Excerpts taken from the May 23, 2003 Dining Guide.
Come on baby, light a fire
Houston Barbecue Company serves
good if not memborable food!
"With its good-quality meats and excellent side dishes,
Houston Barbecue Company
makes a nice addition to the neighborhood."
"I do admire the house-made beef links here. They're very smoky and well-seasoned, with a texture that hovers interestingly between rough and smooth. And the big, meaty ribs can be awfully satisfying, particularly if you arrive when they've just been pulled from the pit and still have their crustiness intact."
"Once you've got a layer of rib meat on a slice of
Mrs. Baird's (the sine qua non for this delicacy), all you
need is a few rings of crisp, mild onion and a couple of hot bread-and-butter
pickles,
plus a few jolts of thin, red-peppery sauce. Yum."
"And I give HBC owners Kurt and Treca Craig much credit for declining to sugar their side dishes to death, the way too many Texas barbecue joints seem to do. Both their church-supper-caliber potato salad (the genuine, freshly made article, not some mummified industrial substance) and bouncy, thick-cut cole slaw are only marginally sweet. They're way better than the usual run of barbecue side dishes."
"I've had no problems at HBC, where the counter staff seems perfectly willing to slice it our way, even if it means an ungainly slab from the fatty side of the brisket, the way one of my barbecue cohorts likes it. That turned out to be a pretty wild, slippery-slidey hunk of meat."
Alison Cook-Houston Chronicle Restaurant Critic