No More Barbecue Sauce on Anything Besides Barbecue

Ian Froeb

​Welcome to 86'd!, a new feature in which Gut Check bans certain ingredients, dishes, trends and techniques until further notice.

The burger pictured is served at Market Pub House (6655 Delmar Boulevard; 314-727-8880), which succeeded Racanelli's Cucina in the old Market in the Loop space. I don't want to single out Market Pub House for its "Smokehouse" burger, but this is the dish that finally pushed me over the edge.

From this point forward, you -- all of you -- may no longer serve barbecue sauce on or beside anything except actual barbecue.

Now, I don't think barbecue sauce is sacrosanct. Hell, good barbecue doesn't even need sauce -- or, at least, not much of it. Which is exactly the point. By drowning a burger or chicken sandwich or whatever in a generically tangy, sweet and (if I'm lucky) spicy barbecue sauce, you haven't evoked good barbecue. You've evoked generically tangy, sweet and (if I'm lucky) spicy barbecue sauce.

Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if just about every restaurant that puts barbecue sauce on its burgers, chicken sandwiches, etc. didn't use the same damn generically tangy, sweet and (if I'm lucky) spicy barbecue sauce. Show a little initiative. If you don't have the time or know-how to develop your own secret recipe, buy a better brand of barbecue sauce. And if, God help us, that is your own secret recipe, then get a better recipe. If nothing else, throw some more cayenne in there.

It's sad, really. It's 2010, yet we haven't advanced much beyond this: