No, this is not a post on evolution, creationism, or anything in between. We are visiting my mother and sister in my hometown of Hannibal. This is a small farming town north of Syracuse that hasn’t changed much in population since I grew up. Several of my high school classmates and a few former teachers still live in town, but for the most part I can come here without recognizing or being recognized by anyone in the grocery store or on the town square.
Yesterday Julian had a hankering to have lunch at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse. On the way we stopped at the Destiny USA mega-shopping mall. When it first opened, it was called the Carousel Mall because of the antique carousel installed near the food court. As enclosed shopping malls fell out of favor, the developer morphed it into a shopping and entertainment venue and renamed it Destiny USA. It has an electric go-kart track, ropes course, bowling alley, and several video game arcades along with the same mall stores you’d find in Sheboygan or Seattle. This strategy can make sense in Syracuse, since the climate is not conducive to outdoor recreation other than hunting, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling 5 months out of the year (if you’re lucky). However, getting out of Destiny USA reminds me of the lyrics in Hotel California
: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” It took us a good 20 minutes to get out of the parking lot and back onto route 81. Do not rely on your cell phone’s map application to get you out of that mall alive.
The Dinosaur started out as a couple of guys and a smoker serving food at biker rallies, but they settled down and bought the restaurant in downtown Syracuse in 1988. (The Dinosaur still caters; they did the BBQ lunch at my Cornell reunion 12 years ago.) They’ve since added restaurants in other cities in the northeast. They even have a restaurant in Chicago now. They have live music on the weekends, mostly blues and rock. We originally parked our rental VW Beetle in the motorcycle parking space, but thought better of it when we realized that a couple of bikers could turn the car upside down with their bare hands. The ambiance is decidedly roadhouse-biker bar. The walls have old posters of blues concerts from juke joints near and far, with old license plates. The waitstaff, bartenders, and cooks are liberally festooned with piercings and tattoos. They had a variety of beers on tap and in the bottle, but they had the most important BBQ lunch beverage from my point of view: Unsweetened, unflavored iced tea–with refills.
The bar at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
As for the food, we did a divide and conquer strategy. Julian ordered the ribs and I had a brisket sandwich. Each order came with two sides. He got black beans and rice and pulled pork collard greens, while I got french fries and homemade applesauce (Syracuse is in apple country). Both meats were cooked with the requisite amount of smoke. The collards were superb, especially cut with pulled pork. The applesauce was made the way I do: Apples cooked with the peels, then ground through the coarse filter of a food mill. We definitely ate our fill.
Any self-respecting barbecue joint has its own sauces and condiments on the table and for sale, and the Dinosaur is no exception. It has two sauces, Sensuous Slathering and Wango Tango. The latter is a bit spicier than the former. The garlic chipotle and habanero table sauces were both excellent. They also have a seasoned salt rub called Cajun Foreplay. We bought some of the rub and habanero table sauce (Devil’s Duel) for our refrigerator’s Arsenal of Democracy on our way out. The Dinosaur also has a cookbook, which I bought several years ago. Definitely getting lost for.
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