Unbreaded

Q BBQ & Tequila: Southern Backyard BBQ In The Heart of Old City

Having discovered that the Old City crowd prefers a late night binge of tacos, ribs and burritos over seafood, Philadelphia Fish & Company took just one week to transform from a 26-year-old neighborhood fixture into a Southern influenced BBQ restaurant. Reborn as Q, it’s a place where the friendly staff and comfortable, bluesy atmosphere reflects the traditional family food served hot off the smoker and full of heart.

Pit master Tom Stewart learned his craft from his grandfather in eastern North Carolina, where real BBQ is a smoked pork butt (shoulder) in a vinegar-based sauce.  And as you travel west to Tennessee and into Missouri, the sauce tends to get sweeter, thicker, and richer with a stronger influence of tomato.  Q offers a selection of three Dixie sauces: Vinegar, a thin sauce made from “spices and love with just a hint of tomato” (though true NC purists may cringe at the thought); Q Sauce, a tomato-based balance of sweet, spice and vinegar; and Sweet, a thick Kansas City-style sauce that lives up to its name.  Perhaps most remarkable is that each of the sauces works well with the others, giving you the ability to customize the flavor to your own preference.

Chicken, pork and beef are each rubbed with their own closely guarded secret spice blends and smoked up to 13 hours at a shot with chunks of fragrant hickory.  Flame-kissed on the grill to finish and pulled by hand (or sliced thin, in the case of the brisket) the meats take on a depth of flavor that can only come with slow cooking.

The pulled pork sandwich is the top selling item on the menu.  A mound of the smokey, tangy meat is topped with cool, refreshing cole slaw, served in non-traditional shreds of cabbage, as opposed to the finely chopped bits you’d find in the Outer Banks. We were impressed by the texture and consistency of the meat, tender and pulled in thicker pieces than we’re accustomed to. The North Carolina vinegar adds just the right amount of sweet and sour playing off the meat nicely.

The brisket sandwich is spicy and smoky, tender to the bite and full of big flavor, though slightly drier than we’d prefer after hours on the smoker.  But the sauces (a mix of Q and Vinegar) saved the day, adding a juicy burst and extra spiciness that perfectly complimented the meat.  Served on a firm but fresh roll, the sandwich held together well and managed the generous serving of meat.

Though it is not a sandwich, we recommend trying one of their 60 tequilas in a flute glass, which mitigates the pungent sharpness and offers a silky, mellow, classy way to do body shots off a drunk chick.

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Q BBQ & Tequila
207 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 (Google Map)