.

How many beef ribs come with the dinner platter? 3.

What is the difference between Memphis and Baby Back ribs? Memphis are longer bones and a bit drier. Baby back are a bit shorter and have more fat/flavor.

How much chicken comes on the dinner platter? One half chicken.

Are you serving spinach? Yes

What kind of beer do you have? None, Baby Blues is BYOB and there is a liquor store across the street near Tasty Goody.

Can you give us a couple more minutes? No problem.

After the server left, our table of four erupted into a bit of chaos. We were struggling with combinations and permutations, how many complete dinners to order (which include sides) and how many ribs could we eat, half rack or whole rack, baby back or memphis, are you eating chicken, who wants beef, is that too many sides…. things were getting tense and tummies were running on empty. Fortunately, our server checked back in and helped guide us with portions and options.

As far as I can recall, this is what we ordered:

One rack of baby backs, one rack of beef ribs and a half smoked chicken.

Sides-wise, we got creamed spinach, mashed sweet potatoes, baked beans, collard greens, corn on the cob and mac and cheese. The dinner platters also came with a couple of pieces of corn bread.

After the order was settled and we were told it would be about 20 minutes before our food would arrive, myself and The Finger headed to the liquor store to pick up a six pack of beer. The liquor store had its own excitement when the proprietor and a customer got into it over a pack of cigarettes. The details of the spat were sparse, but what we could gather from the exchange was that the proprietor “didn’t care about the customer” and he “didn’t need to be told how to run his business” and that the customer was “going to business school and knew what he was talking about”. We paid for our overpriced six pack of Bohemia and left the two business wizards to work out their differences.

Shortly after we got back with the beer, one of the cooks came out from the kitchen and sat at our table.

“Who ordered the beef ribs?” he asked. Uh oh, this didn’t sound good. “We’re planning on sharing them” we replied. He went on to apologize, saying that they had just run out of the beef ribs and that usually they only have the beef ribs on “Texas Tuesdays”. We were a bit disappointed, but the cook was so overwhelmingly friendly (as all of the staff was) that our spirits were soon lifted. The cook suggested that we try the Memphis Ribs in addition to the Baby Backs. He also said that two full racks of ribs and a half chicken was probably too much food for the four of us. He left the table explaining that he would take care of us with a plate of two 3/4 racks and the chicken and that he would only charge us for 1/2 racks since they couldn’t give us the beef ribs we ordered. If that isn’t down home service, I don’t know what is.

It wasn’t too much longer when the same cook brought out our meat. It was a big square plate filled with ribs and chicken. By this time we were starved and grabbed the ribs right away. First bite — unreal. I tried the Memphis Ribs first and, well, wow, I’m drooling again thinking about them. Baby Blues dry rubs their ribs before cooking, and while there is some tasty sauce on the table, the ribs don’t need it. The Memphis Ribs were on the lean side and had a smokey flavor, in contrast to the Baby Backs which had a bit more fat content and were juicier with fatty flavor. Both were incredible, but I would lean towards the leaner (ha!) Memphis style.

Comments from the table included “this is ridiculous” (as in good) and “I’m coming back here tomorrow”.

The sides were a treat too, although we didn’t manage to finish them all. I especially liked the mashed sweet potatoes. The collard greens were pretty good, but weren’t great. The corn on the cob was one of the stars, but since it was one big cob, didn’t quite lend itself to being shared; fortunately we were among friends and all got to have a few bites.

I think that our total bill, before tip, was around $70 for the four of us and we were more than stuffed walking out the door. We had some friendly conversation with the guys behind the counter on our way out, I can see that if this was a place you went to often you could add their staff to your list of friends.

Thanks Jeff for the previous review, and shame on me for not going sooner!

Baby Blues BBQ
444 Lincoln Blvd.
Venice, Ca
310-396-7675

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.