Frankie the Bull’s BBQ has the trappings of a real barbecue joint. But does it have the goods?
When living in San Diego, you find that there are some realities you just have to face. French fries, oddly enough, do belong in burritos. Winter and summer, aside from the hanging of twinkle lights, are indistinguishable. Flip flop sandals go well with jeans, and sometimes, when it’s cold, a hoodie. But perhaps the most troubling of all of these new, twisted realities is this – San Diego, California, for as long as any one ever can remember, has been a barbecue wasteland.
Ordinarily, this should be an outrage. It’s summer all the time here, and there are breweries a plenty, and beaches! So many beaches! Yet, I am almost certain that every other major US-Mexico border town has better barbecue. Maybe there are just too many taco stands, maybe it just moves too fast (BBQ is, after all, slow food made by generally slow folk). I’m almost willing to bet that Arizona probably has better barbecue than San Diego and Arizona is just like the real world, only everything is a little bit worse.
Sure, there are places that serve barbecue. Barbque House puts up an admirable attempt, even going so far as to misspell “barbecue” (or barbeque, or BBQ, for the vowel-averse), in order to try and gain some of that backwoods authenticity. Unfortunately, it falls short, and when you’re eating good-but-not-great barbecue across the street from truly amazing burgers at Hodad’s, or even solidly crafted New York pizza at Newport Pizza, it’s hard to feel good about your restaurant choice. Even Phil’s BBQ, with long lines that suggest a truly spectacular restaurant, under-delivers, with tri-tip that can’t compare to places that can be found north of Los Angeles.
But recently, Frankie the Bull’s BBQ on Morena Boulevard, has been trying to change that, and it has every chance to. Meat at Frankie’s is smoked, low and slow, as opposed to pre-boiled. The menu is relatively small, and the service is remarkably good. I counted no less than three employees doting on my every whim in a span of less than 30 minutes. In fact, the service was so good, that I’m mentioning it before really talking about the food.
But is that a good thing? Well, yes and no. The food is good. Honestly, it gets my vote for the best barbecue in San Diego. The sauce, which is the gold standard for barbecue, and the largest difference between barbecue regions in the US, is good. Put it on your fries instead of ketchup, it’ll be worth it. Hell, do a shot of it if you’re so inclined, that would probably be worth it, too. It comes in two different forms, for those who like sweet barbecue sauce. The portion sizes are generous, go there more than four times a month, and you may have to start being rolled out of the restaurant. Go there more than four times a week, and you’ll require a crane and a harness. The cole slaw, also good, complete with sliced candied almonds that make the genius idea of putting peanuts in coleslaw look half-assed.
Overall, there are a million good things I could say about this place: it’s clean, friendly, fast and good, real good. In a perfect world, I would end this review right now, declare myself completely stunned, take a Stetson off the wall of the restaurant, and ride off into the sunset on a trusty steed named something ridiculous like “Gunsmoke.”
But sadly, I can’t end there. Because there’s one thing I never actually talked about. Did you miss it? You shouldn’t have, because it’s the most important thing ever in the history of barbecue. The meat at Frankie the Bull’s BBQ is… very good. But it is nothing more than that. The pork and the beef are tender, and well-flavored. But they’re also a little bit on the dry side. And as much as this gives you ample cause to drown your sandwich in biblically large floods of the house barbecue sauce, it does mean that the heart of the food is probably the weakest part of the whole operation. And that’s why it falls short of being cosmically legendary, short of being John Wayne in food form, all true grit and badassery. Instead, we get something more akin to Marty McFly in Back to the Future III. Sure, he’ll still win the day, but he won’t spit in your eye and punch your horse in the face.
I would gladly go back to Frankie the Bulls. I would gladly pay. It was definitely worth it. But given the choice between going out for barbecue in San Diego, or trying my own hand at the grill, I think I’ll be staying at home on my Sunday afternoons.
Chef Jordan Cherry
www.thefeedfeed.com
Forget Goodburger, this is Great Burger.
Hodad’s and Burger Lounge Square Off in the Burger Battle of San Diego.
Burgers, like apple pie, speaking only one language, or clinging desperately to the belief that there is simply no problem that cannot be solved by more horsepower, are an American phenomenon. I want to be clear – this is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, it’s not haute cuisine. But some things shouldn’t be all jacked up on lobster and foie gras, and I’m prone to laughing when burgers try to be haute cuisine (“black truffle wagyu kurobuta bacon cheeseburger” sounds about as natural as “Manolo Blahnik workboots” or “cashmere sanitary wipe”… or even “Bollinger bidet.”). Since the early 20th century, the burger has been a defining American food: cheap, sustaining, and easy to eat while driving (how American!). It’s an American institution, Like GM… only more worth saving.
However, truly great burgers are hard to find. Awash in a sea of McTravesties and Burger King’s phallic “Super Seven Incher”, a sandwich that, along with its advertisement, single handedly does more to kill my personal innocence more than Basic Instinct, The Crying Game, and Boogie Nights combined, the local burger joint is a constantly assaulted stronghold of deliciousness. Luckily for people living in San Diego, we have to such strongholds.
Hodad’s has long been the king of Ocean Beach burger joints. Clad in bumper stickers, half a Volkswagen bus, and mildly naughty license plates (the ones directly under the menu board are the best), Hodad’s has been dishing out devilishly good burgers for years, and it doesn’t end there. The milkshakes look like wondrously overstuffed cups of ice cream, spilling out over the sides, threatening to flood your delightfully utilitarian potato wedges. That’s not even the best part: order the bacon cheeseburger. Order the double bacon cheeseburger, if you want to risk the dislocation of your jaw. Either way, you will be subject to something heinously good… the bacon patty. That’s right, no strips here. Pieces of bacon are formed into a patty the same size as your normal burger patty. The last time something this good was created, the words “be fruitful and multiply,” were uttered. You can’t help but think how many years of your life you’re losing by eating of such forbidden fruit, and in the end you don’t care; because this is delicious, and the years your losing are off the end of your life when you forget your own address and return to diaper wearing and rubber mattress protectors.
The portions are enough for Godzilla, and by the end of a meal, you wonder which is going to happen first, your stomach exploding from finishing the shake, or your ears exploding from the Pennywise being played at a million decibels. In no other place does something that looks so much like a mosh pit taste so good.
For years, I had insisted that Hodad’s was the undisputed, tattooed, and pierced king of burgers in San Diego. But now, there is a challenge. In the decidedly less hotboxed sections of town, namely the trendy neighborhoods of Kensington and Little Italy, and the wealthy bastions of La Jolla and Coronado, a local burger restaurant is rooted in the philosophy of taking great ingredients, doing a few things, and doing them very, very well. It’s called Burger Lounge. You’ll find no over the top bacon slabs here… in fact, there’s only one real burger on the menu (three if you count veggie and turkey varieties… but those aren’t really burgers. That’s like calling Yorkshire terriers “dogs”… you may be technically right, but you know, deep down, in your heart of hearts, that you’re wrong, so very wrong). As far as main courses go, there are only four items. And in the world of food, that means one thing… the things that they do, they do very, very well. The beef is grass fed. The buns are yeasty morsels made specifically for burger lounge every day. The onion rings are breaded in panko. It’s a monument to an insane pursuit of burger perfection, wrapped in contemporary restaurant interiors that feature suggestive words like “delicious,” “tasty,” and “moist,” written on the wall. It’s green as well (not the burger, of course). The whole restaurant is dedicated to sound environmental practice, which means that you’ll be tearing into your burger with the same frenzied mauling as the lions and polar bears you’re saving by ordering that burger.
In terms of the composition of the burger, it’s no different from any other burger. The basic parts are all there and nothing more. No bacon. No sourdough. No mushrooms. But there’s a reason for that. If there were bells and whistles, you might not notice that every piece of the burger at Burger Lounge is better than the corresponding pieces you would get at any other restaurant. And all of those little differences add up to a very, very big difference in flavor, all the while avoiding the stupid, pretentious “haute burger” nonsense. Ingredient for ingredient, it’s the best burger in town.
So, take your pick. There’s honestly no wrong way to go between the two. Do you feel like getting both your gut and ears blasted by a punk-rock flavor orgy so good that not even Guy Fieri’s bleach-blonde idiocy could taint it? Or do you want to be stunned by the pristine beauty of grass fed beef that has never seen a feedlot in its life? Whether you get your face blasted off in the sheer overwhelming wonder of the Hodad’s bacon cheeseburger, or lose yourself in the balanced perfection of Burger Lounge, you’ll be doing something to take back the burger from the likes of Ronald McDonald, and his disturbingly shaped food fiend goons.
Chef Jordan Cherry
www.thefeedfeed.com
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