At Lexington Betty Smokehouse, new to my neighborhood, I got the tips and brisket, with greens and potato salad, and Carolyn got the pulled pork, greens and corn bread.
The brisket was very good, with flavorful bark. Though it may be considered “too tender” by some, I really liked it. Also knocked out by the greens, which were done with smoked turkey and had much, more flavor than many servings of greens I’ve had in the past. Tips were fine, pulled pork seemed a touch dry, so the next time we go, I’m just going to double down on the brisket and greens, about which I could not get enough – that’s saying a lot; I have a short attention span with food and am usually bored half-way through most entrees, but this brisket…I could have gone for a second helping.
Lexington Betty Smokehouse started out as a food truck and a caterer, and now they have the Galewood/Oak Park location and a stall (open just about a week) at One Eleven Food Hall in Pullman. But here’s the thing: they are not set up to smoke meat in Pullman, so they’re hauling the BBQ from Oak Park to the southside. Although BBQ travels well, LBS may very well be at its best in Oak Park.
Pit master (mistress?) Dominique Leach was kitchen manager at the Art Institute, and that’s where she met Tony Mantuano when he opened his Terzo Piano in the same building. Mantuano snatched her up and she spent several years at Spiaggia, which is an interesting fine-dining detour in her career path to the BBQ pit. Her wife, Tanisha, told us that she’s the one responsible for the rub on the brisket that yielded the excellent outer crust.
Tanisha had asked us if we wanted sauce cooked onto the meat or on the side, and we went with it on the side (SOP). We got the mild sauce, as this is a Chicago original food that I just don’t know much about. There are several references to mild sauce on this forum, and nobody seems to like it very much. I’d love to say I loved it, but I didn’t, though I did enjoy the mild sauce at Lexington Betty’s better than I have at other places: it didn’t have the disagreeable notes of a commodity sauce, though it may very well have contained some of that, which is typical for mild sauce.
Googling around, I discovered a place called Mild Sauce in Los Angeles that caters to West Coast transplants missing the taste of Chicago mild sauce, which seems strange to me as the flavor of mild sauce apparently varies from location to location, so longing for mild sauce could mean different things to different people.
On Youtube (the font of all human knowledge) I came across some recipes for mild sauce, and there are lots of variations, with some recipes calling for a can of Coke, pickled ginger and other unexpected ingredients.
In 2017, there was a Chicago magazine article about mild sauce written by Hannibal Buress (in town to appear with me in the Netflix series “Easy,” a Joe Swanberg mumblecore effort in which Buress plays a writer for Newcity). In that short, funny piece, Buress wrote:
“If you live on the South Side or West Side and you go to a restaurant that has bulletproof glass, they probably have mild sauce. Apologies, that was a horrible explanation. I’ll try again. If serenity had a flavor, it would taste like mild sauce. It should have Sriracha levels of fame. I think it’s a combination of barbecue sauce, hot sauce, and ketchup. The reason I’m guessing is because I’ve never seen an actual bottle that says “mild sauce” on it. They always pour it from some blank, nondescript bottle.”
“Serenity,” yeah, I can see that.
I don’t use much if any sauce on my BBQ – and it would have been a shame to spackle over the flavor of the brisket with sauce of any kind – but I plan to order mild sauce every chance I get, if for no other reason than to gain a better sense of what this Chicago original condiment is all about.
Lexington Betty Smokehouse
6954 W. North Avenue
https://www.lexingtonbettysmokehouse.com/
"Don't you ever underestimate the power of a female." Bootsy Collins